3706 - Iran War Is Lost But Not Over; Our Corporate Command Economy w/ Cecilia Rakip

Hey, folks. Got some good news from our friends at sunset lake sabade.com. It's sunset lake farms birthday. Actually, they share birthday, I think, close to my daughters. Nevertheless, they're only seven years old. And they're celebrating. Farmers at Sunset Lake have been growing hemp and crafting our favorite sabade products for seven years now. And they want to party with all of us. Now through August 17th, you can save 25% off sitewide. That means 25% off gummies for sleep, gummies, for... Having fun. Gummies for relaxing. Gummies for focusing. Tinctures for balance. Topicles for sore joints and muscles and everything else on their site. Just use the code Birthday 26, Birthday 26 at checkout. That's Birthday 26. Oh, and if you spend a hundred bucks or more, they're going to toss in a free gift as well. Birthday gifts are the best kind. Am I right? I use all sorts of Sunset Lake Farms Sabade products to help me sleep, to help me relax for my eczema. I mean, I use off-label use on their solve. All of their products are fantastic. I even put a little bit into... I don't want to get too deep into this, but I use a little bit of like coconut oil and beeswax in my hair and I put a little bit of a... The Sunset Lake Sabadee in there, the tincture, because it's supposed to be good for your hair. Regardless, head over to sunsetlake sabade.com. Punch in birthday 26 at checkout to save 25% on everything sitewide. Hit the $100 mark and you get a bonus gift on top of it. Sale ends August 17th at midnight eastern time. See their site for full terms and restrictions. And now time for the show. Majority Report with Sam Cedar. It is Monday. August 10th, 2026. My name is Sam Cedar. This is the five-time award-winning majority report. We are broadcasting live steps. From the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, USA. On the program today, Cecilia Ricap, associate professor and economics and head of research at the University College London's Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose on her book, The Rulers, Corporate Power in the Age of AI and the Cloud.

Also on the program today, Trump's former defense attorney had that job up until the day of the inauguration. Todd Blanche, now confirmed by Republicans as Attorney General in the dead of the night last night. Top law enforcement officer in the country. formerly the president's defense attorney. Benjamin Netanyahu rejects Trump's Gaza plan as too unblood thirsty enough. Meanwhile, Trump claims he's sort of negotiating with Iran as Iran flexes its dominance over this now lost Trump war. Tomorrow is primary day in Connecticut, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Vermont, Alabama. We'll be watching Flanagan in Minnesota in Hong in Wisconsin. Meanwhile, accused wife and girlfriend beat her. And, to be fair, daughter beater. And lawyer beater too. And lawyer beater. Representative Congressman Max Miller refusing to drop out as the deadline is today. to get his name off of the general election ballot, which, of course, should launch a thousand interviews about Hasan Piker. Senate recesses until September without delivering Trump's Save Act or Pete Hegseth massive defense budget. Taylor Farms recalls fresh jalapenos. Over a, nope, it's Salmonella concerns this time. This is what life is like without a functioning government, folks. Confusion reigns as confusion reigns over temporary protected status rescission for 350,000 Haitians as temporary protected status revoked. for folks from Miramar and South Sudan. Greenland issues a strong warning as a Trump-linked oil firm prepares to drill off its coast without permission. And Capital One says it closed Trump organization's accounts after its own anti-money laundering investigation. All this and more on today's majority report. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks so much for joining us, Emma Vigland out today. You know, it's traditional. Oh, let me just read this. I got an email from a listener. His name is Brian. Hernandez. And his name is Brian Hernandez. He's running for secretary along with other comrades in South Central Pennsylvania DSA. And we need a few more RSVPs for our Harrisburg General Assembly. We're trying to grow DSA. Can you ask your community to join an RSVP if they live near Harrisburg? We will put a link.

To where you can sign up at Majority.fm and in the podcast and YouTube descriptions for those folks in and around Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. You know, we, every morning before the show, and we collected over the course of the day before and the weekend and we collect clips to play on the program. It is virtually impossible to find a clip that doesn't mention this story about a bank doing its own internal investigation of money laundering investigation and closing the Trump organization accounts with no other comment. No, I'm sorry. No, we found no clips about that. What I was talking about was... This story about the that we're basically trying to commit an act of war with Greenland by drilling in their own. No, I'm sorry, not that one. The TPS one about the hundreds of thousands of people who are being booted out of the country. No. Oh, I know what it was. Hasan Piker. Yeah. Yeah. We've got 75 clips of newsmakers talking about Hasan Piker. In each one, almost identical. So we will probably just play a couple. But in the meantime, one of the amazing things that has happened under the Trump administration is that we have unequivocally.

Maybe not catastrophically, but at least on its own terms catastrophically, lost a war with the unrivaled alacrity, maybe in the history of the United States. Also, fortunately, with a few U.S. casualties. Now, of course, we have killed thousands of Iranians and emiserated tens of thousands of more, maybe hundreds of thousands more in the coming months and years. But Donald Trump is desperate to get out of this war. The Joint Chiefs of Staff, apparently, is chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Kane, has privately made it clear to other top Trump advisors that the U.S. needs to find an off-ramp from the war with Iran because military options on the table to escalate the conflict could backfire. And air power alone is unlikely to achieve any of the stated objectives. Kane is looking for an off-ramp, said one of those sources. And if you wanted to place a bet on Kalshi as to who one of those unnamed sources were, I would bet Dan Kain. Meanwhile, the Houthis said they attacked an oil facility on Sunday in southwestern Saudi Arabia. The Houthis are also now emboldened because just to remind Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, there is no back door to the Strait of Hormuz. And we can get you just as easy as you get us. Here is Senator Chris Murphy. who is, as far as I know, the first senator in this conflict, and maybe in most conflicts, to ever come out and be honest about what our prospects are. Donald Trump has lost this war. America is weaker. Iran is stronger. The price to reopen the straight increases by the day. The supposed deal that's on the table right now would pay Iran... $100 million, excuse me, billion dollars a year in order to reopen the strait. That is one third of Iran's entire economy. What a victory for Iran. At the end of this war, they get paid to reopen the strait. They get paid to rebuild their military. They get paid to rebuild their support for proxies in the region. The answer to your question is, yes, I will support a deal to end this war and to reopen the strait. I am prepared to support a bad...

