Above photo: Featured image: Cartoon portraying robots identified with tech corporation logos “vomiting” gold coins. Tom Grillo/New York Times.
In August, Venezuela’s re-elected president, Nicolás Maduro, signed a decree blocking access to social media platform X, formerly Twitter, for 10 days. President Maduro said of its owner, tycoon Elon Musk, “He has violated the rules by inciting hatred, fascism, civil war, death, confrontation among Venezuelans, and has violated all Venezuelan laws.”
Musk, who also owns the Starlink satellite broadband network, expressed his support for the far-right Venezuelan opposition and insulted the president, which is a sign of the determination of the new global elites to carry out regime change in Venezuela.
This action was accompanied by other attempts implemented through various technological platforms such as Apple, Google, and Meta.
These elites, through the world’s largest and most powerful technology companies (“Big Tech”), seek to govern world politics through new methods but according to old strategies based on the imposition of economic power over the democratic values they claim to defend.
Seven technology corporations are on the list of the top 10 companies in the world, ranked by market capitalization: Apple Inc., Microsoft Corporation, Amazon, Alphabet (Google), and Facebook (Meta) are joined by Nvidia Corporation, one of the largest developers of graphics processors and chipsets, and Tesla —also owned by Musk— which makes and sells both electric cars, batteries, and photovoltaic systems.
The market capitalization of Big Tech exceeds $10 trillion, greater than the combined GDP of Germany, the United Kingdom and France. This is just a sample of their rise and dominance.
Rise and dominance in the paradise of neoliberal deregulation
Big Tech has increased its hegemony in the global economy. Just 16 years ago, only two of the 10 most powerful companies in the world were technology companies: Microsoft and Vodafone. Today, just over 30 of the 100 largest companies in the world are dedicated to the technological chain: this includes semiconductors, software, telecommunications, and other sectors.
Its growth has been exponential in less than 50 years because its products and services tend to dominate all economic areas and other global activities, from the implementation of software and hardware in various areas of daily life to specialized services in areas such as defense, health, and finance.
As in many areas of modern life, diversity has been the biggest loser. Just as ownership of food systems or the media is concentrated in a few hands, the list of large corporations, according to their stock market capitalization, has undergone a change.
Between 2005 and 2021, this catalogue mutated from a diversification that included manufacturers such as General Electric, banks such as Citigroup or marketing companies such as Walmart, to the so-called GAFAM (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft), added to Chinese companies such as Tencent.
“Big Oil” companies such as Exxon Mobil, BP, and Royal Dutch Shell were knocked off the top of the Nasdaq stock index, as were “Big Media” companies such as Disney, AT&T, and Comcast.
• The breeding ground: a globalized and deregulated economy that favors the extreme concentration of resources.
• The method: strategies of actors who constantly pursue the establishment and safeguarding of monopolistic positions.
A Washington Post report published in September 2023 explains their growth pattern: first, they became dominant in their original businesses, then they grew tentacles and made acquisitions in new sectors to add revenue streams and outflank competitors.
Nikos Smyrnaios of the University of Toulouse highlights four key features in the emergence of GAFAM: the theory of the convergence of media and information technologies, financialization, economic deregulation, and globalization.
Focus on data
The dominance of Big Tech in the markets has clear manifestations:
- Amazon dominates e-commerce, with 50% of all online sales; it influences cloud computing technologies, with a market share of almost 32%, and live streaming, with Twitch, at a 75.6% market share.
- Apple sells high-end smartphones and other consumer electronics. It shares a duopoly with Google in the field of mobile operating systems: 99% of the market share belongs to them.
- Meta, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, has 3.5 billion users on its networks. They influence public opinion to the point that around 50% of global online advertising spending is carried out through Meta or Alphabet.
- Google dominates the search engine market share, averaging 86-96% worldwide.
- Microsoft dominates the market share of desktop operating systems (Microsoft Windows) and office productivity software (Microsoft Office), with approximately 80%.
Towards the appropriation of political power
The influence of these large corporations on the daily life of citizens is an issue that has begun to worry US social actors themselves. The maneuvers that they have developed, no longer behind the scenes, in electoral processes and other political situations are well known.
