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Why governments vs. Big Tech is the wrong question
It’s been three and a half years since I first laid out the idea of a technopolar world: one no longer dominated solely by states, but increasingly shaped – and sometimes steered – by a handful of powerful tech companies with the newfound ability to influence economies, societies, politics, and geopolitics.
At the time, I said the power of Big Tech was poised to grow but argued governments wouldn’t go down without a fight and sketched out three potential futures, depending on how the showdown between them played out: one in which tech companies displaced governments as the principal sovereigns of a globalized digital order; one where a tech cold war took hold and states reasserted control over a fragmented cyberspace; and one in which state dominance gave way to a new order led by tech firms.
This week, I published a follow-up in Foreign Affairs – “The Technopolar Paradox: The Frightening Fusion of Tech Power and State Power” – looking at how those predictions have aged, what’s actually happened since 2021, and where we might be heading next.
Spoiler: the trends I flagged back then have only accelerated. But reality has turned out messier, and more dangerous, than anyone could’ve imagined.
Here’s what you need to know.
Technopolarity turbocharged
Let’s rewind to early 2022. Russian tanks are bearing down on Kyiv. Ukraine’s government and military command structure is under threat as the whole country faces an imminent communications blackout.
Enter Elon Musk.
Within days, SpaceX ships Starlink terminals to Ukraine and flips on satellite internet coverage, effectively keeping the country online and in the fight. For a time, he’s hailed as a hero. But months later, when Ukraine asks him to extend that coverage to Crimea to enable a submarine drone strike on Russian naval assets, Musk refuses. He’s worried about escalation. Even the Pentagon can’t change his mind.
Think about that. An unelected billionaire with no formal role in government single-handedly altered the trajectory of a war between nation-states – not once, but multiple times. That was technopolarity in action: private tech actors wielding state-like powers with geopolitical consequences, making decisions that would normally be reserved for presidents, defense ministers, or national security councils, without public accountability.
Over the last few years, the power of tech firms has only deepened. During the pandemic, they became indispensable: for remote work, education, healthcare, and the flow of information (and disinformation). Their influence grew in every sphere – economic, social, and political. And it didn’t stop in the digital world. Tech firms now control critical infrastructure that governments rely on: cloud systems, cybersecurity platforms, data centers, satellites. They’re not just platforms. They’re utilities – with geopolitical consequences.
Governments have tried to claw back power. The EU passed the Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act. US regulators launched antitrust lawsuits and passed state-level privacy laws. Countries like India, South Africa, and Brazil cracked down on tech platforms. But none of these moves changed who writes the rules of the digital world.
And that was before AI exploded onto the scene and supercharged Big Tech’s lead over states. Suddenly, tech firms weren’t just dominant online. They were defining the frontier of innovation – and the terms of national power. Building advanced AI requires staggering amounts of data, compute, and talent. Only a few companies have these resources. And no government has the ability to move fast enough to rein them in. Even if they could build rules to constrain today’s models, those rules would be outdated by the time they were implemented. Key decisions about how AI shapes our societies, economies, and geopolitics looked bound to be made in Silicon Valley boardrooms, not parliaments or congresses.
Geopolitics strikes back
But just when technopolar consolidation seemed unstoppable, the old forces of geopolitics were making a comeback. Protectionism, economic security, and great power rivalry all returned with a vengeance – especially after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and amid growing US-China tensions. In response, governments began to take back control over economic and technological domains they had largely ceded to globalization and free markets.
Washington imposed export bans on advanced semiconductors, blacklisted Chinese firms, and poured billions into reshoring strategic supply chains. China retaliated with restrictions of its own, doubled down on self-reliance, and reined in its tech sector completely. Protectionism and industrial policy became the new global norm.
This retreat from globalization fractured the global tech ecosystem and upended the business models of “globalist” firms like Apple and Tesla, which long depended on open markets and integrated supply chains. “National champions” like Microsoft and Palantir, by contrast, are thriving, profiting off their close ties to the US government in this post-globalization, hyper-securitized, state-aligned era. Tech firms can’t just float above the fray anymore.
Rise of the techno-authoritarians
While states were busy battling for control of digital space, some of Silicon Valley’s leading lights decided they’d rather take over the US state than take orders from it (or resist it).
Back in 2021, I described folks like Musk, Peter Thiel, and Marc Andreessen as “techno-utopians”: visionaries who believed technology could transcend politics and even render governments obsolete. But in recent years, those same people pivoted from wanting to escape the state to trying to capture it.