deal to end this war and reopen the straight because the only deal that is available at this point in time is a terrible bad deal but the war needs to end because every day that the war continues, America gets weaker, Iran gets stronger and people here in the United States get screwed as prices go up and up and up. I mean, where's the lie? And frankly, this is coming months too late. Or, I don't mean, I don't mean to put it in that way. This should have come months ago. And it is only because, I don't know if it's only because, but certainly one of the reasons is there's somebody out there, Matt, who doesn't want what? What doesn't somebody want? Hello? Hello? Matt, what don't I want? No side deals. That's right. No side deals. No bad deals. They're going to sound tough in public and then have a side deal that lets Iran get away with everything. That's bull. Crap. This has been a unmitigated disaster on their own terms. And. We're going to be, I mean, essentially, unless you are a weapons manufacturer who couldn't have imagined a better scenario. But nearly all our long-range missiles are depleted, or at least a mid-range, I guess. And on that note, just to remind folks that last year when we had full, like, supplies, we still couldn't make the Houthis stand down. Exactly. I mean, on some level, on several levels, I mean, this could be a good thing that there has been like, and it could be a good thing to be to reckon with the idea that like, oh, maybe we aren't the military power that we thought we were in this era. Could be a nice bubble pop moment if it's interpreted that way. I can't imagine it will be. Iran on Saturday, you understand what's happening here. The Trump administration, it appears, for the most part, is saying, Iran's saying like, it's going to cost you $10 to get out of this. And the U.S. is saying, okay. And then Iran's going like, actually, wait, I'm sorry. Did you say, okay? No, we meant $15. All right. You know what? We forgot about that other thing. It's going to be 25. That's basically what's going on now. I mean, there was a time months ago where it was just like unfreeze our assets. Just stop. Now we're going to be paying them. I love the idea that we actually may be providing more aid to Iran than Israel very shortly. That is going to be, that is, there's a certain poetry associated with that. And if the Israeli society was not so bloodthirsty for Lebanese and Palestinian bodies, they would literally be lynching Benjamin Netanyahu right now.

It's insane. In a moment, we're going to be talking to Cecilia Rycap. She's an associate professor in economics and head of research at the University College London's Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose on her new book, The Rulers, corporate power in the age of AI and the cloud. But first, a couple of words from our sponsors. We've got two. First is Cozy Earth. I have so many Cozy Earth products now that I have purchased that it is starting to get awkward. Like when you make me come look at your socks? I did do that. Glad I came in late. I got a pair of gold maroon socks that are just... It's so weird my relationship with this stuff. But the sheets and the bedding is just spectacular. I am sleeping so much better now. I've found a pillow, incidentally, that I like. But it is so hot. This year, this summer has been one of the most extended hot summers in New York City that I can remember. My air conditioning is subpar at best. But my sheets keep me cool. They are incredibly soft. And... I just love them. I got the duvet cover. I've got the duvet, the comforter, I've got the sheets, the pillowcases obviously. They're fantastic. And I just got some cozy earth bath towel, not bath towels, beach towels. because I am going on a little beach excursion at the end of the month with my kids. Can't picture you on the beach at all. My dad and my sister, it's a family thing and there's a lot of, you know, drama. Let's put it that way. But nevertheless, I've got some very beautiful striped beach towels that are, I haven't tried them out on the sand yet, but they are super... comfortable when I, you know, rub them up against my face. I do the face test. But they're beautiful, too. And, I mean, I've got cozy earth regular towels, cozy earth socks. When I went on my extended work thing, the one thing I brought was my cozy earth sweatshirt because it's so versatile. Cozy Earth stands behind everything. They make a 10-year warranty and 100 nights of hassle-free returns on their betting. Oversized, ultra-plush, and completely built for your best summer days. Head to CozyEarth.com. Use our code Majority Report, all one word, for an exclusive 20% off. That code is Majority Report for an exclusive 20% off. And if you see a post-purch survey, mention you heard about Cozy Earth.

right on this program, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks to Cozy Earth for sponsoring this episode and for some of the best clothes that I own. Jogger, my sweatshirt, whatever. It's great stuff. Also sponsoring the program, when I went, when I was working on that show, I get my hair done every day. Go into hair and makeup. And the hair guy case, that was his name, was like, your hair is good. Didn't have to fill you out like they do all the other actors. No, no. And that was happening with one or two other people, but I'm not going to say who. But he's like, your hair is good. And he's like, what do you like? And, you know, and I guess part of it was also my age. And I was like, Neutrophol, and he goes, I have people who have had the experience with that. Good experiences. Neutrophol is the number one dermatologist recommended hair growth supplement brand used by over 1.5 million people, including myself. I've been using it now for a couple of years. And, you know, it started off where I felt like some thinning on this side. And my hair is thicker. It just is. It's also, you know, very, I don't know, what do you? Like, he complimented it. I don't know. But the bottom line is it works. And Nutrafall has formulas built for men at different life stages. Neutrafal men for guys 18 to 49. And the new Nutrafall men 50 plus, which is the first product of its kind specifically made for men over 50. What are you going to do? Address the key root causes of thinning wherever you are in life. Grow visibly thicker, fuller hair in three to six months. Nutrafall tests its final product, not just the ingredients. They do clinical tests on the final formulation. Start Nutrafall today. Make the hat optional. Visit Nutrafall.com. Enter promo code TMR10. for $10 off your first month's subscription and free shipping. Find out why NutraFall is the best-selling hair growth supplement brand at NutraFol.com, N-U-T-R-A-F-O-L dot com, promo code TMR10. That's a TMR-10.com promo code TMR-10. Quick break. And we'll be talking to Celia Rycap, Associate Professor in Economics on her book, The Ruler. The rulers, corporate power in the age of AI in the cloud.

