This piece serves as a continuation of my previous exploration into the rise of techno-feudalism and the corporate enclosure of governance. In that article, I outlined how Elon Musk and his allies have not just influenced the state but have absorbed its functions, remodelling governance to serve private capital. Now, we move deeper into one of the most insidious mechanisms of this new order: algorithmic authoritarianism. Through AI-driven governance and social media manipulation, Big Tech has evolved from shaping markets to shaping reality itself. With Musk consolidating power over digital platforms and AI governance, and embedding himself in the Oval Office, the line between corporate and state control has been entirely erased. We now ask: who is the President, who is the puppet, and who is the puppeteer? The question is no longer whether capital influences governance, it is whether governance, as we once understood it, still exists at all.
“With Musk consolidating power over digital platforms and AI governance, and embedding himself in the Oval Office, the line between corporate and state control has been entirely erased. We now ask: who is the President, who is the puppet, and who is the puppeteer?”
The 21st century has not merely witnessed the centralisation of wealth, it has seen the consolidation of power into the hands of a few billionaire technocrats who now shape governance, discourse, and social behaviour through the unseen force of algorithmic control. Through Elon Musk, the tech oligarchs have now taken over the most powerful country in the world, the United States. While Donald Trump is once again President, the real power resides with Musk, who wields unprecedented control over governance, finance, and digital infrastructure through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). In this new era, the most powerful entities are not states or elected leaders but tech oligarchs, their platforms and predictive models, dictating what we see, how we think, and ultimately, how we behave. We are no longer ruled by laws1 alone, but by lines of code that enforce a new form of digital authority, one that is neither accountable nor democratic.
“While Donald Trump is once again President, the real power resides with Musk, who wields unprecedented control over governance, finance, and digital infrastructure through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).”
Surveillance Capitalism to Algorithmic Rule
Shoshana Zuboff’s concept of surveillance capitalism described how tech giants accumulated vast amounts of behavioural data to predict and influence consumer choices. However, this era of prediction has given way to a more insidious development, preemptive control. AI-driven platforms no longer merely monitor behaviour; they now actively manipulate it. Through DOGE, Musk and his allies have secured unrestricted access to an unprecedented trove of government data, including financial records (such as tax returns) and medical data (including Medicaid files). This data will not be collected for the public good, it will be weaponised. These platforms don’t simply analyse social patterns; they proactively shape public consciousness, enforcing ideological control with a precision that surpasses any previous propaganda system. Big Tech is no longer just content with collecting data; it is now programming society itself. Algorithms decide (with a little help from the tech elite) what information is visible, which opinions are amplified, and which are suppressed. The transition from nudging consumer choices to enforcing ideological obedience is complete. The so-called neutrality of AI is a myth, these systems are designed and trained by corporations with vested interests, embedding ideological biases at the structural level. This is algorithmic governance: an unelected, unaccountable power structure determining the boundaries of political and social discourse.
“The transition from nudging consumer choices to enforcing ideological obedience is complete. The so-called neutrality of AI is a myth, these systems are designed and trained by corporations with vested interests, embedding ideological biases at the structural level.”
New Ministry of Truth
Social media has long been described as the digital public square, but this analogy is misleading, false even. In reality, platforms like X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, YouTube, and Facebook function more like privatised ministries of truth. The consolidation of media power in the hands of figures like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg is not just about wealth, it is about narrative control. Since Musk took ownership of X, the algorithm has been deliberately tweaked to amplify his voice and those of other far-right figures. His takeover, combined with his potential acquisition of TikTok2 and Open AI, would give him near-total dominance over political discourse among younger generations. The very algorithms that dictate visibility and virality are being shaped by the interests of a few unelected tech barons. Far from being neutral platforms, these systems actively privilege certain viewpoints while burying others. AI-driven content suppression ensures that dissenting voices are algorithmically de-prioritised, shadowbanned, or outright removed. Meanwhile, AI-generated propaganda is entering the mainstream. Deepfake influencers, synthetic political commentators, and automated content farms are creating an entirely new landscape of discourse manipulation. The boundaries between human speech and AI-generated narratives are dissolving, making resistance to algorithmic rule even more difficult.
“Social media has long been described as the digital public square, but this analogy is misleading. In reality, platforms like X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, YouTube, and Facebook function more like privatised ministries of truth.”
The State That Sees Before You Act
The tech elite have shrugged off the last vestiges of utopian Californian cool and fully embraced the military-industrial complex (MIC). Once marketed as visionaries of an open and decentralised digital future, figures like Musk, Thiel, and the executives of Google and Amazon have seamlessly aligned their enterprises with state power. Nowhere is this clearer than in projects like Project Nimbus—a $1.2 billion cloud computing contract between Google, Amazon, and the Israeli government—which exemplifies this deepening relationship. Under the guise of efficiency and security, these corporations provide the technological backbone for surveillance, weapons targeting, and military logistics, reinforcing an infrastructure of algorithmic warfare that dictates life and death from a boardroom. The same predictive models used for financial speculation and consumer tracking are now being repurposed for military decision-making, further eroding any distinction between corporate and state power.
