Let the enduring image of Elon Musk’s stint in government be that of a boomerang thrown — only to come back and whack him in the face. His recent attempt to strong arm the Copyright Office, part of his broader effort to DOGE-ify government and pave the way for artificial intelligence (AI) companies to freely scrape creative works for training data, hasn’t gone as planned.
Just before the attempted takeover, the Copyright Office had shared a draft report that dared to suggest that some forms of AI scraping wouldn’t be protected under fair use provisions. But, in a twist, the officials brought in by the Trump administration turned out to be anything but Silicon Valley friendly. As the Verge reports, these acting officials “are known to be unfriendly — and even downright hostile — to the tech industry.” As Tina Nguyen writes, the men who arrived on the scene “were not DOGE at all, but instead approved by the MAGA wing of the Trump coalition that aims to put tech companies in check.”
The DOGE-boomerang backfire is more than just political theater. It signals deeper tensions within the Trump administration and the broader contemporary right. The MAGA movement, for all its contradictions, is an expression of populist frustrations with capitalist modernity, sharp edges and all. It counts among its members those who despise corporate America and are, to say the least, tech skeptics.
MAGA adherents aren’t a monolith, and their political commitments vary. But the movement, at a minimum, includes a rhetorical commitment to defending labor…
Auteur: David Moscrop