We are back. Sam Cedar on the Majority Report. Emma Vigland out today. Want to welcome to the program, Cecilia Recap, Associate Professor in Economics and Head of Research at University College, London's Institute for Innovation in Public Purpose, author of The Rulers, Corporate Power in the Age of AI and the Cloud. Cecilia, welcome to the program. Hi, and thanks for humming me, Sam. How are you? I am well, and although I'm a little bit nervous about a lot of different things, I'll be honest with you, and this is one more of those. Let's... Let's start with, I want to try and get as sort of rudimentary as possible because your focus is on corporate power, but particularly in the context of this era that we're living in, in a new technological era. before i i guess we i want to start with you know what what is the cloud but but before we get to that just juxtapose the eras that we're in as opposed to where we were and and uh and then we could talk about how corporate power has a as a different uh i guess outsized power because of the nature of the technology Well, to some extent, yes, but also it's not just about the nature of the technology. And you nail it there because AI and digital technologies more broadly, which is where the cloud is also connected, are used for everything. We are here, like I'm sitting in Argentina. You're in the U.S. We are connected. We are recording this and talking live, actually. And this is because of a lot of digital technologies, including cloud technologies, that enable not only to store our data process. models, but also to connect all the tiny pieces of software that otherwise would be disconnected from each other, not making the products and solutions that we are used to be consuming if you want seamlessly from our phones or computers and so on. So definitely the fact that everyone everywhere is using more and more digital technologies has given an extraordinary power to those that offer. the supermarket of digital technologies. So imagine, like, we don't have the time and we don't have the skills to be going all around the place, to try to get all the tiny underlying and invisible pieces of software, hardware, data, but then make all these products that we are consuming constantly from our screens. And all this has been, like, it has taken place because there is one supermarket of all the digital technologies that is the cloud. And because AI models are...

produce with a lot of these tiny pieces, but also require a lot of processing power, a lot of data. They require, therefore, a lot of infrastructure that is also offered as a service on the cloud. So indeed, part of, if you ask me, the nature of corporate power today, it is connected to the type of technologies that the leading corporations are controlling and controlling what I would describe beyond ownership. And this is the second part. If we compare, like, the U.S. has been witnessing different forms of corporate power and even corporate power linked to tech for many, many decades. Think of IBM, the old IBM. Think of AT&T. It's not a completely new phenomenon. And it's not completely new that these tech giants are around because we've been seeing their power in social media, e-commerce and other platforms for already decades. So. what is new, what is different, what has been changing. And I think that is this capacity to control other organizations that they don't formally own, but still manipulate as if they were to some extent their puppets. And AI has given us plenty of obvious examples here. Think of the relationship between Open AI and Microsoft. How Microsoft got privileged knowledge from OpenAI was capable of getting access to the models and also steer the trajectory of the technology way before Open AI ended up releasing the interface that is CHAPD. And other similar companies like Anthropic or even the French one, Mistral, they all depend as well on... corporate venture capital, so money that comes from the large tech companies, the cloud giants in particular, Amazon, Microsoft Google. And these companies don't acquire the startups. They just leave them out there, competing against each other, focusing on their specific segment, when the only ones that see the whole picture are the cloud giants. So this has also changed from the way in which corporate power operated before. And just to tease out, just a little bit more about this for people that aren't familiar. When we talk about all these operations in the cloud, I mean, I think a lot of people, their perspective on the cloud is, oh, that's where I store stuff. I store it on, you know, my Google hard drive or, you know, my. remote my Google Cloud Drive or my Dropbox or my Apple, you know, ICloud. But. It's not just for storage. It is where all of this software operates that, and it needs to operate in the cloud, as it were, servers that are remote because it has to interface with a bunch of other softwares to end up delivering us a bunch of products.

Exactly. Remember for the older people that are watching the show, they may remember that in the past, we used to have, like, for example, a CD with the Microsoft Office, and we would install it. And then the new version would come with, would mean a new CD. All that meant that the software, although it was formally separated from the hardware, because it came with on the CD, it was still connected to the hardword locally. in our own computers. Today, that doesn't happen with not a single application. And this is also why we started using this term apps, which for someone that is not familiar with the industry, we say, why do we call them apps now? And it's because they are all running on the distance. They are all running online on the cloud, which... If someone has had the privilege, for instance, to fly from one place to another and was working and thought, okay, I'm going to continue working and try to open some files. It may have happened to them that they couldn't open the files that in principle they should have in their own computer because they were stored on the cloud and the cloud was not connected to the internet. Or if you have a blackout but you still have battery in your computer, the same. And this is precisely a way in which the companies can always get more access to our data. So it's not just the data that they get on social media. Microsoft knows our telemetry data, which means that if I'm opening more Word files, if I'm creating files that are longer, if I'm using this or that function within the Word file, all this will be providing Microsoft with information about what I'm doing. What happens is also that, as I was saying before, the cloud is a supermarket of digital technologies. And in every supermarket, think of Walmart. You have Walmart products, but you also have products that are not produced by Walmart, but by third parties. The same happens on the cloud. So you have a lot of development companies that create a sort of idea of competition because you have many, many companies that are developing small things, some of the famous ones like Palantir. that is very famous these days, in particular in the U.S., because it's connections to the government, to ICE, and so on. Palantir doesn't have its own cloud. It operates through Amazon, Microsoft, and Google Clouds. And something that happened, for instance, to the Brazilian government, to give you one example of how dramatic this can be, is that the Brazilian government found out that it was using Palantir for schools. without knowing it, because Palantir software was offered as a service on Amazon Web Services, which is the marketplace that the government was using, and someone directly went to that marketplace and said, okay, these services available, I'm going to start using it. So once you start consuming all these services from multiple organizations, not only the cloud giants, but everything, again, consumed through the cloud, Unlike the supermarket where if I'm, I don't know, drinking water now, this water was manufactured in one place, then it was sold at a supermarket, and then I'm drinking it here at home. This doesn't happen in the cloud. It's like everything stays inside the cloud. Everything is produced inside the cloud. It's exchange inside the cloud and is consumed inside the cloud, which gives this extraordinary panoptican power to Amazon, Microsoft, and Google to oversee.

