Unfortunately, we have a real-world countdown happening with the wait for Trump’s presidency to begin and, as with the proverbial ticking bomb, ther

A countdown creates suspense and tension: preparing for 2025

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2024-11-18 17:00:06

Unfortunately, we have a real-world countdown happening with the wait for Trump’s presidency to begin and, as with the proverbial ticking bomb, there are things that need to be done before the timer hits zero. We might not be facing a literal explosion, but we’re facing a US president who has declared his intentions to assert control to an unprecedented degree.

Since unpredictability is one of the defining characteristics of Trump as a politician, it’s hard to prepare because you don’t really know what to expect, and even harder for those based in the US because they’re exposed to the full range of possible actions by a Trump regime. They might get lucky and get a Trump that is mostly just a repeat of his earlier presidency. But they might also get unlucky and get something that the US has never experienced before. You tick the obvious boxes – tariffs, renew your passports and documentation – but the range of possibilities defies thorough preparation.

Between the tech industry’s preexisting partnership with US security services, the enthusiastic support for Trump of many tech billionaires, and the seeming willingness of Trump’s prospective government to wield regulatory cudgels such as the weakening of Section 230, we can’t rule out the possibility that social, streaming, print, and broadcast media in the US will effectively end up under Trump crony control. Even outlets that aren’t directly controlled are likely to exhibit the Counterculture Switch I wrote about last week. What is normal and mainstream will shift even further under political pressure. The same shift could happen in both finance and computing.

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