Barack Obama’s campaigns were the first to take great advantage of data-intensive microtargeting; then, data experts lent their skills to Donald Trump and the Brexit campaign.
The connotation of using these data-harvesting strategies was not always negative; at the time, the media praised the then Democrat president for “his powerful techno-demographic appeal.”
An iconic case was the intervention of the Cambridge Analytica company in the electoral events mentioned above and during the election campaigns in Italy, the Czech Republic, India, Kenya, Malaysia, Nigeria, Mexico, and Brazil. Evidence of the use of digital platforms for socio-political and even military control has become irrefutable.
While these methods are novel, the strategy is not. Covert influence is commonplace in US society, with manipulative, psychologically driven advertising and marketing techniques used to sell products, lifestyles, and ideas. It has been this way ever since the self-proclaimed inventor of public relations, Edward Bernays, published his book Crystallizing Public Opinion in 1923.
A private poll conducted in 2023 for the Commission on the Future of Technology found that 80% of US voters agree that the government “must do everything it can to curb the influence of big tech companies that have become too powerful and now use our data to intrude too deeply into our lives.”
84% of voters said they were “very nervous” about the effects of social media on children.
Venezuela in the crosshairs of technocratic power
The interaction of Big Tech magnates in the results of the July 28 elections in Venezuela is an example of how the economic dominance of these corporations is not a point of arrival but part of a path towards political hegemony.
In the days following the elections, this association became evident. Some examples:
• In addition to the insults uttered by Musk and the republishing of fake videos about alleged protests against President Maduro, the X platform removed the grey verification label from President Maduro’s account, so it is no longer considered a government account.
• Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, also removed the verification badge from Maduro, a sign that grants credibility and authenticity to the accounts of public figures and organizations.
• As the president noted, in the days leading up to the elections, but more so in the days after, threatening messages to grassroots Chavista leaders were seen on WhatsApp from devices registered abroad.
• Apple and Google removed the VenApp app from their app stores; the platform is used by Venezuelans to report problems related to public services and health. The Venezuelan government had activated a special section in the app for reporting “fascist and vandalistic acts” related to the escalation of post-election violence, unleashed by a sector of the opposition.
• TikTok, the sixth-most popular social media platform behind Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, and WeChat, allowed videos of acts of vandalism to be shared during the post-election escalation. However, it suspended Maduro’s account during a live address after having shown a statement by Attorney General Tarek William Saab condemning the violence.
These are actors who participate for or against certain political systems without the validation of any socio-political or electoral process but, rather, through the alleged legitimacy granted to them by “technocratic power.”
This dimension of power has been shaped “in the context of changing social structures that have promoted technology as a solution to broader social, economic, political, and environmental challenges,” says recent research from the National University of Singapore.
It is the ability to exercise control over citizens through surveillance, censorship, and manipulation based on the collective belief that technologies are democratic and support individual autonomy.
Musk is an example of the instrumentalization of technocratic power. His actively biased position regarding sociopolitical dynamics, whether in the United States or the United Kingdom, or in Bolivia, Brazil, or Venezuela, raises questions regarding the relationship between markets, knowledge, and democracy.
Behavioral modeling through digital platforms not only impacts what people decide to buy but also the sociocultural and political imagination of citizens. This is how, through their algorithms, they have managed to spread a narrative of “fraud” during the new opposition attack against the Venezuelan state and its institutions.
Social media, and artificial intelligence itself, are part of the infrastructure through which billionaires exercise their power, manipulate their image, and pursue their political objectives on a large scale.
The role of governments in the face of Big Tech and its new scales of power have been the subject of debate in various multilateral and national settings.
Freedom of expression and economic freedom are at the heart of a narrative that accuses any state that seeks to regulate the impact of these companies on privacy, national security, and legal systems of being a “dictatorship. ”
Specifically, following a survey conducted by the Commission on the Future of Technology, its co-chair and former Democrat governor of Massachusetts, Deval Patrick, noted that its results showed that “the technology industry has to operate within limits, and the only entity that can force it to do so is the federal government.”
The drift of global transnational power has its total and totalitarian expression in Big Tech: it acts as a mediator and exploiter of the resources and actions of other social actors. The elements and powers of Big Tech require us to rethink its relation with states and citizens.