The days of censoring Americans online are over, said US secretary of state Marco Rubio. “The EU should be supporting free speech not attacking American companies over garbage,” vice-president JD Vance wrote on X. Europe is pursuing “civilizational suicide” through regulation and censorship, added Christopher Landau, Rubio’s deputy. And so on. All of this because the EU last week imposed a modest $140mn fine on Elon Musk’s X for transgressions unrelated to free speech. But forget the details. Musk is the EU’s sworn enemy. As is Donald Trump, who this week described Europe as “decaying” and its leaders “weak”.

Despite having bitterly fallen out earlier this year, Musk and Trump are fated to be close. As America’s chief broligarch, Musk is too shiny for Trump to ignore for long. Musk may flirt with a third party, denounce Trump’s fiscal recklessness and even claim that Trump has personal reasons to suppress the Epstein files, but the prodigal son can always find a way back. They have too many common enemies. The same is true of Trump and the rest of the broligarchy. When historians assess this age of American populism, Silicon Valley’s plutocrats will surely be judged its winners.

Trump’s blue-collar base seems to be cottoning on. Though he now says he plans to revive them, the US president has pretty much ceased to hold Maga rallies. Yet hardly a day goes by when he is not cloistered with one of his Silicon Valley allies. In addition to Musk, David Sacks, the White House AI tsar, and Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, are rarely far from the Oval Office. They get what they want. Trump plans to issue an executive order banning America’s 50 states from regulating AI. There should be one national rule and nothing more, he says. Since there is no prospect of serious federal regulations, AI companies will continue to have carte blanche.