There’s a specific kind of vertigo that hits when a suspicion you’ve been nursing in private suddenly gets confirmed in public. I felt it on January 21, 2025, when Donald Trump was fielding questions about TikTok’s future on his first full day back in office. Someone asked if he’d consider letting Elon Musk buy it, and Trump gave his usual noncommittal shrug, then added something that made me sit up:
“…I’d like Larry to buy it too.”
Not Zuckerberg, who everyone assumed was circling. Not even Elon, despite the president’s apparent fondness for chaos. Larry Ellison. A name most people watching probably didn’t recognize, and the ones who did likely couldn’t explain why it mattered.
I sat with that for two days before making a TikTok about it. I used chess pieces to map what I thought was happening. Zuckerberg was the bishop, constrained by antitrust concerns, only able to move sideways. Elon was the knight, the agent of chaos jumping in unpredictable patterns to grab headlines while everyone else made their actual moves. Trump was the queen, versatile and dynamic, orchestrating deals. And Larry Ellison? He was the king. The piece everyone else was protecting, the one you don’t really see moving until you realize the entire board has been arranged around him.
The video did what it was supposed to do. A few hundred thousand people watched it, some nodded along, most scrolled past. But here’s what I didn’t say in that TikTok, what I couldn’t say yet: I’d been watching Larry Ellison for months by that point. Since the Paramount deal, when he’d quietly funded his son David’s acquisition of one of Hollywood’s legacy studios. I worked in that industry. I knew what that purchase meant, or at least I thought I did.
The Unveiling
There are certain people who, once you notice them, you can’t stop noticing them. Larry Ellison became one of those people for me sometime in mid-2024. The Paramount acquisition seemed strange, not because a billionaire was buying a studio (they do that), but because of how quiet it was. Larry put up most of the money but let David take the public-facing role. Oracle’s founder, worth over $140 billion, was content to stay in the background while his son became a Hollywood player.
That felt significant in a way I couldn’t articulate yet. So I started paying attention. And once the cloak was lifted, I started seeing him everywhere. Oracle’s cloud infrastructure powering TikTok through Project Texas. The Tony Blair Institute, suddenly flush with Oracle money, embedding itself in governments worldwide. Data centers being built nine stories underground in Jerusalem, designed to keep running during missile strikes.
When Trump name-dropped him in January, it wasn’t new information. It was confirmation.
What Listening Actually Reveals
Here’s what I’ve learned about how power announces itself: it doesn’t hide. It just counts on you not knowing how to listen.
When Trump praised Larry Ellison unprompted, he was doing what he does constantly, saying the quiet part out loud. He was telling anyone paying attention exactly who held real influence in his orbit. The problem is that most of us aren’t trained to hear it. We’re pattern-matched to watch the spectacle instead of the infrastructure being built underneath it all.
The “sale” everyone was debating in January wasn’t about access. Oracle already controlled TikTok’s U.S. data through an arrangement set up in 2022. It was about making that arrangement permanent and public. The Paramount deal followed the same logic: not about movies, but about narrative control at scale. CBS News. Pluto TV. Paramount+. All the infrastructure that shapes how millions of people understand what’s happening in the world, now flowing through entities the Ellison family controls.
When I made that TikTok in January, I called it a monopoly on attention plus data. I was right, but I underestimated the scale.
What I Didn’t Know Yet
That January video captured a moment, but I didn’t understand the full picture. I wouldn’t for months.
I didn’t know about Project Stargate and its genome collection ambitions. I didn’t know about the Marco Rubio emails from 2015 where Ellison vetted him for Israeli interests, or how that decade-old relationship would reshape visa policies at universities. I didn’t know about the leaked plans for Gaza reconstruction, or about Jolin Zhu, the wife nobody at the University of Michigan seems to remember meeting.
I knew Larry Ellison was building something. I didn’t know yet that what he was building was a blueprint for how private infrastructure could quietly replace public governance.
Why It Still Matters
I didn’t start writing publicly about any of this until late September, eight months after that TikTok. I needed time to understand what pattern I was actually seeing. But that January moment still matters because the same dynamic is still playing out. We’re still watching the spectacle while the infrastructure gets built underneath it.
Since September, I’ve published eleven parts of this investigation. Each one answered a question I didn’t know I had when I made that video. The investigation exists because I was willing to believe what they were telling me. Trump told us Larry Ellison was important. Ellison told us, at investor meetings, exactly what kind of world he wants to build.
They’re still talking. Most of us just aren’t listening to the right things.
The spectacle is designed to be distracting. The knight jumps around the board in patterns that feel chaotic and newsworthy. The queen moves boldly, drawing attention. But the king barely moves at all. He just makes sure every other piece is protecting him, building toward him, arranging themselves around the infrastructure he’s laid.
That’s what I saw in January. That’s what I’m still watching now. And once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
Resources & Links
Watch:
ABC News: Trump on TikTok buyers, January 21, 2025
My original TikTok, January 23, 2025
Read More:
The full Larry Ellison investigation series, “Who TF Am I Working For??”
