Josh Hawley’s Big Tech Hypocrisy: How His Complicity Fuels Our Descent into a Plutocratic Auto-Technocracy
Senator Josh Hawley built his brand on a crusade against Big Tech tyranny. He has railed against Meta’s surveillance capitalism, Amazon’s monopolistic abuses, and Silicon Valley’s ideological control over public discourse. He even wrote The Tyranny of Big Tech, a book in which he presents himself as the righteous warrior standing against a digital oligarchy.
Yet now, under Trump’s second administration, as Elon Musk consolidates power through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Hawley’s silence is deafening. Worse than silence, he has actively enabled the very system he once decried. By supporting an administration that has handed over critical government infrastructure to a corporate titan with a well-documented history of exploiting data, undermining regulations, and suppressing critics, Hawley reveals his entire political project as a fraud.
This is not just hypocrisy—it is complicity in a new form of rule: a plutocratic auto-technocracy, where billionaires, backed by government decrees, dictate policy through opaque technological control. And Hawley, despite all his populist rhetoric, is doing nothing to stop it.
DOGE: The Engine of Corporate Control
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was billed as a way to streamline the federal government, reduce bureaucracy, and cut waste. In reality, it is a hostile takeover of the public sector by private interests, specifically those aligned with Musk.
Since its formation, DOGE has begun dismantling key oversight mechanisms, transferring critical data infrastructure into Musk-controlled entities like Starlink and X.ai. Reports indicate that Musk’s companies now have direct or indirect access to:
• Government cloud services previously managed by agencies like the GSA.
• Federal employment records, under the guise of streamlining workforce reductions.
• National security-adjacent satellite data, through SpaceX contracts that bypass traditional procurement processes.
Yet, when pressed on these concerns, Hawley offers only platitudes. In his recent public statements, he has claimed that “proper security protocols” are still in place and that data privacy remains a top priority. This is an outright lie.
Musk’s history makes it clear that traditional safeguards do not apply to him. Consider:
• In 2022, Tesla whistleblowers revealed that employees routinely accessed and shared private customer footage from car cameras—despite company assurances that these videos were secure. (Reuters)
• In 2023, Twitter (now X) removed transparency tools meant to track government requests for user data—a move that was widely criticized as a concession to authoritarian regimes. (The Verge)
• SpaceX has repeatedly defied federal contract rules and labor laws, with the implicit protection of a government reliant on its services. (The Washington Post)
If this is Musk’s track record in the private sector, why would DOGE—an entity created explicitly to consolidate government operations under his influence—be any different?
Hawley knows this. Yet he refuses to act.
The “Anti-Elite” Populist Who Serves the Elite
Hawley’s refusal to confront DOGE’s overreach is not an oversight—it is the logical outcome of his political strategy. His entire career has been built on a manufactured populist theater: painting himself as the champion of the working class while advancing policies that serve the wealthiest and most powerful.
• He postures against tech billionaires while refusing to confront the most dangerous one now controlling government infrastructure.
• He decries monopolistic control but aids an administration that is handing public power to private autocrats.
• He rails against Big Tech censorship, yet refuses to acknowledge Musk’s overt ideological policing on X, where dissenting voices are throttled while right-wing propaganda flourishes.
This is not a miscalculation—it is a strategy. Hawley’s brand of “populism” has always been a means of consolidating power for an elite faction that pretends to oppose the establishment while replacing it with something far worse: a corporate oligarchy cloaked in nationalist rhetoric.
The real Hawley is not a warrior against Big Tech tyranny. He is a servant of its new, more dangerous iteration—a system where the state is dismantled, oversight is eliminated, and the most powerful billionaires become the government itself.
What Happens Next: The Auto-Technocratic Future
The consequences of Hawley’s complicity are severe. By refusing to challenge DOGE, he is helping cement a future where government functions are entirely privatized and public accountability no longer exists.
Under this model:
• Government surveillance will no longer be conducted by agencies bound by constitutional oversight, but by private companies with no transparency obligations.
• Public services—such as transportation, communication, and even national defense—will be controlled by corporate interests who set their own rules.
• Dissenters will be deplatformed and financially crushed, not by government censorship, but by corporate blacklists that operate beyond legal challenge.
This is not speculation. It is already happening.
The line between government and corporate power is eroding rapidly, and Hawley, rather than fighting it, is clearing the way. His faux-populist rhetoric is a distraction, a misdirection designed to keep his followers focused on the last Big Tech oligarchs while the new ones consolidate power unchecked.
Josh Hawley has spent years marketing himself as the great antagonist of Big Tech’s overreach. Now, he faces a defining moment.
Will he demand congressional oversight of DOGE, or will he continue issuing toothless statements while Musk restructures government infrastructure in real time? Will he stand against corporate rule, or will he allow himself to become its most useful tool?
Thus far, the answer is clear: Hawley is willing to trade principle for power, truth for expediency. But history will not be kind to those who, when confronted with the rise of a new plutocracy, chose to look the other way.
His silence is no longer just hypocrisy.
It is betrayal.