What explains the shift from libertarian idealism to techno-authoritarian ambition? For one, today’s frontier technologies – from AI to quantum to biotech – can’t scale without state support. That’s made alignment with Washington a strategic necessity. And in an era of great power competition, the rewards of capturing public power have grown alongside the risks of being left out. But some of these tech leaders have grown ideologically hostile to democracy. Thiel has said he doesn’t believe “freedom and democracy are compatible.” Musk once called for a “modern-day Sulla,” in reference to a Roman dictator who dismantled republican institutions in the name of restoring order.
That might have started as a joke, but the governing instinct was real. Musk poured nearly $300 million into helping Trump retake power in 2024 and has since been rewarded with sweeping authority over the federal government. He’s used that perch to purge civil servants, install loyalists, and amass troves of government data – all while maintaining control of his private companies. Suddenly, the same tech overlords who control AI development, space infrastructure, and the digital public square are also shaping public policy and writing their own rules.
The risk isn’t just crony capitalism. It’s the fusion of state and tech power into a hybrid Leviathan where public institutions are reoriented to serve the strategic, commercial, and political goals of a narrow tech elite. Already, reports suggest that confidential IRS, immigration, health, financial, and Social Security data are being consolidated. For all we know, they are being fed into AI models developed by Musk’s xAI to be exploited for commercial gain or even political surveillance. We’re not talking about China’s top-down surveillance state. We’re talking about something more decentralized, more market-driven, and potentially even more dangerous – a system with just as much potential for abuse, fewer checks, and even fewer balances.
What the future looks like
So where does this leave us? Not in a fully tech-dominated world. Not in a state-dominated world. But in a messy hybrid one shaped by two poles of concentrated power.
On one side, we have an increasingly technopolar United States, where a handful of tech firms and leaders enjoy extraordinary power – wielding growing influence not just over digital space and critical infrastructure, but over US public policy and global standards. In some cases, they enjoy the implicit (or explicit) backing of the US government.
On the other side, we have a tightly state-controlled China, where tech firms serve the Chinese Communist Party’s goals.
Caught between these two poles is … everyone else. Europe aspires to digital sovereignty but lacks the homegrown tech muscle to pull it off. Much of the Global South is being pulled toward one model or the other. And global institutions that might once have brokered a balance are being sidelined or dismantled.
And here’s the kicker: though the US and Chinese systems differ in ideology, they’re starting to converge in practice. Both dominant models – American and Chinese – prioritize power, efficiency, and control over consent, accountability, and freedom. Whether authority lies with the state or the corporation, democracy and individual rights are not the default.
Therein lies the paradox of the technopolar age: technologies that were supposed to democratize access to power, information, and opportunity are now enabling more effective forms of centralized, unaccountable control, making it harder to govern democratically and easier for unaccountable elites – public or private – to tighten their grip.
In the West, we risk handing over our democracies to unelected technocrats. In China, the state already runs the show. In both cases, the result is the same: less transparency, less accountability, and more concentration of power – whether in corporate boardrooms or party headquarters.
The question is no longer whether the state can contain Big Tech. It’s whether open societies can survive the fusion of the two. Right now, the answer is very much up in the air.
Is AI's "intelligence" an illusion?
Is ChatGPT all it’s cracked up to be? Will truth survive the evolution of artificial intelligence?
On GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, cognitive scientist and AI researcher Gary Marcus breaks down the recent advances––and inherent risks––of generative AI.
AI-powered, large language model tools like the text-to-text generator ChatGPT or the text-to-image generator Midjourney can do magical things like write a college term paper in Klingon or instantly create nine images of a slice of bread ascending to heaven.
But there’s still a lot they can’t do: namely, they have a pretty hard time with the concept of truth, often presenting inaccurate or plainly false information as facts. As generative AI becomes more widespread, it will undoubtedly change the way we live, in both good ways and bad.
“Large language models are actually special in their unreliability,” Marcus says on GZERO World, “They're arguably the most versatile AI technique that's ever been developed, but they're also the least reliable AI technique that's ever gone mainstream.”
Marcus sits down with Ian Bremmer to talk about the underlying technology behind generative AI, how it differs from the “good old-fashioned AI” of previous generations, and what effective, global AI regulation might look like.
Watch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld or on US public television. Check local listings.
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Elon Musk's Starlink cutoff controversy
I think it's a fascinating question. And it gets to a point of what I call a technopolar world, not unipolar, not bipolar, not multipolar, technopolar. In other words, for all of our lives, we've talked about a world where nation states, where governments are the principal actors with sovereignty over outcomes that matter critically for national security. Now, here you have the Russians invading Ukraine. One of the biggest challenges to the geopolitical order since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. And yet, a core decision about whether or not Ukraine will be able to defend itself is being made not by the United States or NATO providing the military support, but by a technology company. Now, the Ukrainian government is being quite critical of some of the decisions that Elon Musk has made in restricting the use for Starlink, for the Ukrainians.
