Resisting Big Tech Empires

Global Justice Now has not, until now, been at the forefront of concerns about emerging technologies. However, with Big Tech threatening a power grab – Elon Musk ripping the US federal government to shreds, tech billionaires given front-row seats at Trump’s inauguration – technological change is becoming the major issue creating global inequality.

The poster for this event featured five extremely rich, powerful, very white North American (some are “hyphen-American”) men: Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison, and Mark Zuckerberg. I am sure that attendees were not disappointed that none of these monsters were present.

The conference followed the typical pattern: opening plenary in a large lecture theatre, two sessions of three parallel workshops, and a closing plenary with “big names” including author and journalist Cory Doctorow. I was only able to attend part of the opening plenary and two of the workshops, but the two plenaries can be viewed online.

As Nick Dearden of Global Justice Now outlined in the opening plenary, the Big Tech “barons” follow the path of the Robber Barons of the late 19^th century, but with important differences. Big Tech reaches into everyday life and controls the economy far more deeply than the Carnegies, Rockerfellers, and Vanderbilts could even dream of, not only in their home territory of the USA but worldwide.

This has rightly been called 21^st century imperialism: more akin to the British East India Company and its rivals, and, like these old companies, intent on extracting rent through monopoly power, and establishing quasi-governmental rule over large areas of the planet. The aim is nothing less than restructuring of the global economy.

Late-stage capitalism is working as designed – much as V.I. Lenin said back in 1917. But it contains the seeds of its own collapse. At an increasingly rapid pace, we are watching capitalism as we have known it self-destruct: a system that (tempered by Bismarckian welfare states) provided at least minimally adequate living standards for most in the global north, and comfort for the middle classes.

A system that seemed unquestionable, with neoliberal hegemony as the universal “centrist” ideology – is now immiserating the vast majority, leading to unprecedented levels of inequality and seizure of political power by a tiny group of people who are manifestly unqualified to hold it.

Big Tech as imperialism, rapidly-changing capitalism, resistance, hope: this was the basis for some fruitful and largely optimistic discussions. While some panellists debated whether this system can still be called Capitalism, there was agreement that something beyond is within sight; is it possible to hope that a better world is might be built on the ruins of the old? Or will a tech-centric world be controlled by a handful of US-based billionaires?

As Dan McQuillan, author of Resisting AI: An Anti-Fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence, argued, these big corporations are vulnerable. They absolutely need continuous growth to survive; without power they crumble. And, according to Anita Gurumurthy of the Indian advocacy group IT for Change, even the big behemoths such as Uber are dependent on even bigger corporations for cloud infrastructure.

Like much of western science and technology, its deep structure is White supremacist, eugenicist in the spirit of Gault and Pearson. Even the concept of “intelligence” as a measurable quantity derives from eugenics: educated White men, having this quality, were supposed to be genetically superior.

AI is for war; maximum damage is not collateral – it is the point. But AI is being promoted as a universal solution; like capitalism, AI is a sort of religion, an unquestionable a-priori truth. It cannot live up to these promises. Dan McQuillan described AI and these social transformations as “morbid symptoms” (from Antonio Gramsci, of course).

These hidden origins of the Artificial Intelligence are explored in a new film Ghost in the Machine, currently showing at the Bertha Dochouse cinema (in the Curzon Bloomsbury) or online ($20).

The workshop “AI and the Politics of Power” included a discussion of the changing structure of AI corporations. OpenAI, for example, was once dependent on Microsoft but is now building its own ecosystem and collaborating with other companies. Anthropic is directly targetting specific industries, aiming at domination: coding (through Claude Code); life sciences; and finance.

Why these industries? Because they are the most lucrative. Recently Anthropic is back in the news as the more “ethical” company that refused to do the bidding of the US Department of War; OpenAI was happy to take the contract. Is this, perhaps, the first tiny sign that AI companies do have some principles – or at least that they are susceptible to resistance from their customers?

It was not mentioned at the conference, but Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, is one of the more thoughtful AI leaders – yes, he is another American billionaire, but for an informative if definitely not Marxist read, look at The Adolescence of Technology.

The invasion of AI is meeting very little resistance, at least at the government level; indeed, it is enthusiastically pushed by governments as the key to economic growth.

It is hard to recall that less than three years ago government and tech leaders from around the world gathered for the “Bletchley Park AI Safety Summit” (it was a political stunt, of course, but with an underlying intent to address some concerns around AI, however superficially).

Now, AI governance it certainly not the fashion. By abandoning all attempts at control of Big Tech, it might seem that the governing elites are working hand in glove with the tech elites; but there is tension because their interests are fundamentally not aligned, and there, perhaps, a space for struggle. Ironically, it is China that is more advanced in terms of regulation of AI – and possibly more advanced technologically as well.

The last session I attended was “Is this Technofascism?”, with Dan McQuillan, again, and Nafeez Ahmed, author of Alt Reich. This panel was interrupted by a rather ill-tempered intervention. The point of contention is whether AI really is becoming capable of taking over much, or most, of human activity, as the hype claims.

Either way, we need to be worried. If AI were to replace and surpass human capabilities in the ways that the tech-boosters predict, current systems of social organisation are totally unprepared for the social and economic changes this will bring. If, on the other hand, AI is only good for war and some specialised activities such as computer programming, then this is as much a cause for concern.

AI is already being used to terrible effect in Gaza and other places; only a few days previously, journalist Amal Khalil was targetting and murdered by Israel, along with two others. I would like to note here I have been able to follow up this discussion through the WhatsApp group of AI activist movement Pull the Plug

As a final thought, socialists must engage closely with technology – considered at its broadest, from gunpowder, printing, the clock, and the steam-mill, through to IT and AI and further into the future. Chapter 15 of Capital: Machinery and Large-Scale Industry is the longest.

So, Marx certainly did take a great interest in technology, modes of production shaped by, and dialectically in turn shaping, the relations of production. A socialist vision for AI would not be a “revolutionary technology” but as a technology for revolution; not a force for centralising control, but for diversity and liberation. Is this achievable? Only if we resist AI, in its capitalist, eugenicist, proto-fascist manifestation.

Philip Inglesant is a member of London Retired Members' UCU branch and formerly of Oxford University UCU

Resisting Big Tech Empires