US tech titans Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos are taking a prominent place in the new Trump era, but another player from another era — Oracle boss Larry Ellison — is making a surprise return.In the first 48 hours of Trump’s second term, the 80-year-old Silicon Valley veteran has become central to two pressing issues: the fate of TikTok and the growing infrastructure demands of artificial intelligence.Though Ellison’s prominence peaked in the 1990s, before the internet age, when he made headlines as a sports-loving maverick with a passion for tennis, sailing, and public spats with Bill Gates, his influence persists.Unlike most tech leaders who distanced themselves from Trump in 2016, Ellison offered his early support. Today, he ranks among the world’s wealthiest individuals, with a fortune of $230 billion, trailing only Musk and Bezos but ahead of Zuckerberg.On Tuesday, Trump’s first full day in office, Ellison made an unexpected White House appearance to unveil an AI infrastructure project alongside OpenAI’s Sam Altman and SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son.”He’s sort of CEO of everything. He’s an amazing man,” Trump enthused while introducing his longtime ally.”The data center we already built, it was the largest computer ever built. The data center we’re building will surpass it,” Ellison said after the meeting.Ellison’s relationship with the Trump administration dates back to the first term, when he played a pivotal role in negotiations over stripping TikTok from its Chinese ownership.In the process, Oracle became a trusted provider of the company’s data storage in the United States.Oracle maintains that role to this day, and is key to keeping TikTok available to US users, at the request of Trump and in a defiance of a US law that could see Ellison’s company fined $5,000 per user.The company is frequently mentioned as a potential buyer of TikTok’s US operations, which were given 75 days on Monday to find non-Chinese ownership or face a permanent ban. Oracle’s share price was up more than seven percent after the AI announcement. – Musk ties -Ellison built his fortune through Oracle, which he founded in 1977 as a data server provider for the CIA among others.Early on, the company competed with Microsoft, IBM, and Sun Microsystems to provide the data infrastructure for the emerging digital economy.Under Ellison’s leadership, Oracle became known for its aggressive corporate culture and ambitious acquisition strategy, spending billions to become the world’s largest database management company.While Oracle’s market value remains smaller than tech giants like Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon, the company has seen renewed growth amid the AI boom and increasing demand for data server capacity.At the height of his career, Ellison was the brash and hard-knuckle counterpoint to Bill Gates.Ellison made headlines picking fights with some of the biggest names in technology – Gates, Google’s Eric Schmidt – and became comrades in arms with others, most famously Steve Jobs during the period the Apple founder was still exiled from the company he created.While Gates attended elite private schools and Harvard with family support, Ellison grew up on Chicago’s South Side, raised by his great-aunt and heavy-drinking uncle after his teenage mother gave him up at birth in 1944.Known for his athletic build and perpetual tan, Ellison invested heavily in professional sailing, with his Oracle team winning the America’s Cup in both 2010 and 2013.In recent years, he has formed close ties with Musk, investing $1 billion in Twitter’s acquisition and serving on Tesla’s board as a major shareholder.His extensive real estate portfolio includes a $300 million Hawaiian island, which he envisions as an exclusive eco-resort for the ultra-wealthy and where Musk is a visitor.

President Donald Trump wants to boost US oil production, pledging to bring costs down as he returned to office this week — but analysts warn his efforts could be hampered by the industry itself.Taking aim at an “inflation crisis” which he said was driven by rising energy prices, Trump vowed: “Today I will also declare a national energy emergency. We will drill, baby, drill.””We will be a rich nation again. And it is that liquid gold under our feet that will help to do it,” he pledged in his inaugural address on Monday.While the United States is the world’s leading crude oil producer, the US president wants to boost oil and gas production to lower costs, fill strategic reserves and “export American energy all over the world.”In declaring a national energy emergency, Trump reversed some drilling bans, including in a protected area in Alaska.”It’s hard to reconcile the notion that we have an energy emergency, when the US produced 13.2 million barrels per day of crude oil in 2024,” said analyst Stewart Glickman of CFRA.This was “more than any other country.”The US Energy Information Administration also estimates that US production will hit 13.5 million barrels a day this year, “which would imply yet another annual record,” Glickman told AFP.- Economic interest -But analysts say the prospect of oversupply and worries about global demand currently could make US producers reluctant to step on the accelerator — to prevent crude prices from falling too much.US oil companies will likely “act in their own interest” economically, and drill when they expect it to be profitable, said Andrew Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates.That will depend on the price of oil, he added, alongside the return on capital.Some oil majors are already cautious about global supply.”We are seeing record levels of demand for oil, record levels for demand for products coming out of our refineries,” said ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods on CNBC in November.”But we also see a lot of supply in the world right now,” he said, adding that much of it comes from the United States.Woods recounted how, after the merger of Exxon and Mobil in 1999, the group owned 45 refineries.But when he took the helm in 2017, it only had 22 refineries, he told CNBC.Trump’s strategy has also puzzled analysts considering the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies (OPEC+) has 5.8 million barrels per day of unused capacity, said Robert Yawger of Mizuho Americas.Eight members of OPEC+, including Saudi Arabia and Russia, have planned to gradually reverse production cuts of 2.2 million barrels per day since last year.- Profitability -The new US administration “has to justify increases in production by the bottom line. It has to be cost-effective,” said Yawger.”They’re not going to repeat the problem that we’ve done in the past, and that’s just oversupply the market and kill the golden goose,” he added.The emergence of shale oil and gas at the turn of the 2010s disrupted the American oil industry.Concerned about the rise of the United States, Saudi Arabia decided to retaliate by flooding the oil market, causing the price of a barrel of West Texas Intermediate (WTI), the American benchmark, to fall to $26 in 2016.A part of the shale oil industry shuttered, and surviving players vowed to manage their growth and finances more effectively.”Misguided, irrational energy policies are done,” said Jeff Eshelman, president of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, said in response to Trump’s announcements. “America’s vast resources will be unleashed responsibly,” he added.

