The Country is Upside Down: How Media Consolidation and AI Are Reshaping American Democracy

There’s a peculiar irony in how we’ve arrived at this moment in American life. The very technologies that promised to democratize information and empower individuals have, in many ways, contributed to the erosion of the institutions that make democracy function. As someone who has spent decades in investment banking advising media companies through transformational moments, I’ve had a front-row seat to this evolution. What I’m seeing now concerns me deeply. 

The destruction of local media represents one of the most underappreciated threats to our democratic institutions. When I founded Methuselah Advisors in 2010, I’d already witnessed dramatic shifts in how content is created and consumed during my years at First Boston, Lazard, and other major banking institutions. But the pace of change has accelerated beyond what most people realize, and it isn’t obvious that this is good in every way. 

The Expropriation of Local News 

Local media has been decimated by the ascendancy of tech giants who have largely expropriated their intellectual property and paid nothing for it. The use and taking of content produced by newspapers by the likes of Google and Facebook is criminal. And it has destroyed the economics of local media apparatuses that were fundamental to how our democratic institutions function. 

Consider what’s been lost. Local newspapers were the guardians of behavior on a local level. They covered city council meetings, investigated corrupt officials, reported on school board decisions, and held power accountable in communities across America. The big and destructive power of Google and Facebook was left totally unchecked until the local media industry was essentially destroyed. 

Through my work as CEO of Inyo Broadcast Holdings, a television broadcasting enterprise reaching a significant portion of U.S. households, I see this crisis from the inside. The economic models that sustained local TV broadcasting are being chipped away, little by little. Now streaming services like Amazon Prime and Netflix are reaching to acquire production capabilities, Netflix’s interest in Warner Bros. being a prime example, which will make them incredibly powerful, perhaps unstoppable. 

Yet do any of those giants report on anything local? Local murders? Accidents? Local weather? No. All of the tools that people need to live their lives are ignored by these giants. What happens when you wake up and you can’t find out what the weather is like outside? It sounds almost trivial until you realize it’s symptomatic of a much larger problem: the disappearance of the civic infrastructure that keeps communities informed and connected. 

The AI Reckoning 

If the consolidation of media power is concerning, the rise of artificial intelligence represents an entirely different category of challenge. I find myself aligned with Elon Musk on this topic, quite worried about the inability of humanity to constrain technology. There will come a point when technology is not containable. 

Think back to the movie “War Games” with Matthew Broderick, where the machine took control of missile launching. It could happen, and much sooner than people think. We might not be able to contain the technologies we are creating. That’s a big problem that demands urgent attention from policymakers, business leaders, and citizens alike. 

The misuse and abuse of personal images and “likeness” in an age of AI is going to be a major issue that has to be adjudicated. It has been largely ignored, and the longer it is ignored, the more problematic it will become. We’re already seeing deepfakes, unauthorized use of people’s voices and images, and AI-generated content that blurs the line between reality and fabrication. Without clear legal frameworks and ethical guardrails, this will only accelerate. 

But perhaps the most profound impact of AI will be on work itself. What does this mean for young people and their aspirations for work and progress? It means many fewer real jobs and many more “make work” jobs, which isn’t a very satisfying future. Anyone arguing that AI is going to open a world of creative genius that presents more options for people—I don’t see that. 

A Radical Proposal for the AI Age 

Has anyone on the Hill started to talk about the concept of Universal Basic Income (UBI) and how we could fund it? Maybe it’s time leaders pass laws that say: If your corporation deploys AI which destroys human employment, you will automatically be liable for payment into a UBI Trust Fund. 

This isn’t socialism. It’s pragmatism. If corporations want to reap all the profits that AI can indeed produce, they will have to be compulsory funders of a UBI Trust Fund to pay for the millions of workers who are left out of the workforce. The alternative is social instability on a scale we’ve never experienced. 

The Way Forward 

Growing up on a family cattle ranch in Ely, Nevada, I learned early that you can’t ignore problems and hope they’ll resolve themselves. Whether it was managing livestock or navigating

the challenges of rural business, the lesson was always the same: face reality head-on and make tough decisions before circumstances force your hand. 

That same principle applies to the challenges facing our democracy, our media landscape, and our technological future. We need leadership that’s willing to confront uncomfortable truths. We need policies that recognize how fundamentally the ground has shifted beneath our feet. And we need citizens who understand that the institutions we’ve taken for granted—local news, community journalism, democratic accountability—don’t sustain themselves automatically. 

The country may feel upside down, but it’s not beyond repair. What’s required is the political will to act, the courage to take on concentrated power, and the wisdom to anticipate where unchecked technological development leads us. We’ve faced transformational challenges before as a nation. The question is whether we still have the collective capacity to meet them.