The Billionaire Group Chats Steering American Politics—One Emoji at a Time

The most powerful political lobby in America today might be a group chat with disappearing messages, Marc Andreessen memes, and zero oversight.
Forget party conventions; America’s new political coalitions were forged in encrypted group chats. A web of elite Signal and WhatsApp threads, spearheaded by Marc Andreessen, Sriram Krishnan, and Erik Torenberg, has quietly shaped the Silicon Valley-to-Trump pipeline since 2020.
These invite-only spaces, once safe havens from “cancel culture,” became incubators for ideological radicalization, meme warfare, and policy influence. Behind closed chat bubbles:
- Pro-Trump shifts were coordinated across tech’s top names
- Opposing views were softened or sidelined through exit or silence
- Debates on AI, DEI, and culture moved from podcast to power
As AI policy, media narratives, and even elections are nudged from inside these invisible salons, should we treat elite group chats as digital governance platforms? If power now resides in encrypted conversations rather than democratic deliberation, what checks—if any—should exist?
Read the full article on Semafor.
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