Greetings from a cold winter day.As I write this letter, we are in the early stages of President Donald Trumps second term. The inauguration was exactly one week ago, and already an image from that day has become an indelible symbol of presidential power: a photo of the tech industrys great data barons seated front and center at the swearing-in ceremony.Elon Musk, Sundar Pichai, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg all sat shoulder to shoulder, almost as if on display, in front of some of the most important figures of the new administration. They were not the only tech leaders in Washington, DC, that week. Tim Cook, Sam Altman, and TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew also put in appearances during the presidents first days back in action.These are tycoons who lead trillion-dollar companies, set the direction of entire industries, and shape the lives of billions of people all over the world. They are among the richest and most powerful people who have ever lived. And yet, just like you and me, they need relationships to get things done. In this case, with President Trump.Those tech barons showed up because they need relationships more than personal status, more than access to capital, and sometimes even more than ideas. Some of those same peoplemost notably Zuckerberghad to make profound breaks with their own pasts in order to forge or preserve a relationship with the incoming president.Relationships are the stories of people and systems working together. Sometimes by choice. Sometimes for practicality. Sometimes by force. Too often, for purely transactional reasons.Thats why were exploring relationships in this issue. Relationships connect us to one another, but also to the machines, platforms, technologies, and systems that mediate modern life. Theyre behind the partnerships that make breakthroughs possible, the networks that help ideas spread, and the bonds that build trustor at least access. In this issue, youll find stories about the relationships we forge with each other, with our past, with our children (or not-quite-children, as the case may be), and with technology itself.Rhiannon Williams explores the relationships people have formed with AI chatbots. Some of these are purely professional, others more complicated. This kind of relationship may be novel now, but its something we will all take for granted in just a few years.Also in this issue, Antonio Regalado delves into our relationship with the ecological past and the way ancient DNA is being used not only to learn new truths about who we are and where we came from but also, potentially, to address modern challenges of climate and disease.In an extremely thought-provoking piece, Jessica Hamzelou examines peoples relationships with the millions of IVF embryos in storage. Held in cryopreservation tanks around the world, these embryos wait in limbo, in ever growing numbers, as we attempt to answer complicated ethical and legal questions about their existence and preservation.Turning to the workplace, Rebecca Ackermann explores how our relationships with our employers are often mediated through monitoring systems. As she writes, what may be more important than the privacy implications is how the data they collect is shifting the relationships between workers and managers as algorithms determine hiring and firing, promotion and deactivation. Good luck with that.Thank you for reading. As always, I value your feedback. So please, reach out and let me know what you think. I really dont want this to be a transactional relationship.Warmly,Mat HonanEditor in Chiefmat.honan@technologyreview.com