the global economy, not because they are sneaking into our data necessarily, unless we give them permission that it's illegal to do it, but they can see the underlying data, which is called the metadata, which is the data of what we are consuming and what we are doing. And when I say we, it's not just individuals, but also other companies, other organizations, and even governments. So they know who their clients are and they know what they are consuming from where and to what extent. So they are planners. They do corporate planning. We think that we market economy, but we don't. I want to get to that because on some level, we are, you know, we look at China and they have a command control economy. And we're like, we don't have that, but we do. It's just that we don't really have. control over the command uh in the way that um at least the chinese government does um but let's let's talk about the three uh companies because i think before i picked up the book i would have guessed like meta and apple would have been included in these because there's such bea myths but it's only like google amazon and microsoft that have this have the the cloud, as it were. Is that right? Exactly. And this is because the other companies have chosen another strategy. So meta, instead of entering the cloud as a business itself, Meta builds data centers for its own consumption. And it has been doing this since before the AI hype in the same way as Amazon, Microsoft Google, but for its private consumption. So Meta has its own private cloud. It doesn't offer the cloud as this marketplace, as this platform of platforms. And you may have thought of other companies, like Netflix, for instance. Netflix doesn't even own the infrastructure. It has decided over a decade ago that it was going to operate fully on the cloud. And it chose Amazon Web Services, which is particularly relevant because Amazon Web Services is the same company that operates a rival business. Amazon Prime, and nonetheless, Netflix operates fully inside Amazon Web Services. And Apple, offers cloud for its individual users but doesn't have a business to business or business to other organization at cloud, which is particularly relevant because on top of the individuals storing our photos and so on the cloud, what matters the most is how other organizations, including governments, including hospitals, schools, every type of organization, including the defense industry, ends up migrating and entering the cloud. And once you are inside, imagine you have a sheet of paper and you are creating code there, like a very, very silly example, but for lay people that have never heard of this before. Instead of developing the whole algorithm yourself with your own code,

you will start calling services. And the services will be tiny black boxes. You know what they do, but you don't know the code of how all that is done. And you start calling the different black boxes. And imagine tomorrow you want to leave the cloud because you realize it's very expensive or for security reasons or whatever reason. you will need to start all over again because you have all these black boxes. You cannot simply download and start operating your computer. So imagine how serious this dependence is for governments, for companies, to the point that even big companies are concerned about their dependence on Amazon, Microsoft, and Google Cloud. Okay. And so just to illustrate this a couple of different ways, I can say, like, you know, with our program. Here, not only are we using a technology to bring you into the show. We also have, we use something called Fans.fm, which Kyle, the godfather of the program, developed. But he is using services from two or three different other branded technologies that come together. Our audience doesn't see those technologies when people call in or when they sign up for a membership. They don't see those technologies. All of it. lives on Amazon servers. Imagine, for example, you may remember that there were some blackouts of data centers. Like last year, it was quite common. What happened afterwards? You had like very random things that were not working. From government websites, I remember the HMRC, which is the tax website of the UK where I live, but also at the same time, some airports were not working in hospitals. All these are completely unrelated organizations, businesses, websites in principle. But they were all, they went all black because they were all depending on the same piece of infrastructure. That is not, again, it's not just the data center. And I emphasize this because often governments around the world have. understood that the data centers matter. That is not just about data and algorithms. But it is more than that, again, because the data centers are not simply used for processing information or for storing information, but enable the whole economic space ultimately where every digital technology is developed, is consumed, is exchange. So this makes the companies so, so powerful. The fact that if you think of any industry, think of drug development, One could say, okay, we also have the big pharma companies. They are very powerful, yes, but they can exercise their power up to a limited degree to those that depend on the drugs that they are developing. And this doesn't affect, for instance, a company like Google or Amazon, Microsoft. However,

Google, Amazon, Microsoft provide key technology through their clouds to big pharma companies for drug development, which is becoming more and more data-driven and using AI for all the processes of conducting the clinical trials. And this is one example. If we move to Coca-Cola or Nestle, PepsiCo, these companies that build brands, brands are more are more built with data. I remember an interview for the book that I did with someone from L'Oreal, and this person at one point said, well, now the company is all about data, not so many luxury stories in the sense like we are trying to create less narrative and use more data-driven insights. All that. In order to have the data-driven insights, you need technology to make sense of your data. And this is what the companies get through the cloud. And this is why they become so dependent because the key secret of the business of even other leading corporations now also depends on data processed with digital technologies. Okay. So there is a dependence and a limited... I mean, it's, it's, you mentioned Walmart. There's almost a, there's a monopsony quality to this because there's only so many places where you can get these cloud services. And, um, and so they can dictate the terms in which you engage with them. Uh, and that's always hanging over their head. And in terms of the Netflix example, I would imagine. Amazon gets insights as to maybe not incredibly granular, but in terms of like, Where are areas that deliver more movies regionally? What time of day? What type of, you know, how long do customers engage in this? This is all data that you don't know what movie they're watching, but you're getting broad strokes, which I imagine Amazon then uses when they want to compete with them. more often than not maybe entering a different country or a different region or pricing or anticipating. Yeah, like all that, but also because Netflix is a very relevant client, it has very specific technology requests and anticipates technology requests that then Amazon can use for its own business. And here you don't need to have the same, exactly same business. Because when you start developing for these big companies and these big companies have sort of bespoke needs and pay tons of money to get delivered,

