The Cloud Cartel Has Created a Global Rentier Economy
The US tech giants have achieved an unprecedented concentration of economic control, forcing other firms, American or not, to pay intellectual rents. These cloud hegemons are boosting US global power even as it declines in other fields.
Amazon, Google, and Microsoft own around 65 percent of the global public cloud market. Most companies and even states that have sought to bypass the cloud hegemons have given up due to the costs involved and the risks of falling behind technologically. (Shawn Thew-Pool / Getty Images)
Who are the rulers of modern capitalism? Cecilia Rikap’s answer couldn’t be clearer or more precise: Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are the rulers.
In her book The Rulers, an exhaustive and highly original examination of how just three companies dominate “global knowledge production,” Rikap finds that almost all other firms — tech companies or not, American or not — are caught in their web, forced to pay “intellectual rents” to the “cloud hegemons” to be able to compete in the modern digital economy.
This extensive economic control makes Amazon, Google, and Microsoft more than just economic giants — they are also “political leaders” at a global level. Their power is so extensive that they are, Rikap argues, “capable of controlling nearly every organization and nation reliant on AI and other digital technologies.” This is a bold claim, and one that should have all of us paying attention.
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