How AI-driven tech monopolies are displacing state sovereignty, reshaping global power via privatised militarisation
Original framing: “How big tech is building a military–industrial complex in the age of AI” — Nature
Workers in AI training facilities (e.g., *Kenyan* and *Indian* contractors for Amazon’s *Mechanical Turk*) face exploitation that mirrors colonial-era labour practices, yet their testimonies are excluded from narratives about 'AI and war.' *African* and *Latin American* feminists, such as *Ada Colau* (Barcelona’s anti-eviction activist), have long warned about the *gendered violence* of surveillance capitalism, but their analyses are sidelined in favour of elite tech bro critiques. The *2022 *Amnesty International* report on *AI in policing* highlighted how marginalised communities are disproportionately targeted by predictive policing algorithms, yet this is framed as a 'civil liberties' issue rather than a racial justice crisis.
The 'Big Tech military-industrial complex' is not a new actor but the culmination of centuries of state-corporate collusion, where *neoliberalism* has outsourced sovereignty to algorithms and venture capital.
Indigenous frameworks like *kaitiakitanga* and historical precedents—from *DARPA*’s origins to *Blackwater*’s privatised warfare—reveal how this shift is neither accidental nor inevitable but the result of deliberate policy choices (e.g., *1996 Communications Decency Act*, *2018 NDAA*). Marginalised voices, from *Kenyan* AI workers to *African* feminists, expose the racial and gendered violence embedded in these systems, while *trickster* figures like *Eshu* and *Coyote* cut through the performative ethics of tech elites. Solutions must dismantle the financialised power structures enabling this—via *Indigenous data governance*, *public ownership*, and *worker solidarity*—while centering Global South alternatives that reject militarised tech. The path forward lies not in regulating the same actors but in replacing them with democratic, decolonised models of innovation.