The digital Gilded Age: DC faces Silicon Valley's riches – and ever-growing power

The late 19th century was a period known as “the Gilded Age” in America. As the railroads, mining industries and factories boomed, millions of workers were inspired to migrate from Europe, yet the wealth became concentrated among a small set of industrialists such as Andrew Carnegie, a steel magnate, and the oil baron John D Rockefeller. These men wielded massive power through business, political efforts and philanthropy. Yet even Carnegie, whose ruthlessness earned him a reputation as a “robber baron”, would have been amazed by the power the heads of technology firms wield today, according to the Carnegie biographer David Nasaw.

“Carnegie could never have imagined the kind of power Zuckerberg has,” said Nasaw, a history professor at City University of New York. “Politics today is less relevant than it has ever been in our entire history. These CEOs are more powerful than they’ve ever been. The driving force of social change today is no longer government at all.” Tech CEOs have spent 2016 wading into politics when it suits their own ends, and even going head-to-head with the US government.