“Privacy Is Power:” How to Exist in a World of Tech “Broligarchs”

HARI SREENIVASAN: Christiane, thanks. Carole Cadwalladr, thanks so much for joining us. Most of our audience might remember that you are a Pulitzer Award-winning journalist who worked at The Guardian for decades, and now you’ve launched a Substack which is called “How to Survive the Broligarchy.” in your column you write, “the opaque and unaccountable Silicon Valley companies that facilitated both Brexit and Trump are now key players in an accelerating global access of autocracy. I believe this is a new form and type of power that I’m committed to keep on exposing.” So what is the broligarchy?

CAROLE CADWALLADR: it’s the idea that we have this new class of oligarchs who’ve come out of Silicon Valley, and as we know, they’re tech bros. So it’s the idea of a tech bro oligarchy. And an oligarchy, you know, we know it in the Russian sense in that it’s a group of businessmen who are able to make vast fortunes as long as they support Putin, as long as they support, they, they, they, they support – they, they don’t dissent from the, you know, the aims of the Russian government. And we can see that exact same relationship now in the USA, in that the tech companies very clearly are supporting and standing behind Trump, literally at the inauguration. And they are tech bros, hence tech bro – broligarchy. Yeah. And, and the reason I say it’s a kind of power that the world has never seen before is that these aren’t just vast corporates making, you know, some type of machines or cars or whatever. These are men who own global communication platforms. And those global communication platforms are now allied to the US government, which we can see quite clearly is acting in an authoritarian way and is making alliances with these autocracies around the world. And so, it’s a, for me, it is this very, very dangerous, centralized, far reaching and extensive type of power that at the big level and also at this, at the micro level in our own personal lives.

SREENIVASAN: This past April, you did another TED Talk but, but you compared what’s happened in Russia to what’s happening now in the United States. You said, quote, “The Russian and American presidents are now speaking the same words. They’re telling the same lies. We are watching the collapse of the international order in real time, and this is just the start.” So why do you call this a digital coup?

CADWALLADR: I think the thing which really triggered my sense of alarm was the first weekend that Trump came into office and DOGE, that first weekend deliberately at the weekend, took access of the US Treasury. So they gained access to the building, and then they gained access to the databases. And that I felt, you know, it was just such a clue to what is going on, which is, you, you know, I say this with Silicon Valley, it is always about the data. Like that is, it’s, it’s the crack cocaine. They can’t get enough of it. They’re addicted to it. They know that that is where power and control lies. And what we have seen DOGE do through this period is get access to all these different government departments. They’ve got access to all these different databases.  And now we know from reporting in the New York Times that Palantir, which is this data analytics company that this guy Peter Thiel owns, is now being mandated to use its software to bring all these databases together. And Palantir, by the way, have denied this, but it’s this, you know, as it was set out in the New York Times reporting, it’s this idea of creating a giant database of all American citizens. That database can also be combined with commercial data, with social media data. And that is, that’s a surveillance state. That’s what it is. That’s what China has. And it is clearly used in China to profile, to targets, to sur, to surveil, and to suppress descent. And I think people should be really, really worried about what this means to them as a country, but also it’s an individual level.

SREENIVASAN: I can see that one of the justifications for trying to aggregate this data together is that people are gonna say, you know what? You’re right. We have so many departments and so many little information silos, and I have this bits of information about whether or not their their taxes are filed on time. I have this bit of information on whether or not getting Medicaid, Medicare, et cetera. What’s the harm in putting that stuff together under one roof? Doesn’t it make government more efficient?

CADWALLADR: And that’s exactly – so Trump actually signed an executive order. He talked about it was eliminating fraud, waste, and abuse through getting, I think, eliminating information silos, he said. And it’s exactly that idea. And, this is always the language which is used, it’s gonna make life better, it’s gonna make it more efficient, it’s gonna be easier. And of course, there are some instances when that is true. And if data is collected in an ethical, transparent way, which protects the privacy of the individual users, that can be the case. But this, this is not that. 

