The Oracles
"Citizens will be on their best behavior because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that's going on."
Oracle, their co-founder/CTO/executive chairman Larry Ellison, and his son David Ellison may be entities you've heard of a lot recently when keeping up with political and tech news. Whether it's Oracle's monopoly over your personal data, the upcoming acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery by Paramount Skydance, or their involvement with the Trump administration and Israel, there's a good chance they've come up. Like with Palantir, there's so much that they have their hands in to the point where you could have a completely different idea of them to any other person reading this. So, like with what I did for Palantir, I wanted to be the explainer to end all explainers on everything they're involved in today.
What they've done
Larry and David Ellison either are in control of or own... just about everything. Across their personal and private holdings, Paramount Skydance, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Oracle, this includes (but isn't limited to):- Oracle (which I'll go over what they do)
- CNN News, CBS News, the Free Press, and a minority stake in Vox
- a 15% share of TikTok in the US (making them one of the majority owners, not including ByteDance itself)
- HBO, the CW, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, Comedy Central, Animal Planet, HGTV, MTV, and TLC
- Paramount+, HBO Max, Discovery+, Fandango, and Pluto TV
- DC Comics, SpongeBob, Transformers, Mission Impossible, Star Trek, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, the Lord of the Rings movies, the Matrix, Looney-Tunes, and much, much more
- the Java programming language, MySQL, and PeopleSoft
- an entire island of Hawai'i
- multiple military jets
Between TikTok and all the news publications, I think it's safe to say that most people probably get most of their information on current events from something they control - not to mention their control over entertainment. If you don't get news from them, the info has probably at least passed through them at some point (Press Gazette, Pew, Pew). They definitely don't use all this power to do things like control narratives, shift public opinion, propagandize youth and adults, hide news stories, suppress information, or otherwise exert their wills upon the world.
What they do
"Most of the world's most valuable data is stored in an Oracle database."
Larry Ellison's initial claim to fame is his co-founding of the Oracle Corporation, which he is currently the executive chairman and CTO of. To simplify what they do, they provide things like database software, enterprise applications, cloud infrastructure, hardware, and more to groups like companies and governments. While what they actually offer may sound boring and uninteresting, they are directly involved in the daily goings-on of just about anything and everything. They are one of the largest IT and software companies in the world (Forbes). It's been said in the past that 98% of Fortune 500 companies use their services, and they've only continued to grow since then (Oracle). Naturally, they're big into AI (Oracle).
Groups they work with include Palantir, Netflix, LinkedIn, eBay, Airbnb, Philips, Israel, the US, and much more (Oracle, Thomson Data, WhoProfits, Lin). With Oracle Database and MySQL combined, they have about half of the market share in the "database" industry (6sense). While you likely don't directly interact with them, their impact touches your life with so much that we do. With how much data about us our digital lives produce, it's heavily concerning that this one company has unparalleled access to all of it regardless of who or where it comes from.
If this wasn't scary alone, remember that the same family that has control over this company has control over all those other things I mentioned. Oracle, TikTok, CBS, CNN, HBO, Nick, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, an entire island of Hawai'i, and 2 military jets are all controlled by the same family, you will soon learn, that is best friends with Donald Trump, prime minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu, and the IDF.
The People
See the relevant entities' Wikipedia articles for more information and sources.
Oracle was founded in 1977 by Larry Ellison, Bob Miner, and Ed Oates. Nowadays, Ellison is executive chairman and CTO. Miner has passed away and Oates isn't involved in the company. Their co-CEOs are Clay Magouyrk and Mike Sicilia. Their current executive vice chair, Safra Catz, was in the running to be at a cabinet-level office in Trump's first administration after being a big donor (Womack). She is currently on the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and the board of Paramount Skydance (White House, James) I will also be covering Larry's son, David, as he is arguably equally as if not more powerful than his father and they are still heavily involved with each other's dealings to this day.
Larry and David Ellison
""It is not sufficient that I succeed; everyone else must fail." We believe that this is not sufficient. We must destroy our competition."
Larry Ellison was born in 1944 in New York City. After he struggled with pneumonia, his parents gave him to Ellison's mother's aunt at the age of 9 months. They then moved to Chicago. After being awarded with science student of the year, he dropped out of university when his adoptive mother died.