I don't think that's fair criticism by itself. I think we need to recognize that Starlink's availability to the Ukrainians was absolutely essential in helping the government and the military leaders actually communicate with their soldiers on the front lines. And if it wasn't for Starlink, and if it wasn't for the role of many other technology companies, largely in the United States, not at all clear to me that Zelensky would still be in power today. Certainly the Ukrainians would have lost a lot more territory and they'd be in much worse position than they are. So I think that the Ukrainians still owe Elon a significant debt. But I also raise a much bigger question, which is, should an individual CEO, should an individual centibillionaire be making these decisions about outcomes of life and death for 44 million Ukrainians?
And they're the answer is much more concerning. Because, of course, Elon and all of these technology companies, they're not treaty signatories with NATO. They don't have any obligation to do anything other than Netflix and chill. And yet they're absolutely indispensable for national security in these countries as increasingly national security becomes a matter of not just what happens with bombs and rockets, but also what happens in the digital world, what happens in cyberspace, what happens in communications, in the collection of intelligence. As Elon and others become principal actors in a military industrial technological complex, accountability for those decisions is very deeply concerning if it's only in the hands of those individuals. Now, I think it's a little easier with SpaceX, because SpaceX is, after all, a company that is overwhelmingly funded by the US government, by the Pentagon and by NASA. And so ultimately, either legally through regulation or informally through pressure on the basis of providing those contracts, there is certainly a level of influence that the US government would be able to have over a SpaceX to ensure that Starlink is made available fully to the Ukrainians as US. and NATO's allies see fit.
Just as the American government would take vigorous exception if SpaceX and Starlink were suddenly having their technologies made available to American adversaries. Having said that, keep in mind that there is no other viable technology that is presently available. So, if it's not Starlink, it's nothing for the Ukrainians. And what about a country like Taiwan? Very concerned increasingly that we see the status quo on Taiwan eroding from the United States, as Biden says that he would defend Taiwan and as the Americans put export controls on TSMC, the semiconductor company, and from the Chinese side, as the Chinese keep sending over drones and aircraft to invade Taiwanese airspace. Well, if there were cyber attacks from mainland China into Taiwan, would Starlink be made available in Taiwan the way it has been in Ukraine, even though imperfectly in Ukraine? And the answer to that, I suspect, would be absolutely not, because it would prevent Elon Musk from doing effective business in mainland China, including Tesla. Would the Chinese use that leverage against Elon in a way that the American government had not been against SpaceX?
Absolutely they would. And so what does that mean? Does it mean that that just means Taiwan doesn't get that ability to defend itself? Or does the US government have to somehow, through force majeure, nationalize the technology and take it away from SpaceX or force SpaceX to provide Starlink to Taiwan? Or does the US government have to build its own alternative, where it has direct ownership of such a company and technology. Look, the fact is this is a very, very messy piece of geopolitical power where increasingly technology companies are acting as sovereigns. And until and unless those questions are answered, we are increasingly living in a technopolar world.
That's it for me. And I'll talk to you all real soon.
Ian Explains: Why big tech will rule the world
Who runs the world? It used to be an easy question to answer, but the next global super power isn’t who you think it is—not the US, not China. In fact, it’s not a country at all ... It’s technology.
On Ian Explains, Ian Bremmer breaks down the three global orders of the current geopolitical landscape.
First is the global security order, where the US is the undisputed leader. It’s the only country that can send soldiers, sailors, and military hardware to every corner of the world. Next there’s the global economic world order, which has no single leader. The US and China are too economically interdependent to couple from each other; the European Union is the world’s largest common market; Japan is a global economic power; India’s economy is growing rapidly … You get the idea.
The third global order isn’t quite here yet but it will bring unprecedented changes to our everyday lives: the digital order. As new artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT and Midjourney hit the market, techn firms control increasingly large data sets about massive swaths of the world’s population—what we think, what we feel, how we use the internet. And social media companies can impact elections with a simple tweak of an algorithm.
Who will hold these companies to account as they release new, more advanced tools? What will they do with the massive amounts of data they collect on us and our environment? Most importantly, how will technology companies use their power?
For more on the power of Big Tech and advances in AI technology, watch the upcoming episode of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer on US public television and at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld.
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What is a techno-prudential approach to AI governance?
Can the world learn how to govern artificial intelligence before it’s too late?
According to Ian Bremmer, founder and president of GZERO Media and Eurasia Group, AI’s power paradox is that it’s both too powerful to easily govern, but too beneficial to outright ban. In a new video series on AI, Bremmer introduces the idea of “techno-prudentialism.” A mouthful of a word that will almost certainly come to define the way AI is governed, regulated, and controlled.