There are no protections in there, there are no ethical guidelines that we can see. None of this is being done with people’s consent or even their knowledge. It’s being, and it’s going to be used in opaque and unaccountable ways that could – I mean, it’s not just, it could be used to target critics.  It could be used to target protesters. We can already see that people are being literally rounded up off the streets with regards to, you know, their, whether they’ve attended protests or similar. So there’s that, there’s the targeting of people because the, you know, the, the, the government doesn’t agree with their views, but it could also be used to deny people from the services which they’re entitled to, to deny them from from welfare or from Medicaid, or because it’s the idea that a beautiful computer is gonna be all knowing and all seeing, and is gonna be able to make these decisions without any human intervention.

SREENIVASAN: We should point out that 10 Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to Palantir on Monday asking that the tech company answer questions about, its expanding federal contracts with the Trump administration. And that The New York Times reported recently that Palantir began helping immigration and customs enforcement officials and removal operations. So I, I wonder, you know, this is not necessarily just a case of ones and zeros attached to my name, that this can actually have consequences in our real, 3D world.

CADWALLADR: Exactly. And I think it’s, I think it is worth, I think that’s the thing to, to, to remember is that it’s the idea –  all of these AI, they, they’re using this to train AIs, which are gonna create these algorithms which are gonna be making life and death decisions about, you know, ordinary people with ordinary problems who are gonna have no way of challenging the computer. The computer says no, and that’s it. And, and I think that like focusing on those real world consequences is really, really vital, but also realizing that it could easily get things wrong. 

If you have the same name as somebody who’s on a terrorist watch list, and you get targeted because of that. I mean, we know that’s already happened to people after 9/11. So think of that on steroids, if you’ve got the same name as somebody who once attended a Palestinian protest rally. I mean, I think These algorithms are very far from infallible. And we know if you just, you use chat GPT, you know, it hallucinates things which aren’t even there. So the, it’s not an all seeing, all knowledgeable eye. It’s a very, very fallible machine that’s, as I say, could be making decisions that directly impact people’s lives.

SREENIVASAN: In response to the New York Times reporting Palantir said, “the falsehoods and misleading statements documented in relation to the Times article appear to fall well below such standards and even raise questions about the author’s adherence to the Times guidelines on integrity.” On their company blog, Palantir said they act as a data processor, not a data controller. 

You know, recently the US Army had announced this creation of the Executive Innovation Corps. It’s a new initiative designed to fuse, they say cutting edge tech expertise with military information on innovation on there they have tapped Palantir’s, chief Technology Officer, Shyam Sankar, meta Platform CTO, Andrew Bosworth, and Kevin Weil, and Bob McGrew of OpenAI to join this coalition. Does this – how does this impact the American public?

CADWALLADR: Well, again, it’s this, it’s this coming together of these Silicon Valley companies, this authoritarian government, and now this sort of increasing militarization. And it’s, I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s the bizarrest news story, I think of the last couple of weeks that these tech executive officers are going to become Lieutenant colonels in the US military. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s kind of bizarre and ridiculous and stunty and, you know, a piece of political theater. But again, it is just truly alarming. It’s the militarization of government. It’s the militarization of the social media platforms that we use every day. And, you know, again, I think that has to be a wake up call. It’s a red flag. It’s, you know, it’s, it, I, you know, I, I’ve been preaching this for the last 10 years about the danger of these companies, about the power that they have. That’s no longer a warning. That is now what is happening in real time.

SREENIVASAN: Is there a template for policy or regulatory framework anywhere on the planet at this point that works to serve as a check on artificial intelligence, on perhaps the kind of reach or extent of power that the broligarchy might have?