then you can reuse the same lines of code and sell that to countless of other clients. So this is another important part of this story. And like a landowner that can only rent the land to one other organization at a time, when you capture knowledge, when you capture, in this case, algorithms, data, you can resell the use of that without access. but the use of that without access again and again and again to countless clients. So the rents that you capture, the intellectual rents are exponential. And also, At the same time, the power that you get. You have power also over other governments. You have power also over your own government. And we were talking before about China, always conceived more as a planned economy. And the U.S., the rest of the world or the Western world, seen as more a market economy. And I was saying... What they are doing is planning beyond ownership. And I would describe it as authoritarian planning in the same way as the Chinese government may, for example, be doing authoritarian planning. Why? Because, first of all, nobody elected these companies to have this massive access to our ways of living. our ways of producing, our ways of consuming. At the same time, these companies use this knowledge to perpetrate themselves in a position of power and to develop technologies that are not delivering to the majorities. Because imagine we had these like organizations with extraordinary power. But the result would be that we all live a better life and we have more time for creative thinking and more time for entertainment and enjoying life. like sufficient means to also live until we retire and so on. But no, we were talking at the beginning about the context in which we live in. We live in a context in the midst of an ecological crisis that this technology has worsened. We live also in the midst of a cost of living crisis with rising inequalities. And these are the effects of having a handful of corporations controlling global knowledge and dictating how that knowledge moves forward. Let's talk about how that translates, like the relationship between, because it's pretty clear if they control all of this information, all of this data, they use it in ways that we can't really even imagine. There, we are both the, I mean, we are renting space on the, the cloud. But we are also sort of like becoming a product in many respects of the cloud. I think people understand that dynamic. And I think people understand, at least conceptually speaking, you've got three major players. They control everything, whether, you know, all our, you know, government functions are on Amazon servers and whatnot. And all of that information is being gleaned from there, that data.

It's all proprietary to them. We don't have the ability to come on there and say, we might be able to say you can't get the specifics data, but you can get a sense of how big column A is and column B is. You don't know what's necessarily in there, but you have broad stroke understanding. How does that turn into? um aside from obviously the huge amount of power that they have politically because of the concentration of wealth associated with us have we gotten to the point where they're manipulating things like like it seems to me like amazon itself like the literally the amazon uh that we go to at amazon dot com provides a at least some insight conceptually to what they have the ability to do. So like if they see that, hey, this brand toothpaste is selling a lot, we're going to come out with our own Amazon version of that. We're going to, when you search for toothpaste, spearmint toothpaste, we're going to put the Amazon one up top and we're going to push the other one down. It's not just that. Yes, that happens, of course, and happens all the time. But they have that capacity to dictate what every organization is offering on the cloud and how. So they outsource the risk. So it's not just cornering competition, copying what others are doing when it's successful. It's also outsourcing the risk to other players. And they do. so also in the knowledge space, when they are seen as the most innovative of all the world because they are driving the AI hype and so on. Actually, these companies are only a tiny part of the network of factors that is behind the production of frontier technology. We have universities, public research organizations, a startup companies, all these organizations invests money. In the public space, a lot of public money invested. And then those that reap the benefits and direct the technology are the company. So the risks are outsource. And this is why if you can outsource the risk and still insource the benefits, why would you terminate the competition? It's better, and especially to escape from the antitrust watchdogs, to create the... sort of illusion of competition with many actors when in fact they operate as a stable core surrounded by a periphery of many other actors. So you see tech and you see vibrant, the startups popping up all around the place. And the victim companies promote the startups themselves. They have accelerators. They put venture capital money. They invest in seed money all the time. And they also create a lot of incentives for these companies to migrate very soon to the cloud.

so that they can control them beyond ownership. So it's not only, and this is a way of exercising power that is even more invisible than the ones that we are used to, which is the concentration, elimination of the rival, rising the prices. They may keep the price low because they are extracting value from those that are further down. And those that are further down will try to compensate, compensate at least partially by squeezing more value from the workers that they are either directly hiring or hiring. in an informal precarious way. And this is the same story that we see in all the industries as I was talking before about the big pharma companies, about the Coca-Cola and Esclay and so on. What happens? For these giants, becoming dependent on Amazon, Microsoft, and Google Clouds, is a sort of way to get the key ingredients for planning their own value chains, for controlling other workers. Imagine. If you have a global value chain like Coca-Cola or like Toyota or whatever company, big leading corporation multinational one, they need to control what thousands of different companies are doing, how they are doing it. They need to make them deliver at the exact time the number of items of tiny parts that then will be all assembled to create the product. How do you manage a supply chain with so many actors? With information systems. with technology. So you need digital technology. Your IKEA, you have a franchising model, you have franchisees, how do you make sure that the franchisees are operating in the way you want through your systems, through your digital technologies, that are even on the tablet of every employee that you don't hire, that is hired by your franchisees, but you can still dictate how they are working. So it is an invisible way to plan portions of the global economy according to what gives them not only more benefits, but also reassures their control. And as they control more and more spaces indirectly through these complicit actors that are also leading corporations themselves in their industries, the majority of the workers will be worse and worse. And with AI, yes. Well, so in that example of IKEA, all right, they have franchises. They need information systems that will tell them they are using, they are integrating these information systems via the cloud. The operator of that cloud gleans data from this. They also have them like the, there's no other place to go. Like, what do they do with that power, the operator of the cloud, specifically on, I mean, I understand how like, you know, IKEA's information systems ultimately end up squeezing the workers because that's where they. That's the easiest place for them in their mind to get their value, increase their shares, the value of their shares. And the Amazon Web Services, dudes, what they will do is they will be creating more in the same way that Amazon does with final consumers. They give you recommendations all the time. So the tech people from IKEA will always be tempted to improve and run differently the cloud of IKEA.

