The digital Gilded Age: DC faces Silicon Valley's riches – and ever-growing power

Through charities, lobbying groups, and head-to-head fights with the FBI, tech titans like Mark Zuckerberg and Tim Cook wield influence comparable to that of Andrew Carnegie and John Rockefeller

The late 19th century was a period known as "the Gilded Age" in America. As the railroads, mining industries and factories boomed, millions of workers were inspired to migrate from Europe, yet the wealth became concentrated among a small set of industrialists such as Andrew Carnegie, a steel magnate, and the oil baron John D Rockefeller. These men wielded massive power through business, political efforts and philanthropy.

Yet even Carnegie, whose ruthlessness earned him a reputation as a "robber baron", would have been amazed by the power the heads of technology firms wield today, according to the Carnegie biographer David Nasaw.