Chris Ategeka - The Unintended Consequences of Technology

The tech-state, which is synonymous with BigTech, refers to the big technology companies that have an outsized social, economic, political, and environmental impact on the world, both positive and negative. Examples of such companies include Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft. The convenience of tech offerings has made the general public numb to the dangers. And having meaningful regulation from nation-states over tech-states is difficult, due to their outsized influence and power. In many ways, these tech-states have replaced nation-states, all without the responsibilities of providing citizens with social services. This chapter explores these tech mega-powers and discusses how these new outsized forces require new oversight.

Governments around the world are having a hard time figuring out how to regulate technology companies on issues like employee mistreatment, freedom of speech, climate change, and a myriad of other issues that are essential to humanity and our planet. Due to their transnational operations, no single government has yet cracked the code on how to keep them in check when they have so much power. These tech-state companies appear to feel as if they are almost invincible!

A nation-state is a sovereign state whose citizens or subjects are relatively homogeneous in factors such as language or common descent. There are four essential features of a nation-state: population, territory, sovereignty, and government. When a nation of people has a state or country of their own, it is called a nation-state. Places like China, France, Egypt, Germany, and Japan are excellent examples of nation-states. Even with its multicultural society, the United States is also referred to as a nation-state because of the shared American culture.

Any nation-state or any government's job is to fulfill certain roles and obligations for its citizens. Those duties include:

Protect the social and economic welfare of its citizens.

Protect natural rights.

Defend against external enemies.

Manage the economic conditions and its place in the world.

Redistribute income and resources.

Provide public or utility goods.

What happens when a government has less social economic and political power than the companies started and run by a handful of its citizens?

Well, a lot is at stake!

Performing these governing functions in the name of protecting citizens and the environment from predatory behavior becomes extremely difficult.

When anyone is building something big, things are bound to get messy, but no one anticipated the extent at which we would experience the messiness of tech-state. As many as 9 out of 10 startups fail. Entrepreneur and contributor Neil Patel (2014) mentioned a few reasons as to why this many fail in his write-up for Forbes magazine.

He says that those who fail maybe made a product no one wants, or ignored some important parts of their business. Other times it's the hyper growth the company is not prepared for. Growth—fast growth—is what entrepreneurs crave, investors need, and markets want. Rapid growth is the sign of a great idea in a hot market. However, without the right infrastructure in place, rapid growth can be a liability. If your startup lasts, you're lucky. You've been able to do something that 90% of new businesses haven't (Patel, 2014).

Even the ones left standing sometimes end up failing later. That's why companies like Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and their fellow tech giants had to weather many storms to become what they are today. Pivots, stolen ideas, and even firings are commonplace. Steve Jobs was once famously forced out of his own company that he founded. But by embracing uncertainty and making timely pivots, some tech companies end up becoming some of the most influential—and valuable—organizations on the planet, with power that rivals or exceeds their nation-states. Let's take Facebook and Google as examples:

Tech-state: Facebook

Population: 2.7 billion (2019)

Capital: Palo Alto

Nationality: Users

Valuation: $720 billion (August 2020)

Founder: Mark Zuckerberg

In total, Facebook has more than 3.14 billion account holders across its platforms, which include acquired companies like WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger (Newton, 2020).

Tech-state: Google

Population: 1 billion (2020)

Capital: Mountain View

Nationality: Users

Valuation: $1 trillion (2020)

Founders: Larry Page and Sergey Brin

Google's search engine market share is more than 90%. Considering that there are almost 4.39 billion Internet users, the number of Google users worldwide is nearly four billion. Google usage statistics show Google Photos has over 1 billion active users. There were over 1.8 billion active Gmail users in 2020. YouTube has 2.3 billion users worldwide. This is just a small taste of only four out of the many products Google offers its customers.

Tech-states have brought to bear many benefits and positive advancements for humankind, as you may know. In fact, it's possible you may be reading this book with the aid of one of their products. If we were to focus on all their advantages, that could take up the space of this entire book. Therefore, I will point out just a few.

Being so large means these organizations can make big investments in the future and big investments in R&D, and much faster and better than any nation-state could do. Take entrepreneur Elon Musk and his companies as an example. His company Tesla is on a mission to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy. Elon and Tesla's big bets of venturing into the unknown world of research and development have proved that people don't need to compromise to drive electric cars. Electric vehicles can be better, quicker, and more fun to drive than gasoline cars. The same daring spirit can be said about his other company, SpaceX. Its mission is to revolutionize the aerospace industry and make affordable spaceflight a reality. SpaceX plans not only to land humans on Mars but also to colonize Mars. Space exploration used to be the work of nation-states; now it's mostly done by private companies and made possible by big investments in R&D. In fact, nation-states are now contracting tech-states to do this work for them, as shown by the NASA/SpaceX partnerships, as well as by many other collaborations like it (McFall-Johnsen and Mosher, 2020).

Furthermore, tech-state companies are better positioned to deliver large-scale services to the market, because they have the tools, resources, and infrastructure to do so. Because of their size, cash in hand, and many other factors, they can survive market slowdowns in ways small companies cannot. This was very evident during the COVID-19 pandemic (Sundaram, 2020).

The pandemic challenged most of us on a personal level; however, business-wise, it hasn't been bad for everyone. Big tech leaders like Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, and Google have all seen their market values increase this past year. Furthermore, all of these companies were poised to play a significant role in helping the world recover from coronavirus, using their technological prowess to do everything from tracking coronavirus spread to managing tests and vaccines to improving overall distribution workflows (Newman, 2021).

Tech-state also contributes greatly to the GDP of the nation-state. The world's largest companies are in the technology sector, and four out of five of those tech-states companies have grown to trillion-dollar market capitalizations (Wallach, 2019). As technology use continues to increase, their revenue forecast will only continue to grow.