Meta-owned Instagram has been wooing creators from TikTok as the China-based video-snippet sharing app’s future remains uncertain in the United States.After officially increasing the allowed length of videos and adding a new editing tool, Meta recently began letting TikTok creators earn as much as $5,000 over the course of three months for posting “Reels” to Facebook and Instagram.The “Breakthrough Bonus” program for eligible TikTok creators is intended to “help jumpstart their growth on our apps,” a Meta spokesperson told AFP.In addition, Meta is quietly offering incentives amounting to tens of thousands of dollars a month to get creators with large TikTok audiences to switch to rival platform Reels at Instagram, according to a report Wednesday in The Information.”Meta has been trying to take advantage of the volatility around TikTok for months, and now its efforts to court TikTok creators have gone from subtle to overt,” said Emarketer analyst Jasmine Enberg.- Temporary reprieve -The campaign to get TikTok stars to switch allegiance to Reels comes as TikTok’s future in the United States remains unsettled.TikTok is facing down a US law that ordered the company to divest from its Chinese owner ByteDance or be banned in the United States.In one of his first acts in office, President Donald Trump ordered a pause on enforcing the law that should have seen TikTok effectively made illegal in the country on Sunday.The executive order directed his attorney general to delay the implementation of the law for 75 days.The TikTok ban passed due to concerns that the Chinese government could exploit the app to spy on Americans or covertly influence US public opinion through data collection and content manipulation.TikTok briefly shut down in the United States late Saturday as the law’s sale deadline approached, leaving millions of dismayed users barred from the app. That same day, Instagram boss Adam Mosseri announced that video snippets shared on Reels could now last 3 minutes instead of 90 seconds, a limit set more than two years ago.On Sunday, Mosseri announced a new video editing application will make its debut on iPhones in February.That comes as TikTok’s flagship editing tool, CapCut, has disappeared from mobile app stores in the United States because it’s owned by the same parent company, ByteDance.”There’s a lot going on right now, but no matter what happens, it’s our job to provide the best possible tools for creators,” Mosseri said.- Zuckerberg and Trump -Analyst Enberg believes the new features won’t be enough to win over the TikTok faithful, with some likely to be irked by “blatant copycat behavior” as many are “rattled” by Meta’s moves to align itself with the Trump administration.Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg has dined with Trump since his victory, openly praised the president and appointed Trump allies to positions of influence at the tech firm.Meta also recently ended programs to prevent disinformation and vitriol on its platform, efforts long criticized by political conservatives.While Instagram is considered the most likely alternative to TikTok, Chinese application named Xiaohongshu — nicknamed “Red Note” — is a preferred option for many in the United States.Even though the app is in Mandarin, many see it as a way of thumbing their noses at Meta and US politicians.”The potential of a cash bonus is going to be hard for TikTok creators to resist, regardless of how they feel about Meta,” said analyst Enberg.As for users, they will follow where their beloved creators lead, and there is no better way to get them to Instagram than money, Enberg reasoned.

US President Donald Trump on Wednesday nominated a Secret Service agent who rushed onstage to protect him from a would-be gunman during a failed election rally assassination bid to become the agency’s next director.Sean Curran, the head of Trump’s personal security detail, was among several agents who surrounded Trump as a gunman in Butler, Pennsylvania, opened fire on the then-candidate, leaving him with a bloodied ear.He was identified by US media as the man in sunglasses to the right of Trump in a series of iconic photos showing the Republican raising a defiant fist as he is escorted offstage with blood trickling down his face.The nomination flies in the face of a review of Secret Service failures following the attack, which recommended looking to someone with a wealth of experience outside the organization for its next leader.”Sean is a Great Patriot, who has protected my family over the past few years, and that is why I trust him to lead the Brave Men and Women of the United States Secret Service,” Trump posted on his website, Truth Social.The president noted Curran’s 23-year Secret Service career that began when he was a special agent in the Newark field office and led to his promotion to become head of the Presidential Protective Division in the Republican’s first term.”He proved his fearless courage when he risked his own life to help save mine from an assassin’s bullet in Butler, Pennsylvania,” Trump said.”I have complete and total confidence in Sean to make the United States Secret Service stronger than ever before.”The appointment had been expected, with the president’s son Donald Trump Jr announcing as long ago as last week that the “great patriot” would be getting the job.- ‘Historic’ failure -An independent panel called for a sweeping shake-up of the Secret Service following what it described as its “historic” failure to prevent the July assassination attempt.”The Secret Service has become bureaucratic, complacent, and static,” the four members of the bipartisan review panel said in a letter to then-Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas that accompanied their 52-page report.”The Secret Service as an agency requires fundamental reform to carry out its mission,” they said, and without reforms another assassination attempt such as the one that took place in Pennsylvania “can and will happen again.”Trump was grazed on his right ear when a 20-year-old gunman opened fire from a nearby rooftop while the Republican presidential candidate was holding a campaign rally in Butler on July 13.One person in the audience was killed and the gunman, Thomas Crooks, was shot dead by a Secret Service sniper.Much of the report was devoted to identifying the specific security failures that allowed the assassination attempt, many of which had already been publicly acknowledged by the Secret Service.The review panel said a new leadership team with “significant experience outside the Secret Service” was needed in the wake of the assassination attempt.”The events of Butler suggest that there is an urgent need for fresh thinking informed by external experience and perspective,” the report said.Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle resigned following the assassination attempt and was replaced by acting director Ronald Rowe.