I walk through how a handful of billionaires capture media and tilt the information environment toward their interests.
I open with a jaw-dropping clip: a prominent tech billionaire argues it’s “time to limit the First Amendment” and put government in charge of social platforms to control speech. From there, I map how billionaire ownership and influence run through legacy outlets and social media — and why that consolidation is poison for a functioning democracy.
Chapters:
00:00 – The setup: What “media capture” looks like now
01:00 – The clip: ‘Limit the First Amendment’ & control the platforms
03:00 – Why consolidation wins: profit engines vs. public interest
05:00 – Paywalls for facts, free feeds for outrage
09:00 – Platform capture: bots, foreign amplification, and X/Twitter
11:00 – Close: Why deconcentrating media power is a democracy issue
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Music Credit: Good_B_Music
Mentioned in this episode:
Left in Exile Intro
Left in Exile Intro
Transcripts
Dr. Jim : [:
Sara Eisen : Shlomo Kramer, also one of the founders of Checkpoint, another big cyber company. Shlomo, it's great to have you here. Welcome.
Shlomo Kramer: Thank you for having me.
Sara Eisen : How is AI cyber warfare shaping geopolitics right now?
Shlomo Kramer: So, AI is going to revolutionize cyber warfare is revolutionize cyber warfare from critical infrastructure, uh, to the, uh, uh, fabric of society and politics and undermining it, giving unfair advantage to the cian, uh, uh, governments against.
Uh, democratic countries, uh, first Amendment type of, uh,
Sara Eisen : that's already happening.
low for the First Amendment, [:
Sara Eisen : What do you mean?
Shlomo Kramer: Look, I mean that, uh, we need to, uh, control the platforms. Uh, all the social platforms we need to stack rank the, uh, uh, uh, authenticity of every person that, uh, uh, expresses themselves online and take, uh, control over, uh, what they are saying based on that ranking through
Sara Eisen : the government. The government should control the social media.
Shlomo Kramer: Uh, should do that. And we need, uh, to educate people against ICE and government need to develop cyber defense programs that are as sophisticated. The sub attack today, it's a one to a hundred, uh, ratio and, uh, really government are not doing this, uh, today at any rate, and enterprises are left.
Eh, [:
so you need to use technology in order to stabilize the political system, and you need to put adjustments that are perhaps you are left in polarization of society. And inner fighting, and you have to control that.
And you see that already happening, uh, uh, across the world. So this, uh, is, uh, an urgent need by the government to do that. And until then, enterprises are buying by themselves more and more, uh, cybersecurity solutions, but they can't afford all these, uh, solutions by themselves. So they are looking for ways, uh, to deliver more efficient.
Consumption,
so, and that, that drives really the next generation of companies such as Wiz, CrowdStrike, uh, Cato Networks on the network that are platforms and are able to deliver this extended need for security in an affordable way for enterprises.
Sara Eisen : For enterprises, right? Not for governments,
to start building, uh, their [:
So, so changes must be made.
Dr. Jim : That is just one example of a billionaire expressing out loud what he feels is necessary in order for billionaire interest to be served. They want to control free speech and limit what's said on. Publications on social media platforms, anywhere and everywhere. That is their vision for the future, and the fact that American media has been consumed by a handful of billionaires is probably one of the worst things that can happen when it comes to maintaining the republic and the democracy that we have.
society. They add nothing of [:
As of today,
Everything that we need to survive on a day-to-day basis is. Structured in a way to extract as much as possible from us, and the media is no different, whether we're talking about social media, print media.
Network news, cable news, all of them are owned by a handful of people, and you can see the reason why we have the regime in power today is because a handful of billionaires decided that they need one of their own that is easily controllable and will serve their interests. And that's exactly what we're seeing.
fraudster, rapist, and felon [:
Don't believe me. Think about this. Every form of legitimate news that's out there that deals with the facts and evidence and follows a story where the facts and evidence lies is stuck behind a paywall. What's free for everyone to consume brain rot? Every kook conspiracy theorist, every tabloid muckraker, every two bit uneducated moron with no training and a microphone can hop on any platform and gain millions of views, often funded by foreign entities and billionaire interests so that they can push all sorts of cookery and culture war stuff that takes attention away from [00:06:00] the reason why everyday Americans are struggling, and that's by design. Billionaires have a vested interest in controlling the narrative and controlling the message, which is why we find ourselves where we are today.
So think about all of the different media entities that are controlled by billionaire interests and the impact that it's had. You look at somebody like Rupert Murdoch, who owns News Corp. And News Corp is an umbrella organization that controls every tabloid piece of journalism that you can think of, including Fox News. And Fox News has repeatedly paid nearly billion dollar settlements for not being able to tell the truth and. That's under Rupert Murdoch's umbrella and direction that Fox News has taken the position that they've taken.
You look at Jeff Bezos, who owns the Washington Post. Jeff Bezos put his foot down and prevented the Washington Post to editorial board from supporting Kamala Harris and pulled.
wants things that are in his [:
And certainly Jeff Bezos wants no attention paid through the level of bribery and influence that he is peddling with this regime. You think that $40 million payoff to do a Puff Piece documentary about Melania, who's been in the US for 40 years and can't even speak English.
You think that was done out of true journalistic integrity or was there a payoff that was to be had or money to be made? We know the answer to that. Jeff Bezos is a great example of why a billionaire has no business owning a press entity.
Take a look at what's happening with CBS.
values that's been publicly [:
another billionaire that has no business owning any media entity is, marian Adelson now, she inherited the Las Vegas Review Journal through her husband and the Adelsons are huge supporters of the Trump regime. And what have you seen in terms of their support of this regime? When you look at their influence in this regime. The funds alone, say one thing, but you have somebody that has divided loyalties between this country and another country, and they have outsized influence in this regime that is a problem for everyday Americans.
influence that Patrick soon [:
So when you look at all of these big players that own media entities, you can understand how it creates a conflict of interest and there is no better example of a conflict of interest occurring than what's happened since Elon Musk has bought Twitter.
Elon Musk, the world's richest man, acquired Twitter and promptly turned it into a bot farm Nexus, designed to push Russian propaganda and Chinese propaganda in. Support of the Trump regime because those countries have a vested interest in having weak American leadership that's easily controlled, and they got their wish by way of Elon Musk's moderation of Twitter.
d let's not forget that Elon [:
That's one of many examples of why media capture by billionaires is a problem that we need to address and as soon as possible, when the next administration takes over, one of their key initiatives should be to excise every one of these parasitic billionaires out of the media sphere.
