On March 11, 2025, President Donald Trump, while inspecting a Tesla Model S at a White House car show, marveled at the vehicle’s technology with the comment, “Wow, that’s beautiful… everything’s computer.” The remark, which quickly went viral and became a meme, reflects a sense of awe at the pervasive role of digital systems in modern life—a sentiment that sharply contrasts with the warnings laid out in Ted Kaczynski’s 1995 manifesto, Industrial Society and Its Future. Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber, argued that technology’s relentless advance erodes human freedom and autonomy, creating a system where individuals are increasingly dependent on machines and the structures that control them. Trump’s casual admiration for the computerized nature of the Tesla underscores the very technological optimism Kaczynski despised, highlighting a societal shift where such advancements are celebrated rather than questioned.
 

Kaczynski’s manifesto, written during his 17-year bombing campaign against those he saw as advancing technological progress, posits that technology is not a neutral tool but a force that demands conformity and servitude. He wrote, “The system HAS TO regulate human behavior closely in order to function,” suggesting that innovations like the computerization Trump praised inherently restrict personal freedom by integrating individuals into a tightly controlled industrial framework. From Kaczynski’s perspective, Trump’s comment is a naive endorsement of a system that alienates humans from their natural state, replacing authentic experiences—like the tactile, mechanical simplicity of older cars—with a digital interface that distances users from the physical world. The Tesla Model S, with its sleek, computer-driven design, embodies the kind of technological dependency Kaczynski believed would lead to a future where humans are reduced to mere cogs in a machine, stripped of agency and purpose.
 

Trump’s remark, while lighthearted, also reveals a broader cultural disconnect from the concerns Kaczynski raised about technology’s trajectory. In the manifesto, Kaczynski warned that society’s passive acceptance of technological progress—evident in Trump’s awe and the internet’s subsequent memeing of “everything’s computer”—would lead to a loss of meaning, as people chase artificial goals dictated by the system rather than their own instincts. While Kaczynski’s violent methods were indefensible, his critique resonates in a world increasingly dominated by AI, surveillance, and digital interfaces, where even a president can be struck by the omnipresence of computers in daily life. Trump’s comment, made just days before the government funding deadline on March 14, 2025, serves as a symbolic flashpoint: a celebration of the very technological society Kaczynski sought to dismantle, illustrating how deeply entrenched and normalized this system has become, even as debates about its consequences continue to simmer beneath the surface.