新帝国主义，政企综合体？
中国的崛起，未必是大家熟悉的纯国家体系政治主权。
*There is a concerted attack on the Googles, Amazons, Apples and Facebooks of this world by politicians across the planet*. To many of us, this seems like government’s desperately trying to protect their turf and maintain control.
In modern times, most empires have a life span of around 100 years. The American Empire is about 100 years old and it is possible time is running out.
*The obvious successor is China*, but perhaps the New Empire isn’t actually a nation-state? When it comes to modern power and control, there’s a transition taking place.
Is the idea of a non-governmental entity controlling parts of the world really far fetched? Maybe there’s a better way to run the world? *The big players of the tech world, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Oracle, are all financial giants poised to wrestle control away from government.*
Their combined total revenues are over US$801 billion. And in terms of cash, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet and Facebook, are sitting on a cash war chest of US$96 billion. That’s not including the hundreds of billions in ‘short term investments’ that exist on their balance sheets.
*In short, pooled together the might, power and influence of the world’s biggest tech companies and their combined networks, arguably, you’d be looking at the most powerful group on Earth.*
*They are collectively more powerful than the US government*.
All the regulators and authorities can really do is try and build a fence around the growing might of ‘Big Tech’. US politicians are terrified of Big Tech because Big Tech poses an immediate threat to the most successful weapon the US has in their global empire arsenal…banking and finance.
*But what Big Tech has going for it is the network effect*.
These companies combined, span the entire globe (except for China) with their network reach. They have a global distributed network of users that no other entity on Earth can compete with.
They’ve built their companies on consumer power, and now they’re looking at way to redistribute the power of Wall St and government amongst themselves as a new global power.
