Guest post by Robert Stewart and Ted Malloch
Purchase Ted Malloch’s latest book The Plot to Destroy Trump
Do we need to de-fang the FAANGs (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google) before it is too late?
The stock valuation of these few companies alone exceeds $4 trillion dollars now. They dwarf the real economy and almost every country on earth. Their power is growing exponentially with cloud computing, ecommerce, artificial intelligence, blockchain, machine learning, robotization, and now space travel.
They believe they own and will dictate our future.
Do they demand anti-trust action? What about their unruly collusion? Alarming labor practices? Or the fact that they more or less avoid paying tax?
These are perhaps the most “rapacious” enterprises, ever. Yes, they rape the public — that is the very meaning of the word.
Look at how intertwined Amazon is. It is imperial. And its leader is cult-like, a cyber-oligarch of the largest pretensions.
This is a serious political, cultural, deeply societal question. We pose it in all seriousness. Don’t censure it or shy away from asking it yourself.
President Trump’s end game seems to be to get a Real World Free and Fair Trade Agreement going on all sides, even as he bashes a few players along the way. That may work to America’s benefit as long as it keeps a technological advantage over the emerging Asian powers.
But what about the evil, controlling companies right here?
It is abundantly clear that the Chinese in particular have ambitions to not just take over but to run the world by 2030, its technology, its military, and its political and trading systems. They have said so. Some day we will all likely awake to the danger of all this, hopefully not before it is too late to do something about it.
Trump gets it and that is why is refuses to kowtow to China and its not so covert project literally translated as “global domination.”
We should however all be equally, if not more concerned, about another rising tide, which seems to be gathering greater power with every passing day.
It is FAANG power.
You use a mobile phone, have a laptop, do social media, conduct searches, view the web and buy stuff, and entertain yourself right? Think about who controls every link in that chain.
Jeff Bezos better than anyone represents that tide. He is the poster boy of tech monopoly.
Recently, he was ONLY worth $66 billion. Today, his numbers topple $150 billion. If you add up all the wealth of the mightiest worldwide today, we think it might eclipse most government coffers. We are sure Bezos believes in low taxes (at least for himself and for Amazon which pays almost none) and free trade too, as do most other techno-entrepreneurs now classified as the world’s wealthiest people.
But his intentions are very sinister.
Image via Flikr
Bezos wants to dominate our lives — every bit as much as the Chinese do.
He is a real monopolist. That is threatening.
He is already getting there — from his websites to his services to his media outlets and now including, even what you eat and how you medicate. Make no mistake Bezos’ strategy is to own you, control you and to do so vertically—that is his strategy: vertical integration of our entire supply chains and our life cycles.
When confronted at the BENS (Business Executives for National Security) Annual Meeting, where he was given a prize for his contributions to America, Bezos stated his ambitions boldly. Asked what he was going to do with his many, many billions. He replied that he wanted to take man to the outer planets. He wants to own space, too.
At some close time in the future, there will be a tipping point after which these new multinational corporations (FAANGS plus Asians), but particularly Amazon, who realize they control the financial world and can influence the political and governmental world beyond repair come to full power.
Watch for the takeover. It is coming and sooner than you think. There are signs.
Having spent years working within the G7 leadership community, we realize more than most political observers that the elected leadership of governments are no longer running what they lead. They can barely run their own offices and get reelected.
Cabals of civil servants and lobbyists (a Deep State) now control every step in the process, from writing speeches, to creating policies, to passing laws and enforcing them. From the most powerful governments down to the majority of puny little states, these leaders have become pawns to the other more powerful bureaucrats.
Unelected so-called ‘experts’ working on behalf of and dictated to by the FAANGS will in time decide everything. What you buy, where you buy it, who you vote for, what you read and see. It is absolutely Orwellian and portends nothing less than the “end of freedom.”
Trump alone is ripping up this matrix and delivering his own speeches and Executive Orders, which are understood and accepted by the populace, heretofore left out of the political process. He is succeeding but against all the odds and in the face of massive opposition and racial/political hatred, most of it fueled by the mainstream very liberal media and the tech giants (in Amazon’s case they are one and the same).
The question is: Can he sustain this barrage long enough to continue with these efforts? Can he possibly win? Or will they destroy him?
This is the new geo-political battleground.
Global (so-called transnationals’ because they owe no allegiance to any country or nation) corporations are moving in their sole-sourced directions (Bezos, Zuckerberg, Cook, Glasenberg, and hundreds of others worldwide). Central banks and governments are pushing in another direction.
The fault lines are cracking around these forces.
Trump stands in the middle, but alone he may not have the power to influence the change he so dearly wants and shares with the majority of ordinary voters, ordinary citizens—the masses.
They are like sheep willing to follow the lead over a cliff too often and the technology and influence of the Amazon’s of this world is growing beyond anything we have previously experienced. Their biased algorithms control what we do, buy, and view. Their gadgets and platforms shape elections, markets and ideologies.
And who polices them? Who has oversight over them?
Nobody.
This extraordinary shift in power, away from governments and into the hands of a certain few corporate markets and their highly paid lobbyists versus the weakened powers of the governed, makes for a battle zone bigger than any past world war.
When we see the wimps that make up most of the governments around the world and realize they are mere puppets in the hands of their handlers, we fear Trump falling into the same traps. Even he can’t control the vast government he presides over—more than a military industrial complex Eisenhower warned us about some 60 years ago. His very own Justice Department and FBI colluded to take him down and impeach him.
The media, the bureaucrats and all who oppose him do not see that he is the one, true altruist trying to turn this tide around.
Can he alone do it? The angry haters who oppose him grow in strength. Their shrill voices of resistance fill the airwaves and the streets. Silicon Valley and the Bezos crowd want him to vanish. They even tried a clandestine coup to overthrow him.
Those that do continually and vociferously oppose him, like almighty Bezos, buy an organ like the Washington Post to critique and defame him day in and day out. It is hard to compete with such power and wealth. They censure their opponents and deprive them of their voice.
It is a war of words for now, but governments will soon bow to the forces of manipulated markets, which can overpower them in actions.
Amazon could rule not just the US but also the whole wide world by 2030.
Rue the day when Amazon and a like-clique of all-powerful tech giants does run the world. It will make ‘The Matrix’ look like child’s play.
We will all be mere serfs in their techno grip.