This fusion of big tech and the MIC has enabled one of the most insidious developments in contemporary governance: the use of AI to anticipate and neutralise dissent before it even emerges. Predictive governance, spearheaded by companies like Palantir, Peter Thiel’s data analytics firm, has become a central tool in AI-driven surveillance. Through predictive policing3, for example, AI assigns risk scores to individuals based on their social media activity, location, and associations. The result? Entire communities are criminalised not for actions, but for algorithmic probability. The presumption of innocence is replaced with statistical forecasting. Beyond law enforcement, these predictive models are actively shaping the battlefield of the future. In an era where data is the new frontline, AI-driven systems are being deployed to anticipate, control, and preempt threats before they materialise. Nowhere has this been more devastating than in Israel’s war on Gaza, where predictive algorithms have been leveraged for military targeting, surveillance, and autonomous decision-making, raising urgent ethical and humanitarian concerns.
The power to predict is now the power to dictate. Governments and private actors alike are using these AI-driven technologies to surveil populations, profile individuals, and engineer political and military outcomes with unprecedented precision. But the influence of these systems extends far beyond war zones and policing. AI-powered credit scoring systems, automated hiring filters, and risk assessment tools are embedding algorithmic discrimination into the fabric of everyday life. If an AI model determines you are a ‘risk,’ you may find yourself locked out of basic services, without recourse, without human accountability.
We are already living in the age of algorithmic pre-crime: a world where your future is dictated before you have even acted.
“This is the birth of algorithmic pre-crime: a world where your future is decided before you have even acted.”
The Enclosure of Speech
The shift from overt censorship to algorithmic invisibility is one of the defining characteristics of our time. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has actively removed information related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) from government websites, erasing references to trans people and other marginalised communities from official records. Traditional state-led repression has given way to something more insidious: the de-platforming of political opposition, the quiet removal of content from search results, websites and the throttling of engagement through algorithmic suppression. While Musk publicly proclaims himself a ‘free speech absolutist,’ his control over X has demonstrated the opposite. The site’s algorithmic enforcement policies (which the platform denies) have led to the widespread suppression of left-wing and anti-capitalist voices, while far-right content enjoys (renewed) privileged amplification. Meanwhile, AI-powered moderation tools ensure that what remains of public discourse is heavily policed, with dissenting narratives quietly buried under a flood of noise. The future of digital speech is not one of government censorship, but of (billionaire) corporate algorithmic control. AI is now systematically removing safeguards that once restricted sexual and extreme content, leading to a more unregulated and radicalised digital space. There has even been increasing discussion that AI models themselves are shifting rightward4, reinforcing reactionary ideologies and further privileging extremist viewpoints. Unlike traditional state suppression, this form of speech control leaves no martyrs, no public trials, just silence.
“Unlike traditional state suppression, this form of speech control leaves no martyrs, no public trials, just silence.”
Breaking the Algorithmic Chains
The fight against algorithmic authoritarianism cannot be won through regulation alone. The fundamental issue is not that these systems are unregulated, it is that they exist at all. The left must develop a strategy that does not merely seek to reform Big Tech, but to dismantle its monopoly over digital infrastructure altogether.
Public AI for Public Good
We must reject the idea that AI and algorithmic governance should be controlled by private corporations. AI models should be open-source, accountable to democratic oversight, and deployed in service of the public good, not as tools of corporate surveillance and social engineering.
The Federated, Decentralised Internet
We must build alternative digital infrastructures outside the control of Silicon Valley billionaires. This means investing in federated platforms, decentralised social media5, and publicly owned digital commons that operate outside the extractive logic of surveillance capitalism.
Abolishing Algorithmic Suppression
Algorithms have become the primary gatekeepers of public discourse. The left must challenge the very existence of proprietary recommendation engines that dictate what speech is seen and what is silenced. The future of digital discourse should be shaped by users, not by opaque machine-learning models designed for profit or the will of their owners.
Breaking the Tech Monopolies
A handful of billionaires should not have the power to dictate the flow of information. The only way to ensure this is to break up monopolies like X, Meta, and Google, nationalising key digital infrastructure where necessary, and ensuring that no single entity has the power to dominate public discourse.
Digital Liberation
The age of algorithmic authoritarianism is here. We are no longer living under governments that simply respond to crises, we are living under predictive regimes that shape crises before they occur. AI governance is not an inevitable technological evolution; it is a political project, designed to serve the interests of the billionaire class. The left cannot afford to passively critique these developments, we must organise, build, and reclaim technology as a tool for collective liberation. The battle ahead is not just against Musk, Zuckerberg, Thiel, or Silicon Valley, it is against the very idea that governance should be outsourced to the tech elite, or algorithms and machine-learning models that prioritise efficiency over democracy, capital over community, and control over freedom.
We have a choice: a future of digital feudalism, where algorithmic overlords dictate the conditions of life, or a world where technology is reclaimed as a means of collective power, free from the grip of billionaire capital.
“The left cannot afford to passively critique these developments, we must organise, build, and reclaim technology as a tool for collective liberation.”
The algorithm and the tech billionaire must fall. The future belongs to us.
Footnotes
- Which can be ignored. ↩︎
- Even though Musk denies this. ↩︎
- https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-47118229 ↩︎
- With the Labour Government seemingly leaving safety to the tech elite. ↩︎
- Such as BlueSky ↩︎
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