The Global Politics of Big Tech

The image of massively wealthy tech leaders assembling at Donald Trump’s inauguration in 2024 travelled around the globe. Yet, even before tech executives got substantially involved in the US administration, the rise of large tech companies had begun to transform not only the digital economy but also global politics.

As contemporary capitalism is increasingly organized around the control of knowledge, data, and intangibles, tech firms have divided much of the digital sphere among themselves—and the infrastructure that carries it. Amazon, Microsoft, and Google together occupy about two-thirds of the global cloud market. Lately, Big Tech has also invested heavily in data centers, fiber-optic networks, and satellite systems.

New players in the Big Tech ecosystem consist of rapidly rising ventures like SpaceX, OpenAI, and Palantir that open new markets to the sector’s activities. Defense and warfare are currently transformed by artificial intelligence and algorithmic decision-making. Through ownership of social media platforms and integration of AI-driven services into public policy, tech firms also increasingly influence knowledge production itself.

A defining feature of this ecosystem is the personalization of corporate power. Close personal networks span between tech leaders, political offices, and venture capitalists, sparking debates around “intellectual monopolization” and the rise of a “tech oligarchy” or “technofeudalism.”

This thematic issue brings together scholars of various backgrounds—international relations, international political economy, geopolitics & geoeconomics, science and technology studies, platform studies, etc. It aims to promote an interdisciplinary agenda on the global politics of large technology firms that matches the scale of their real-world influence. Contributions may address:

·        The sources and forms of tech firm power;

·        The logic guiding the firms’ operations and their leadership;

·        The societal, economic, ecological, and political consequences of Big Tech;

·        The evolving corporate ecosystem;

·        Global competition and relations with other tech sectors, e.g., China and Europe;

·        Big Tech’s impact on different fields of public policy;

·        Its role in the knowledge economy and knowledge creation;

·        Possibilities for governing Big Tech.

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