The companies that once sold themselves as engines of freedom—open information, empowered individuals, helping the world—are quietly becoming something else entirely. I understand only too well; I moved to Silicon Valley in 1996 to join the many that wanted to make the world better by empowering the people.
But it’s become clear that these companies are no longer standing up for democracy. They are no longer defending people. Increasingly, they resemble a consolidated power bloc led by wealthy and unaccountable billionaires, willing to align with authoritarians so long as profits and control keep flowing.
This is how corruption starts and democracy ends—not by villains with mustaches, but with executives telling themselves they are being pragmatic and doing what’s best for their shareholders.
Tech leaders are now routinely cooperating with politicians hostile to democratic norms, labor protections, and civil liberties. They provide data, infrastructure, services, and platforms to governments that surveil, intimidate, and punish. They stay silent when elections are undermined, when judges are attacked, when protestors are tracked and even murdered. Silence is cheaper than resistance.
And behind the scenes, they are developing AI to give them even more power. Artificial intelligence is not being deployed primarily to help people live better lives. It is being deployed to replace workers, weaken labor, and concentrate power. The public-facing story is productivity and innovation. The internal story is fewer humans, lower costs, higher margins, more control, and most importantly, more billions. No matter how many billions these companies and individuals have, it’s never enough.
Tech once needed people—millions of them. Now tech sees people as costs to be eliminated many thousands at a time.
This is where the Darth Vader metaphor is apropos. Vader didn’t think he was evil. He believed order mattered more than freedom. Efficiency more than messiness. Control more than consent. That is the ideology quietly taking hold across big tech: democracy is inefficient, workers are expensive, and consent is optional when you have enough data and compute power. Authoritarian systems rarely justify themselves as evil. They justify themselves as: More rational, More efficient, More secure, More predictable
What makes this moment dangerous is the consolidation of big tech. Just a handful of companies now control communication, commerce, cloud infrastructure, AI models, and increasingly the machinery of government itself. When they act together—or even merely refuse to push back—they function like a consortium, with growth and power above all.
The people are no longer treated humanely. Workers are reduced to headcount. Users become sources of data to be exploited by their products.
Democracy is treated as an obstacle rather than a moral obligation. When tech leaders talk about responsibility, they mean shareholder responsibility—nothing more. Amazon just laid off 16,000 people in one fell swoop. It follows another layoff of a similar size several months ago, and likely precedes another one later this year.
All the while their corruption is visible for all to see. Once-admired executives now court authoritarian leaders, fund propaganda-like projects, and normalize collaboration with agencies that trample our civil liberties. The latest example is Tim Cook prostrating himself to fawn over a movie that’s really just a $70 million bribe from Amazon to Trump.
Cook sucking up to Trump made it clear that there are no limits of decency even to one who was formerly decent.
Tech still depends on public trust, public infrastructure, public education, and a stable democracy. But instead of defending those foundations, too many companies are hollowing them out—confident they can outlast the damage. And as they become bigger, they care even less.
The original promise of technology was our empowerment. What we are getting instead is domination,, surveillance, and consolidation—wrapped in all the AI hype. The best resistance to all of this is for us to just say no and fight back the only way these companies understand. Stop doing business with them. Stop upgrading your phones, delay replacing your old computer, cancel your Amazon Prime membership. Just don’t patronize those that support those taking away our rights. Here is a LIST to get started.