Techno-prudentialism is the idea that we need to identify and limit risks to global stability posed by AI without choking off innovation and the opportunities that come with it. It’s a tricky tightrope to walk, but it’s similar to how global finance is governed, known as macro-prudentialism. Despite conflict between, say, the US, China, and Europe, they all work together within institutions like the Bank of International Settlements, the IMF, and the Financial Stability Board to keep markets functioning. The do it because global finance is too important to allow it to break.
Techno-prudentialism applies that idea to the AI space. Bremmer lays out the case for a collective, international effort in AI governance, emphasizing the need for global institutions to address the many ways AI could challenge geopolitical stability. As the balance of power shifts towards technology companies in a techno-polar world [HYPERLINK TO TECHNO-POLAR VIDEO], Bremmer envisions these institutions creating a framework that balances AI’s power and benefits, while preventing it from inciting political instability on a global scale.
What is a technopolar world?
Who runs the world? In a series of videos about artificial intelligence, Ian Bremmer, founder and president of GZERO Media and Eurasia Group introduces the concept of a technopolar world––one where technology companies wield unprecedented influence on the global stage, where sovereignty and influence is determined not by physical territory or military might, but control over data, servers, and, crucially, algorithms.
We aren’t yet in a fully technopolar world, but we do exist in a digital order where major tech companies hold sway over standards, operations, interactions, security and economics in the virtual realm. And Bremmer says this is just the beginning. He highlights two key advantages that technology companies have: their dominance over the digital space, which profoundly impacts the lives of billions of people every day, as well as their role in providing critical digital infrastructure required to run a modern economy and society.
As artificial intelligence and other transformative technologies advance, and more and more of our daily life shifts online, Bremmer predicts a shift in power dynamics, where tech companies extend their reach beyond the digital sphere into economics, politics, and even national security. This will almost certainly challenge traditional ideas about global power, which may be determined as much by competition between nation states and tech companies as it is, say, between the US and China. Incorporating tech firms into governance models may be necessary to effectively navigate the complexity of a technopolar world, Bremmer argues. Ultimately, how these companies choose to wield power and their interactions with governments will shape the trajectory of our economic, social, and political futures.
See more of GZERO Media's coverage on artificial intelligence and geopolitics,
A vision for inclusive AI governance
Casting a spotlight on the intricate landscape of AI governance, Ian Bremmer, president and founder of GZERO Media and Eurasia Group, and Mustafa Suleyman, CEO and co-founder of Inflection AI, eloquently unravel the pressing need for collaboration between governments, advanced industrial players, corporations, and a diverse spectrum of stakeholders in the AI domain. The exponential pace of this technological evolution demands a united front and the stakes have never been higher. There is urgency of getting AI governance right while the perils of getting it wrong could be catastrophic. While tech giants acknowledge this necessity, they remain engrossed in their domains, urging the imperative for collective action.
Mustafa vividly illustrates the competitive dynamics among AI developers vying for supremacy, stressing that cooperation between corporations and governments is pivotal. Ian emphasizes the existing techno-polar world and the importance of inclusivity in shaping AI's trajectory. The discourse emphasizes that the way forward isn't confined to legislative channels, but rather a tapestry woven with non-governmental organizations, academics, critics, and civil society entities. Mustafa propounds the notion that diversity and inclusivity breed resilience. The duo makes a compelling case for stakeholders' collaboration. They draw a parallel between their alignment and the potential accord between major tech leaders and governments.
Watch the full conversation: Governing AI Before It’s Too Late
Watch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld or on US public television. Check local listings.
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Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi meets Tesla CEO Elon Musk in New York.
Elon Musk's geopolitical clout grows as he meets Modi
After Narendra Modi met Elon Musk on Tuesday, the Indian PM immediately took to Twitter to update his 88+ million followers about his friendly chat with the world's richest man. Musk, of course, is the owner of the social media platform, whose most popular politician is ... Modi.
The thing is, Musk not only controls Twitter, which has often tussled with India over censorship. He also calls the shots at Tesla, a big name in the electric vehicle business, and at Starlink, the satellite internet provider which has kept Ukraine online since the Russian invasion.
Visiting world leaders meeting captains of industry is nothing new. But Musk has unique geopolitical sway in today's "technopolar world" because his companies operate in both the "real" economy (i.e. they make physical stuff people want to buy) and the digital space, where public discourse takes place nowadays.
That makes Musk arguably more influential than most world leaders right now and any business leader in recent memory. As GZERO writer Alex Kliment puts it, he's William Randolph Hearst meets Henry Ford, all in one. No wonder he also recently met Xi Jinping and often talks to Vladimir Putin.
Whatever you think of Musk, his geopolitical clout is undeniable in a future "digital order" in which the digital space itself becomes the main arena for great-power competition and tech companies set the rules instead of governments. But his chumminess with three authoritarian leaders is no harbinger of democracy for the technopolar world.