inside AWS, for instance, or inside Google, by consuming more and more of these services. One important thing that I didn't mention is that on the cloud, we are not purchasing the service as a one-time payment, and then we can use it as much as we want. We pay as we go. This system pay as you go means that if you're consuming more and more and more, then you pay more and more and more. Maybe you remember there was this case of someone that, a company that was using a lot of tokens from Anthropic is the same way of paying. When you pay per token and you keep using the tokens nonstop, then you see the bill and you realize that you're broken. So this is a way in which the companies squeeze also more from those that are their direct clients. And then they use all this. through the narratives of digital technologies as the best way to manage an economy as the ways in which countries will blossom, you will get economic growth, and so on, to convince governments that they shouldn't regulate them. through the misuses of AI, that they shouldn't levy taxes against them, that they should allow them to build data centers wherever they want because the data centers are the key for the AI and digital economy without saying that they're also fueling the ecological crisis, that they don't generate jobs, that they... end up increasing the electricity and the water bill of the people living around the areas. So it's a way in which they redistribute with all this data, with all this information. They basically redistribute how capitalism operates. We again seem to think that we are all exchanging in markets and everything is some sort of competitive market economy, but ultimately it's a way in which these companies accumulate more knowledge. and then can dictate policies as well. So dependence is translated from the economic space, from the technological space to the political realm. For the majorities of the governments in the world, they don't have leeway when it comes to Amazon, Microsoft Google, dictating. what they should be doing. I was last week in Brazil. Brazil is a country that has been doing a lot to try to keep the companies at bay. Nonetheless, the Brazilian government in the last four or five years has signed 124 agreements for AI and cloud services coming from Amazon, Microsoft, Google. Huawei, a Chinese company that sometimes is using Latin America and other places as a sort of alternative, but that ends up operating in the same way. And then when the governments are trying to build their own alternatives separately, they can't because they depend. In the case of the U.S. government, of course the U.S. government has more leeway because the companies, even if they're multinational, they are ultimately American companies.

But the way in which these companies have also become indispensable, in particular for the military complex, has also given them extraordinary power inside the different administrations with an exponential power today with Trump's administration. The response from Trump, the way I see it, is that Trump is trying to, in a way balance or tilt the scale a bit in favor of... himself and as the ultimate and most powerful actor in the world, as he sees it, by behaving like the companies. For instance, Trump has purchased, well, the U.S. government, because of Trump's decision, they purchased 10% equity in INTO. one of these big companies that is not at the core, core, but is still needed, an ally of the cloud giants. It has also invested equity in lithium extraction companies, rare earth materials extraction companies. So it is trying to have some sort of bargaining power in the internal negotiation with the large cloud giants in the exact parts of the value chain where these companies may see a bit of a weakness. And in the case of American companies, because of also all the materials and so one needed for the data centers, the strategic investments of the Trump administration are, I think, that are aimed at saying, hey, let's balance this ruling alliance that we have at this moment. So to depend less on the companies or have more of internal bargaining power. All right, I want to get to that in just with just to be clear conceptually on where we are. And then I want to talk a little bit about what you say in terms of solutions. We have a situation where these three BMUs have essentially addicted businesses to their services. And it's constructed that way. And because of the nature of their strength, really. I mean, it's just that they have cornered the market. We have allowed antitrust to just sort of melt away in this arena. So they have a monopsony, as it were, more or less, in terms of providing these services.

We as a society are unable to restrict their business decisions in any fashion, ones which inevitably end up causing environmental. antitrust, perhaps ultimately consumer costs, maybe a limitation of options as to what products are available because they don't want anything that's going to be competitive to any of their side businesses. All of those things are detrimental impacts on society. And God knows where that goes. I mean, we see energy companies near Lake Tahoe. We're no longer providing you energy anymore because we're going to do this all for an AI data center. And just the incredible wealth that they're accumulating also has its own ability to project power. So what's the answer for this? And is it just? A U.S. answer through our own antitrust or, you know, how much do we rely on Europeans? Other countries, what? So basically, I think that even the scenario is even worse, because since a few companies decide the present and future of the key technologies that we are all consuming today, the technologies that we are getting, are not the technologies that the majority needs. Again, AI for automatic weaponry, algorithms that make people addictive and result in mental health issues in social media. control technologies, algorithms that are used inside the workplace, to control the workers, to dictate even more at a customized, tailor-made way, how you're working, what you're doing. All this, generative AI is a technology that undermines people's capacity to think. There are even academic papers from people working for Microsoft that recognize this, that more trust on generative AI results in less capacity to think critically. So we are living in the midst of so many crises with so many problems to solve. and the technologies that are being developed hamper people's capacity to think. Really, this is dramatic. So what can we do? And we need to be, I think, an exercise that we do at every level. So we need to think of solutions at the local level, at the union level. We need to think of solutions at the city level. We need to think of solutions at the country level. And it's not the same what a government like the U.S. government.

could do than one smaller from the historical peripheries, but we also need international collaboration and solidarity. The idea of an AI race is part of the narratives that these companies craft to make us all fight against each other, to open more space for them, to build more data centers, to expand more their power instead of thinking collectively that knowledge, if we share knowledge, is the only thing that when it's produced, if you share it, it expands. So it's not only that we can share it without reducing our satisfaction. It's also that actually when we collaborate, when we work together, when we share knowledge, we expand knowledge. I'm a scholar. I'm working all the time on the basis of other people's work, discussing with others. These dialogues are what make us move forward. But we need to democratize the dialogue. We need to produce technology that serves people, that serves the majorities. So it's not enough we're trying to break up this power also because there is a tendency to concentration. Why do we go? to supermarkets. It would be amazing to go to each local store and buy the best from the best, but also they are very convenient. So it's very hard in some cases. There are certain technologies, there are certain ways of organizing markets that have a tendency to concentration. One thing that in economics is called natural monopolies. And the solution there will never come from competition. We can push and push, but there are so many services that even if we have three companies, it's impossible to move from one cloud to the other. because you need to start all over again. Everything, as someone from Amazon Web Services, Amazon's Cloud told me, they even work to build stickiness, to make it harder for you to live. So although I do think that there is an effort to be made from antitrust authorities, I also think that we need to build public democratic spaces where we can collectively decide what technology we want, what technology we don't want, what data should be retrieved, and what data shouldn't be retrieved. And we also need to do democratic planning to see... how many data centers the planet can cope with, how to distribute them in the way that is less harmful, and who should operate them in the way that enables access to the technology and to decision-making about the technology, and not only enable the use of the technology. These companies are even manipulating, you were talking about manipulation, and indeed they manipulate how we think. And they do so to the extent that it makes us think that democracy is having the possibility to use the technology. For everyone to use technology, that is democratizing technology. No.

