Read Alastair Crooke — But Here’s What’s Missing About Trump and His Billionaire Backers

Originally published on History with a Why. Also published on Real Left’s substack. Please consider subscribing if you haven’t already.

Alastair Crooke’s recent article Is the Trump Project Unravelling? offers a sharp and useful look at the strange and increasingly unstable alliance between Donald Trump and the tech billionaires who support him. It’s a strong piece, especially in how it shows the disconnect between what many Trump voters want and what the elites funding him are aiming for. But there’s one part of Crooke’s argument that doesn’t quite hold up, let’s take a closer look at it.

Crooke argues that the MAGA movement and the tech elite are heading for a clash because they have totally different, and contradictory, visions for America’s future. He describes how figures like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk support a kind of “authoritarian libertarianism,” where a small group of wealthy tech leaders would run things, using artificial intelligence and surveillance to manage society. Trump’s team, on the other hand, is more focused on using [bizarre] economic tools to try to maintain U.S. dollar dominance and deal with America’s growing debt. These goals seem very different — and Crooke presents them as being on a collision course.

In reality, the tech billionaires rely on Trump’s economic and military agenda to advance their own interests. His trade policies, tariff threats, and use of sanctions are designed to block out foreign competitors — especially from China — and keep U.S. tech companies in a dominant position. These are not really separate policies; they’re a key part of the strategy. The biggest players in the tech world make their money through data collection, surveillance tools, cloud infrastructure, software and intellectual property. Their profits depend on shutting out competition and expanding control — and that means protecting their market from rising challengers like China.

So, while they are on a collision course, it’s not because Trump stands for ordinary people. It’s because his One Big Beautiful Bill tax cut strategy is doomed to fail — it will increase US debt because, despite Western governments already steadily cutting company taxes, the uber-rich have not been coaxed back towards the productive economy, nor away from their greedy fixation on making money through government subsidies, government contracts, money-for-nothing financial instruments, share market buybacks and tax avoidance.

So while Crooke is right to highlight policy differences, Trump and the tech billionaires are more aligned than he suggests. Their goals overlap: both want to use U.S. power to benefit American business and keep global competitors down — and this means continued war and continued concessions to the rich.

The deeper contradiction is between the billionaire class — including those backing Trump — and the working-class voters who make up some of his base. Many of these people want a return to a stable, decent life: good jobs, good health, good houses and functioning infrastructure. But the MAGA movement doesn’t have real answers for any of that. It sticks to the fabricated ‘communist’ bogeyman — which is, in reality, an anti-tax, anti-spending ideology that blocks the kinds of public investment needed to rebuild the country.

At the same time, the left — which once might have offered an alternative — has largely abandoned class issues. Many MAGA folk wouldn’t touch what now passes for the left with a bargepole, and for good reason. Too much energy has gone into identity politics and symbolic fights, while the real power of corporations has been ignored or even supported. In some cases, especially around public health and pharma, and also the ‘transgender’-‘queer’ fabrication, the left has ended up backing the very industries it should be challenging. That’s left a vacuum. No political force is consistently fighting for the material needs of ordinary people — let alone organising them — and the left has proven itself the enemy of real science, real health, medical choice and bodily autonomy.

Crooke’s article stands out as a helpful starting point. It captures the surface-level tensions between Trump and some of his backers, and it outlines the instability of the current political moment. But to fully understand what’s happening, it’s necessary to go further. The real issue isn’t a clash between Trump and the billionaires — it’s the gap between both of them and the people they claim to represent. Until someone speaks directly to those unmet needs — and is willing to challenge both capital and the political class — the same cycle will keep repeating.

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