Business chief executives, including Elon Musk, have become increasingly involved in US elections.Credit: Scott Olson/Getty Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley Jacob Silverman Bloomsbury Continuum (2025) Over the past 20 years, big technology companies in the United States have exerted an outsized influence on the country’s politics. Initially, it was through conventional lobbying. Google, for instance, was one of the most influential lobbying organizations in Washington DC during the administration of former president Barack Obama. But the methods of big-tech executives have become much more direct and, today, are often highly disruptive. How to end outrage and detoxify politics: share stories, not statistics In Gilded Rage, journalist Jacob Silverman describes how some of the United States’ wealthiest men, who have enriched themselves during the technology boom of the past 20 years, are recasting themselves as ideological ‘rage pundits’.…