democratizing technology is creating the institutions that can help us democratically decide what technology we want, knowing everyone how it operates, its trade-offs, and then decide democratically. And this today is decided only by a few giants. So the key for me here is to start creating this spaces. And they can start from unions, workers, deciding what technology they will authorize in the workplace, what technology they want and fight against that. with the data that will be retrieved from them to international arenas where we can collectively decide what are the key priorities for the joint efforts that public scientists should be working on today. So does that, is that excluding a governmental intervention at the highest level? In other words, should we be nationalizing these cloud services? Well, I mean, it would be great, but the problem that we have there is that only you, only the Americans could nationalize them because there are only three companies and these companies are American. And we are dealing with the impacts of technology all over the world. And we are all contributing with knowledge. We're all contributing with data. So Bernie Sanders, for instance, has this idea of, okay, let's redistribute the gains. Let's create a sovereign AI wealth fund. This is incomplete, and I've been writing about this, because this is incomplete at multiple levels. First of all, it's incomplete because it's not only about redistributing the gains, but also the decisions in terms of what technology we get and why we are prioritizing this technology instead of other solutions. But also it would be incomplete because the sovereign wealth fund would only be for Americans, American citizens. And actually, these companies operate globally and capture knowledge, produce at public institutions globally, capture data and our culture. co-produced globally. So we really, we have, for the first time in history, I think that we have an urgent need to build global public goods. If you want to call it, nationalize the companies. Well, it could be, but instead of nationalize, how do we create compute and cloud as a global public good? Again, this sounds very, very far from where we are. And a lot of my efforts in the policy space have been also to try to go with that long-term vision, think in terms of what can be done today. For instance, think about how generative AI shouldn't be adopted at schools. This should be forbidden. strong regulations there. Governments are now regulating social media for minors. And they are not paying attention to the fact that Google is offering for free. It's suite of technology to schools. Why? They want to create addicted consumers from very early ages. And these kids will never learn to think by themselves. So I think that there are many things that we can start doing at local level, at international level. and that it's so urgent that I wouldn't dare say, no, if a country was thinking about taxing and I don't mention taxes at this interview, that does that mean that taxing is not a solution? Not at all. I think we need to try to explore as many solutions as possible because definitely we are very, very far from getting any meaningful transformation of how today a handful of companies have managed to dictate the present and the future of how knowledge is produced.

I mean, what I'm hearing is most of the responses, at least in the short term, have to be way downstream of where the problem lies. It's really more like the problems, you know, in the cloud, but what's coming out of the cloud are stuff that we have to protect ourselves from. Is there any initiative that you have seen, perhaps in the states or internationally, where there is an attempt to address the structural problem? So Brazil has tried, and I was last week, and the minister of is like management, innovation and so on, when she was giving her speech, she was automatically saying, and I know, Cecilia, that you will say that this is not enough. Because indeed, what they were trying to do is to try to create some sort of like safety net that protected them at least part of their data from. But ultimately, they were still storing everything on AWS with services from AWS. I think it's very, very hard because the governments have already signed so many procurement contracts with these companies. So it's really, really hard to work, especially at the national level, to completely decouple from the companies. I think this is why they need to start small. And a way to start decoupling can be to pick one sector, one very... key sector in our societies. Education is an example. Healthcare can be another example. And start from decoupling. from the cloud, separating everything in that sector. That doesn't mean that the rest of the state will not depend on these enclosed spaces. But it does mean that you will be creating a sort of prototype ecosystem that operates differently and that can also be governed not simply by the experts. This is another problem in this story, which is that political decisions about the transformation of our lives. are made by computer scientists. And all good, they can, they, I'm sure they are extremely clever and very good at coding, but they're making political decisions. It's not about their expertise, has nothing to do with democratizing the decision making about how we are living. So I think it's also about understanding that. And if we start this small, by no means I think it's a failure. Because where we are and doing nothing is a failure. So we start from where we can, in the same way that the community is organizing against data centers, they know that it can be a Wakamoli thing. They know that it may not be enough. But it's a way to raise awareness. It's a way to understand and take more stock of our present at a time when they are telling us how social thinking to the algorithms.

Cecilia Rieke, Associate Professor of Economics and Head Research at University, College, London Institute for Innovation in Public Purpose. The book is The Ruler's Corporate Power in the Age of AI and the Cloud. We'll put a link to that at majority.fm and in the podcast and YouTube description. Thanks so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. Thanks to you, Sammy. It was a pleasure talking to you. You too. Okay, folks, that's it for the first half of the program. I realized halfway through the interview, I forgot to switch my glasses. These are the ones that transition. So I look, right, right? Don't they look a little bit like they're turning dark? Very, very slightly. Very slightly. I don't even see it. Well, all right. And maybe I won't switch at the break. I need to flash a flashlight at him. Watch them change. Folks, it's your support that makes this show possible. If you want to become a member and help the show survive and thrive, you can do so by going to join the majority report.com. When you do, you only get the free show free of commercials. We also get the fun half. Join the majority report.com. We are able to do what we do because of people just like you. We'll listen to the program. I mean, is there any other program that does as much content as we do? Well, I think some people stream for longer, but I don't, I think it's a lot of reaction content. Oh, right, right, right, right. That's true. Of course. Twitch streamers, they'll go on for six or seven hours. Right. But as far as, like, producing a show. But not really doing a show per se. Yeah. With the beginning, middle and end. Yeah, I would say for shows that only have like one Cory Booker who has to handle all of this. I would say, yeah, it's a lot. Probably the most. Probably the most content. Probably the hardest working man in the business, Brian. They call me the James Brown of political content.