CADWALLADR: I mean, I think we’re, we are at a very, you know, sort of frightening juncture in that respect, in that these companies, which are based in the US, Trump has added to, to his big, beautiful bill this amendments, which would mandate every single US state. It would prevent them from passing any legislation that sought to curb or control or even scrutinize these AI companies and what they’re building. And these are totally untested technologies. The, the potential for harm is off the scale. And so we can clearly see that in the US that’s, if that bill gets passed, that is then gonna become impossible. 

At this point. Really the only, you know place where we do see legislation, where we do see the will and the knowledge to act is in the European Union. Whether it can enforce these, this regulation, this legislation is yet to be seen in a world in which Trump uses the trade tariffs as bargaining chips to get the legislation he wants. So I think we are in really uncharted waters in that respect.

SREENIVASAN: I wonder if these companies are maybe too big to fail, and when they are in relationships with governments, then governments also have an incentive to make sure that their contractor, for example, doesn’t fail?

CADWALLADR: I mean, it’s, it is a total failure of capitalism on behalf of America. You know, you, America has been built because it’s, it’s had strong laws that has enabled a free market for people to be able to go out and create businesses and create wealth. And, and that is where, you know, the prosperity has come from. And now we’ve entered an age of monopolies and monopolies, which have not been broken up. Although there are now, there are lawsuits now which are finally coming. And those monopolies prevent innovation. They prevent new, new technology companies coming into the market. We, we all use WhatsApp and Instagram and Facebook, which are all owned by Mark Zuckerberg because there’s very little other choice. That’s, that’s – because they’ve dominated the market. But so the absolutely first thing that we have to do, and that is a nonpartisan issue. This is not about left or right or Democrat or Republican, it’s just about enforcing the actual laws that you have and breaking up what are clearly monopolistic companies dominating the market. And that has impacts not just on business, it has impacts on us as citizens, as consumers, because there is no incentive to build better, safer products. 

You know, Instagram, we can see there’s so many bad effects on teenagers on mental health. We, we’ve had story after story of stuff that they’ve done, but there hasn’t been a clear competitor because they have, as I say, just dominated the markets and, and that, you know, that purchase by Facebook should clearly never have been part, allowed to happen in the first place because they just bought a competitor.

SREENIVASAN: Okay, so let’s say somebody in the audience agrees with one of your premises, that the foundations of a techno-authoritarian surveillance state have been laid. You know, you’re still a little optimistic. I mean, what is an average citizen to do if they want to digitally disobey?

CADWALLADR: I think it’s really important that there’s this famous phrase from Tim Snyder, the historian of authoritarianism, and he says, “do not obey in advance.” Do not – and it’s that idea of that you can see the threat coming and you pre obey. And I think there’s just like even little tiny things, you know, when it’s like, do you accept the cookies? No. You shouldn’t accept the cookies, right? That’s tracking you, that’s surveilling you, you don’t want that. Reject them. When you are asked, when you are going onto some website, they want your name, they want your email, they want your date of birth, don’t give it to them. That’s private information. And it’s everything that you do like that, where you are just giving away information that can be used in some way. It’s, it’s being contained somewhere. It’s being combined with other information.

And we all have to just get into the habit of protecting our privacy. Privacy is power. That’s one of the really, really key things to remember. If you want agency over your own life, you need agency also over your digital life. So I think that’s one of the sort of key points that I try and hammer home. 

And, and, you know, I give the example about your kids. You know, children are people too. And if they’re not over the age of consent, why would you put their images onto platforms which are harvesting their data, which we can clearly see are now allied or aligned with either authoritarian or hostile governments. You just don’t know how that will be used in the future. And if you care about your kids, and of course you do, you want to protect them, and you also must now think about how you protect them in this online space. So I, I, I think that that’s somewhere in years to come, that social mores are really going to change. And children who are of age now are going to grow up and, and ask their parents, why, why did you do that? So that’s something I think which people can clearly do something about now.

SREENIVASAN: Author and journalist, Carole Cadwalladr, thanks so much for joining us.

CADWALLADR: Thanks, Hari.