He then worked for a couple IT companies. He worked on a database for the CIA, codenamed Oracle. In 1977, he unsuccessfully worked on integrating Oracle with IBM's technology before officially releasing the Oracle Database in 1979. After some issues with lay offs and class actions, the Oracle corporation got the upper hand in the market when IBM delayed entering the Unix and Windows marketplaces and when they beat rival Informix. In 1990, Ellison was named Harvard entrepreneur of the year.
In 1977, Ellison became a director of Apple. He served until 2002. In 2006, he was the richest Californian (Forbes). As of today, he's the 6th richest person in the world (Forbes). In 2021, he bought 98% of Lāna'i: a 364 square kilometer (140.5 square mile) island of Hawai'i (Mooallem). He owns two military jets (Schofield and Brockes). He appeared in Iron Man 2, alongside Elon Musk (Greenberg). He's long been supportive of increased identification for citizens (McCullagh). His current wife - number six - is 47 years younger than he is (Lu). In 2026, Oracle became a partial owner of TikTok in the US (Weprin).
David Ellison, Larry Ellison's son, was born in 1983. Larry wasn't very present in his son's upbringing, although they are very involved today (Schleifer, James). While he used to be more of a Democrat, he is now a close ally of Trump (Gold, Monde). David has long been interested in film; he has been both an actor and a producer. He founded media financing company Skydance Media in 2006, and when entertainment conglomerate Paramount and Skydance's merger was approved by the second Trump administration in 2025, David was named CEO (Eller, FCC). His father and another Oracle executive have seats on the board (James). In June of 2026, after a lengthy period of work, the same FCC approved Paramount Skydance's bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery (Khorram).
"And, in the case of Larry- Larry Ellison, uh... it's well beyond technology, sort of, uh... CEO of everything. He's an amazing man, and an amazing, uh... business person."
Both Ellisons are big friends of Donald Trump (Grynbaum, Allyn). Larry has funded both Republicans and Democrats (Stangel). As of 2016, he's become one of the Republican's largest donors (Rouhandeh, Vogel, Metz, Bland). Larry was on a call discussing the possible ways to deem the 2020 presidential election illegitimate (Stanley-Becker and Boburg). He also announced AI company Stargate at the White House, alongside Trump and Sam Altman (Boak and Miller). A Paramount confidant alleges that Trump directly helped in the merger between Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery, stating that Trump said that "if you really, really want it, Larry, I'll make sure you get it" (Katje).
"I am very grateful for everything [Netanyahu] has done and continues to do for the nation of Israel! #bibinetanyahu"
Larry became the largest donor ever to the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces in 2017 with a $16 million donation, citing a call for the IDF to "defend our home" (Siedman, JTA). He lobbied an Israeli mogul to drop his lawyer so that Netanyahu could hire him instead (TOI, TOI). In 2021, he offered a board seat at Oracle to Netanyahu (Tov, Wayt). He's heavily involved with Trump's Board of Peace, which seeks to oversee the Gaza peace plan and was proposed after Trump's AI video showing him as some sort of deity over the strip (Ahmed). While he was raised Jewish, he is mostly non-religious. He says his love of Israel is founded in their technological innovation rather than from religion (Symonds).
Conclusion
However upsetting it is, we need to stay up to date with people and institutions that have this amount of power. They may not be as ideologically threatening as Palantir, but I'd say they're more powerful. I'd even argue that Oracle benefits from this: while we stress about companies like Palantir or individuals like Thiel due to their interesting ideologies, the Ellisons have only grown in power. When consuming media, whether it be news, social media, or legacy entertainment, remember that there's a very high chance it's passed through or came from the hands of the family that our corporate-linked identities also pass through. I'm sure that the Ellisons use this power wisely, especially considering their deep ties to Trump and an ethnostate that has killed over 20,000 children in the last few years (Graham-Harrison). Ugh.
If you aren't yet worried enough and if you haven't already, check out my similar article on Palantir and their founders. It's easier to control an uneducated masses. To my knowledge, there aren't really any anti-Oracle advocacy groups like there are for Palantir.