American Zaibatsu

Imagine a right-wing regime where private business and authoritarian politics are so closely intertwined that the boundary between the two ceases to exist. A system where businessmen sit at the cabinet table, making decisions not for the public good, but to further their own corporate interests.

In this world, politics and profit collude. The demand for raw materials—especially for the defense industry—becomes a military priority. Strategic wars are planned, not for ideology, but to secure supply chains.

Eventually, this regime finds itself in open conflict with the global economy, withdrawing from trade agreements and retreating into a belligerent, self-imposed isolation.

This isn’t Trump’s America—but Japan in the 1930s. Yet the parallels are impossible to ignore.

The billionaires orbiting Trump span manufacturing, government services, AI, social media, and cryptocurrency. They echo Japan’s 20th-century zaibatsu: vertically integrated industrial empires controlled by a holding company, financed by in-house banks, and operating across multiple sectors. The “Big Four” zaibatsu—Sumitomo, Mitsui, Mitsubishi, and Yasuda—held immense power. Mitsui was tightly aligned with the army, Mitsubishi with the navy.

The zaibatsu weren’t just economic giants; they were political ones. Their executives took turns sitting in the Japanese cabinet, and during wartime, they occupied seats in the war cabinet itself, alongside generals and civilian leaders.

Authoritarian regimes are fragile. Their weakness is the human element—ordinary people refusing to comply. The Soviet Union collapsed not through military defeat but because its citizens, army, and secret police simply gave up. Other regimes have fallen when soldiers joined protesters rather than fire on them.

China’s leadership learned from this. During Tiananmen Square, they disarmed local troops, claiming it would prevent violence. Instead, they brought in forces from far outside Beijing—many of whom didn’t even speak Mandarin. These troops were immune to persuasion. When the crackdown came, it was swift and brutal.

The elites who rise to the top want us to believe in their genius, their work ethic, their inevitable dominance. In truth, it’s luck and a broken system. Strip away the scaffolding of privilege, and many of them are just well-connected mediocrities.

Technocrats like Musk and Thiel peddle a new strain of authoritarianism—one enforced by drones, sensors, and loyal machines. Their loyalty is unquestioning. Their reach is endless. Combine this with social media surveillance, and you have a control structure Stalin could only dream of.

Musk’s involvement with DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) is especially chilling. It’s building a vast database of U.S. citizens. Combined with social media data, it becomes a tool to identify and neutralize anyone deemed a threat.

This is authoritarianism fit for a collapsing world—plagued by pandemics, economic shocks, climate catastrophe, mass shootings, and domestic terror. In the face of endless crises, some people will embrace the regime, craving safety. Others will cling to their dwindling freedoms.

It’s the hard-right vision of fortress nations—Italy, Israel, Australia, the U.S.—each becoming an armed bunker in an age of chaos. In these bunkers, openly supremacist movements offer survival, but only to those on the inside.

This is already happening. The head of ICE openly discusses using AI to “free up bed space” and “fill up airplanes”—deporting immigrants faster, with less oversight. He boasts about working with DOGE to access social security data for supposed “voter fraud” investigations.

This isn’t law enforcement. It’s logistics. “Let the badge and gun do the badge-and-gun stuff,” says Trump’s border czar Tom Homan. “Everything else, contract out.”

ICE’s track record is abysmal. Most deportees aren’t criminals or terrorists. But that’s the point—the randomness is deliberate. In this system, only absolute loyalty offers protection from arbitrary detention and exile.

These are America’s zaibatsu. Musk isn’t an industrialist—he’s a venture capitalist. Tesla? Founded by someone else. SpaceX? Funded with government cash. His real business is financial speculation, not engineering.

The Japanese zaibatsu led their nation to war, believing they were forging a better world—one dominated by their race and empire, but still a world of order. America’s modern zaibatsu have no such dream. Their vision is apocalyptic. They plan to rule from bunkers, watching the world burn as they sip purified water and optimize their children’s genetics.

They’re not preparing to rebuild society. They’re preparing to outlast it.