Socialist Co-Ops Against Silicon Valley Empires
Co-ops are often dismissed as attempts to create islands of socialism. But building democratically controlled tech infrastructure can be part of a wider movement for working-class power.
Amazon and Meta each spend more on federal lobbying than most labor federations spend on organizing. (Ssebastian Bozon / AFP via Getty Images)
Last June, the International Criminal Court experienced operational disruptions after Microsoft blocked the official email account of its chief prosecutor following US sanctions.
The action revealed the return of an old pattern. Systems once imagined as open, neutral channels of communication harden into privately controlled switches, capable of halting entire institutions for a single policy change or alleged misstep. But this was not an outlier.
Across the globe, millions of workers and entire branches of government now find their most basic functions throttled by choke points they neither control nor understand. The real consequence of AI-driven consolidation isn’t just automation or efficiency; it is dependency. Democratic institutions are increasingly at the mercy of technical systems they do not own and cannot audit.
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