Tech Firms Gain Power as Democracies Fall Behind

Technology-company owners are becoming more powerful than most heads of state and government, Jean-Marc Rickli of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy said. The companies answer to shareholders, not the public. That is one of the fault lines in the account of technology and democracy: power is shifting toward private firms even as governments struggle to protect the systems people depend on.

Power Without Public Accountability

Rickli said Nvidia, the U.S. chip manufacturer, has more financial clout than a middle-income country, ranking just behind the United States, China and Germany. “Yet such firms are not accountable to the public, but only to their shareholders. And artificial intelligence does not act in the interests of humanity,” he said. The money and influence sit in corporate hands; public accountability, Rickli said, does not.

The technologies converging include artificial intelligence, biotechnology, neurotechnology, nanotechnology and quantum computing. Rickli said they fuel one another, while technology’s impact on security policy is often overlooked. He described technological development as having a “democratising” effect, but not as a promise of shared power: the threshold is falling for criminal gangs, terrorist organisations and individual companies to use technology to exert geopolitical influence.

The people gaining that capacity aren’t limited to governments. Rickli’s account puts corporations and smaller groups alongside states as actors able to exert influence, while the public’s relationship to powerful technology companies remains mediated through shareholder accountability. His warning about AI was direct: it does not act in humanity’s interests.

The State’s Defensive Bind

Attackers can overwhelm a state’s defence system with attacks on a massive scale, anywhere and at any time, the article said. Highly developed social welfare systems have tens of thousands of vulnerabilities, which are being exploited almost daily. The systems intended to support people are also exposed to attack; Rickli said technology’s security implications are too often overlooked.

He considers open, democratic states more at risk than dictatorships. Autocratic regimes can plan their defence over a longer period, make decisions more quickly, change course if needed and impose greater hardship or restrictions on their populations. Democratic governments, by contrast, must balance competing interests. Cut social, health or education spending sharply to raise defence spending, and they risk being voted out of office.

That choice is laid out in the article as a collision between protection and public provision. Governments face pressure to defend the state, while spending decisions that affect social welfare, health and education carry political consequences. Rickli says democracies have not been willing to enact laws and regulations for future threats.

Waiting Until the Threat Arrives

“We always wait until a problem becomes acute before we act – in other words, too late. Today, we would also have to factor in what is still considered science fiction,” Rickli said. The warning is about a political system that reacts after danger becomes immediate, while technology advances rapidly.

Rickli contrasted AI with earlier inventions such as fire, electricity and the steam engine: those inventions could not develop further on their own, he said, while artificial intelligence can. Asked whether people are powerless in the face of it, he replied, “To a certain extent, yes.”

His proposed task for governments is to define what a state absolutely needs and try to defend the essentials for survival; anything beyond that is no longer possible, he said. The account leaves the terms of that choice hanging: which essentials get protected, and whose needs fall outside them? The technology is advancing. Publicly accountable power, Rickli’s warning suggests, is not keeping pace.