Forget the U.S. and China — Big Tech is the next world power
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Forget the U.S. and China — Big Tech is the next world power
When we think about the prevailing world order, we tend to think of spheres of influence, with the U.S. on one hand and China on the other. These are the world’s two largest economies after all.
But what about a third world power, one that is not a government, but instead a collection of the biggest companies that rule the digital world and hold an increasing amount of political power. These companies hold more and more influence over how we communicate, how we spend our money, even whom and what we vote for. And unlike government, these tech companies do not make decisions via elections or other necessarily democratic avenues. And this is the argument of Ian Bremmer, founder and president of the political risk consultancy Eurasia Group.
“In the digital space, whether we’re talking about cybersecurity, or information and disinformation, or the digital economy, there’s no question that governments … they are not the decision-makers,” Bremer said. “They’re not the sovereign actors. The technology companies are. I’m not suggesting the governments aren’t important or aren’t powerful. They’re enormously important. But governments don’t have the expertise.”
What does it mean if more and more our lives are intermediated by tech? Bremmer has a recent TED Talk on this subject, and he spoke with “Marketplace Morning Report” host David Brancaccio for more. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.
David Brancaccio: Tell me about this thesis of yours: Someday I may not have a U.S. passport, I’ll have a document that says I’m a citizen of Alphabet-Google or Facebook-Meta.
Ian Bremmer: I’m not at all thinking you’re changing your passport. I’m rather thinking that where you’re spending most of your time, how you’re making decisions, who you’re connected to personally, how you decide what you’re going to vote on and for, what you spend your money on will all be intermediated, or most of it will, by algorithms that are determined in sovereign fashion by a small number of technology companies and the people that control them.
Brancaccio: And the big power players, you think, on the global stage may not be U.S. versus China versus EU, and so forth. It could be the clash of the tech titans?
Bremmer: In the digital space, whether we’re talking about cybersecurity, or information and disinformation, or the digital economy, there’s no question that governments — whether it’s the United States, China, Europe — they are not the decision-makers. They’re not the sovereign actors. The technology companies are. I’m not suggesting the governments aren’t important or aren’t powerful. They are enormously important. But governments don’t have the expertise, they don’t have the institutions, they don’t have the regulatory framework, to do this. And the companies, of course, have been driving this for a long time now. They’re investing hundreds of billions of dollars.
So, it’s interesting: Six months ago, there wasn’t a single head of state that I speak with that was asking me about AI. Today, they all are, but that’s completely new. And so while they’re getting up to speed for the next one, two, three years, all of the core decisions that matter in the space are going to be made by a very small number of men that control these companies.
Brancaccio: Yeah. And I’m gonna get back to AI, artificial intelligence, and algorithms in just a second. But you said this was long and coming. You already see the sovereignty of tech companies on the world stage, even before the great ChatGPT announcement of last November?
Bremmer: Yeah, in some ways I do. I mean, so for example, if you look at the war in Ukraine, which has dominated so many headlines, and you and I have talked about it, I don’t think that Zelenskyy is still in power if it’s not for SpaceX providing Starlink on the ground, allowing the commanders to talk to frontline soldiers. I don’t think that Zelenskyy is still there if Microsoft doesn’t provide the cloud computing and cyberdefenses to defend Ukraine against Russian attack. Those two companies — I mean, I’m glad they made those decisions, but it’s not like they’re members of NATO. It’s not like anybody voted to make them make those decisions. And, you know, same thing is true about whether or not former President Trump was going to have a platform to talk in real time to hundreds of millions of people. Those were arbitrary decisions made by the CEOs of Twitter and then Facebook, now Meta. Those weren’t decisions made by governing authorities or judicial authorities. I think this stuff is enormously important, and it’s coming very, very fast.
Brancaccio: Now, as we got to the middle of June here, the European Union said it’s putting together a package of new regulation for AI. It’s going to put up some guardrails, some safeguards. Doesn’t sound like you’re relaxed that this is going to lead to something quickly enough.
Bremmer: I think it’s going to take time. There’s gonna be a lot of fighting in order to get those regulations through. You’ve got 27 members of the European Union that are going to have to agree on it unanimously. The EU is a very powerful regulatory force. It is also very slow, incremental and ponderous. It also is governance of the EU, which is different than governance of the United States, or Japan, or, you know, the rest of the 8 billion people on the planet. I have no doubt that these regulations are coming. But I want to be clear that for the next one, two, three years, overwhelmingly, the way that the world and that we as citizens experience this AI is going to be because of decisions that are being made by the people that control the companies, not by the governing authorities.
Brancaccio: Now, at the moment, concern about AI doesn’t seem to have broken along partisan lines. It doesn’t seem to be a conservative/liberal issue yet. Does that offer some hope that politicians, that Washington, could get on the stick when it comes to thinking about, how can we deploy this technology in the public interest?
Bremmer: I think so. I think you’re right, David, this is not a partisan issue. This is a, “What the hell is going on? How do we understand it?” And that’s where you want it to be. I mean, let’s face it: On climate change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for years was all about, “Let’s just try to understand the basic science here.” And we did, eventually. It was late, but we eventually got to a place where we all kind of agree on the science. Let’s hope that happens a lot faster on AI.
Brancaccio: Some years ago, I was favored with being able to do the last big interview that author Kurt Vonnegut ever did. I did it for PBS television. In the middle of that interview, he was worried that no country has ever had what he called a “secretary of the future.” And I think he meant like a Cabinet-level person, worried about how policy will affect the generation to come. And with artificial intelligence shooting into our lives in all these different ways, you kind of wish we had had a secretary of the future and the mindset that would have come with it.
Bremmer: We have experience already today that there are institutions that are governed primarily by people with expertise. And no matter what country they’re from, they take that job seriously in terms of how the basic functioning of the world works, as opposed to domestic politics. And what I’m talking about, of course, is our central bank governors, the head of the Fed. Like, if there’s a recession, if there’s a financial crisis, everyone understands from every country, you’ve got fiscal tools, you have monetary tools, and they largely see the world in the same way. It would be wonderful if on issues that clearly affect the future of 8 billion people on the planet, like AI, like climate change, if you could create the kind of technocratic governance in our countries that would allow for central bank governance-type cooperation globally.
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