Incidentally, oh, upstairs comma is Brian single asking for a friend. Somebody's, that's all that Brian talking about the booking is just a huge thirst trap. You know, you should know, however, though, that if you're a Red Sox fan, Brian's the reason why the Red Sox halted their incredible run. Derailed the whole season. He went up and visited Fenway Park. Brought the vibe down. Brought the vibe down. So. Should have knocked down wood. They have not won a World Series since I signed the Green Monster in 2019. Is that right? Yep. Wait, you signed the Green Monster? How did you manage to do that? I had a little, I had a nice little VIP pass. Are you confessing to a crime right now? No, you're allowed to say. Everybody signed it. I signed right next to Tom Petty. And I wrote, Jeter still sucks. He was already retired. Nice. Also, just coffee dot co-op. Speaking in Wisconsin, they're out of Madison, Wisconsin. They're a co-op. They were set up to help their producers and farmers in Chiapas. And then they expanded to West Africa. And they got single origin coffee. They got blends. They got the majority report blend. Regardless of what you get there, if you use the coupon code majority, get 10% off. Just Coffee.coop. Matt, what's happening in the Matt Leckian Media Universe? Yeah, over on Left Reckoning for Patrons, I did a audit of the Steve Keene debate, I guess, with Patrick Bet David. Keene was very, very patient with a scam artist. The idea of... A, you know, someone like that going on with someone like that is just... And giving him 90 minutes of his time. We are. I'll actually pull a clip from that because we should maybe if we talk about vaccines. It's an insane conversation, but I looked at it in depth. And so that's for patreon.com. So left reckoning patrons tomorrow talking about China and central planning and political economy with Yostin Hauga, who's been on this program before. He's a... He's great. I follow him on Twitter now, and his stuff is... Yeah, he's excellent. He's really on this beat of the productive capacity and how we're asleep at the wheel talking about, I don't know, girls basketball or something. When I need all new teeth, you know, which apparently happens when you start to get in my age, you need to like replace all your teeth or something like that. And you realize, like, this is like, this is like a down payment on a house. Yeah. For your teeth. I'm going to China. I mean, it's crazy. I remember. I've seen, like, like, videos of people going to China for, like, dental stuff. Oh, Turkey in Mexico. Turkey is the famous one for baldness. The turkey also teeth. Really? Yeah. I mean.

Why not roll it into one? You get to take a trip and get a cheap teeth thing. It's crazy the degree to which they've... I remember I took golf lessons in high school at once. It didn't take. I only went once. It wasn't for me. But the golf instructor, I'll never forget he's like... He had these nice, like, Callaway or something golf clothes, but he's like, whenever I buy... I buy my golf clubs when I go to China, because you can get them way cheaper there, and they're just as good as the really expensive ones you can get here. And that's basically repeated itself with cars, with running shoes, and all sorts of other products now. But we want to point and laugh at Cuba, without realizing what's happening to our economy and how we're losing competitiveness. It's a crap show right now, folks. Brian and I were just talking before the show. Like, people don't even fully get, and it's very hard to report on this stuff. Brian's got friends who worked for the IRS and now working for the park service. Yeah. And they were telling them all of the plaques. plaques about like the underground railroad that were taken down in boston yeah there was a vietnam veterans against the war quote they took down there was uh there was like a quote about um a plea somebody i can't remember who it was in the 1800s who was begging the state to not like just to treat the irish immigrants like humans they took that down uh they took down a harriet tubman quote They took down, yeah, a bunch of abolitionist stuff. Wait, who's doing all these takings? The doge. It was all with the National Park Services. It was all at Bunker Hill, all the stuff they took down. The guy who, the program started by the guy who did the Hitler salute at the president's inauguration, that doge? Yeah. Right? Okay. Okay. Well, folks, let's go to the fun half. We get all the doom and gloom out in the first half. Go to the fun half and have some fun.

See you in the fun half. Three months from now, six months from now, nine months from now. And I don't think it's going to be the same as it looks like in six months from now. And I don't know if it's necessarily going to be better six months from now than it is three months from now. But I think around 18 months out, we're going to look back and go like, wow. What? What is that going on? It's nuts. Wait a second. Hold on for, hold on for a second. The majority report. Emma, welcome to the program. Hey. Fun hat. Matt grew. Fun hack. What is up, everyone? Fun hack. No, McKean. You did it. Fun hack. Let's go Brandon. Let's go Brandon. Bradley, you want to say hello? Sorry to disappointment. Everyone, I'm just a random guy. It's all the boys today. Fundamentally false. No, I'm sorry. Women's... Stop talking for a second. Let me finish. Where is this coming from, dude? But dude, you want to smoke this? Seven and eight? Yes. Is it me? Is it me? It is you.

I think it is you. Who is you? No sound. Every single freaking day. What's on your mind? We can discuss free markets and we can discuss capitalism. I'm going to guess no one. Libertarians. They're so stupid though. Common sense says, of course. Gobbled e-gook. We fucking know. So what's 79 plus 21? Challenge met. I'm positively quivering. I believe 96, I want to say. 857. 210. 35. 301. One half. Three-eighths. 9-11 for instance. $3,400. $1,900. $6.5,4, $3 trillion sold. It's a zero-sum game. Actually, you're making a think less. But let me say this. Poop. You can call it satire. Sam goes to satire. On top of it all? Yeah. My favorite part about you is just like every day, all day, like everything you do. Without a doubt. Hey, buddy, we've seen you. All right, folks, folks, folks. It's just the week being weeded out, obviously. Yeah, sundown guns out. I don't know. But you should know. People just don't like to entertain ideas anymore. I have a question. Who cares? Our chat is enabled, folks. I love it. I do love that. Look, got to jump. I got to be quick. I get a jump. I'm losing it, bro. Two o'clock, we're already late, and the guy's being a dick. So screw him. Sent to a gulaw? Outrage. Like, what is wrong with you? Love you. Bye. Love you. Bye-bye.