Techno-Feudalism like Yanis Varoufakis Said

under whom we cheerlead the destruction of our kind – 
our heads bowed down with the weight of the media 
-Marc di Saverio (2020). Crito Di Volta, 31.

Former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is building an investor group to acquire ByteDance’s TikTok, as a bipartisan piece of legislation winding its way through Congress threatens its continued existence in the U.S.
-Rohan Goswami and Jesse Pound (2024). 

You are under surveillance!
And the USA is seizing the surveillance for MAGA.

The scramble for cyberspace: 1884 all over again.
Invade. Colonize. Partition.
There are only terra nullius and eminent domain
in platform empires.

Trump’s Treasury Secretary will have your kid’s data.
Trump’s Treasury Secretary will know your recipes and décor hacks.
Twerking tweens will twerk for Trump now.

Now we can all be Miss Teen USA.
Help! We don’t even live in the USA!
Steve Mnuchin wants a platform, and to wear a crown.

MAGA will buy TikTok with offshore accounts,
Then offshoring whales will onboard TikTok in Uncle Sam’s name.
Android-Apple-Alphabet – California Caliphate,
Christian Nationalist internet.
while microserfs make BitCoin bets.
What did you monetize today?
What do the 5 Eyes not see already?
Can one Eye subpoena what another Eye surveils?

What is the difference between “Treasury Secretary” and “Chairman?”
Mao we get to find out.


Terry Trowbridge has appeared in Synchronized Chaos before. He is grateful to the Ontario Arts Council for funding poetry during the polycrisis.