Tech giant Elon Musk has been compared to an alien, has called himself a 3,000-year-old vampire, and was once the inspiration for the screen depiction of Marvel superhero Tony Stark.

But there is another descriptor following Musk around lately.

They're clearly oligarchs. They have concentration of wealth and power.

That was former Trump advisor Steve Bannon on his podcast, War Room. He later spoke to my colleague

Steve Inskeep on Morning Edition. These oligarchs in the Silicon Valley, they have a very different

view of how people should govern themselves. I call it techno-futalism. Banon has been feuding with

Musk over immigrant access to work visas in the U.S.

But, you know, he's not the only one to warn about the influence of billionaires like Musk.

This whole idea may be the only point of agreement between Bannon and former President Joe Biden.

Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence.

That literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms.

Even before Musk was chosen to run Trump's newly created Department of Government Efficiency,

he had deep investments in the federal government.

Where both the federal government and the rest of the private sector have underinvested,

Elon Musk has stepped in and really dominated.

That is NPR's tech correspondent, Bobby Allen.

60% of the country's electric vehicle chargers are controlled by Tesla.

Another Musk company, SpaceX, operates the only U.S.-made

rockets that can send astronauts to the International Space Station. So through Tesla and SpaceX,

Musk's companies have been awarded, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars in federal contracts.

With the work Musk is doing, sometimes there's no other alternative. So the federal government

just can't disentangle itself from the Musk empire. But Musk is not the only billionaire looking

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