Reach of the tech giants: Controlling all aspects of our future

Google has taken a 60-year lease on a Nasa airfield next to its Silicon Valley headquarters near San Francisco.

A Google subsidiary called Planetary Ventures will use part of the historic Moffett Federal Airfield for projects involving aviation, space exploration and robotics. This may seem like a harmless indulgence by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin who have a well-known interest in aviation and space.

But it could also represent a scary escalation of attempts by major cash-rich multinationals to control everything about our lives. The robotics, satellite and space ventures follow Google’s move into health care and medical equipment, areas normally associated with government projects.

It is not alone. Leading technology firms such as Apple, Amazon, Facebook as well as Google have now grown too big for any single government to reign in, even the US government. Far from their roots of plucky nerds toiling away in garages, they are rapidly expanding into vast conglomerates, using their huge resources to buy up small companies and control many areas of human endeavour. Like the industrial tycoons of the 19th and early 20th century, they are beyond the reach of government control, intent on consolidating their power while expanding into new markets.

US commentator Joel Kotkin compares what he calls the Monster Tech Giants with the Keiretsu, an elite club of enterprise leaders that dominate the Japanese economy. “The Keiretsu, epitomised by such sprawling groups as Mitsubishi, Sumitomo and Toyota, are spread across a vast field of activities, leveraging their access to finance as a means to expand into an ever-increasing number of fields.”

A Google or Amazon spaceship may still be in the distant future, but, Kotkin argues, by investing widely and chewing up developing markets, the Gang of Four internet companies—Microsoft, Apple, Facebook and Google — can use their almost limitless cash piles and technological expertise to get their way. These technological oligarchies are already dominating the field of robotics, and have the resources to do the same for health, space exploration and even defence. Google is not alone in the space race. Amazon chief Jeff Bezos founded his own private space company, Blue Origin, which has launched two rockets into space. It plans to build space stations and already acts as a private contractor for Nasa.

Why should all this matter? What is the big deal about a few billionaires indulging in pet projects? In a word: accountability. When democratic governments get involved in expensive areas such as space, health and defence, they, at least, are accountable to their parliament and – more importantly – their electorate. Private enterprises only have to answer to their shareholders and when they are big enough and rich enough can employ an army of lawyers to circumvent many legitimate limitations on their activities.

As the 19th century English politician Lord Acton once remarked: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”