Want to Fight Back Against Big Tech? Start Here

“In June, I wrote about how the data center revolts happening across the country get to the heart of our greatest political problems. Artificial intelligence is not just a market product or a scientific achievement. It is a political theory. And it is gobbling up our democracy.

 

The challenge this presents to a functioning democracy is immense. Democrats cannot just “win the midterms” and go back to life before Donald Trump and his army of tech bros upended our way of life. We can talk about reforming the Supreme Court, ending the filibuster, enshrining women’s autonomy in the Constitution and getting money out of elections. But those things won’t matter if we don’t change our laws and norms about what I am calling data politics.

 

All of the speculation and hype around A.I. is hiding the fact that the technology isn’t just large language models or agents or data centers. It is the backbone of a superstructure that merges regressive politics with unchecked economic power in the guise of technological innovation. Put simply, there is too much money, some of it too untraceable, giving a small group of unelected people too much power over the people. That’s data politics.

 

Data politics is the right’s answer to what’s next after Trump: more Trumpism, without the man who gave away the country’s store for personal gain. What should the left’s answer be?

 

To figure that out, I’m proposing a bit of late-summer reading. I hope you’ll join me.

 

I was inspired by a list proposed by literary scholar Matt Seybold. The list isn’t definitive. Each of these books aims to explain how technology, politics, money and power are reshaping our world. I am reading some of these books for the first time; others, for the third or fourth. In reading them together, I’m looking for common themes, patterns and novel questions about data politics. The goal isn’t to find answers to a huge political challenge but to ask better questions about our political obligations.

 

First, I’m proposing three books about the tech C.E.O.s who are shaping data politics around the world. These books about Sam Altman, Jensen Huang and Elon Musk offer a window into how the global A.I. arms race isn’t just about microchips and data centers. It is about reshaping culture and capital.

 

    “Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI” by Karen Hao

 

    “The Thinking Machine: Jensen Huang, Nvidia, and the World’s Most Coveted Microchip” by Stephen Witt

 

    “Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed” by Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff

 

It’s not just those men who matter, of course. It’s also how their corporations are rewriting the rules of capitalism beyond recognition, territory this next group of books explores:

 

    “The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy” by Gil Duran (available Aug. 18)

 

    “Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism” by Yanis Varoufakis

 

    “End Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World” by Astra Taylor and Naomi Klein (available Sept. 15)

 

I’m reading these books in conversation with other works, including Trump administration executive orders on A.I., widely circulated white papers from architects of Silicon Valley’s political ambitions and the pope’s recent address.

 

    Executive Orders 14409 and 14365, which are two of the Trump administration’s most direct attempts at A.I. policymaking to date

 

    The Trump administration’s A.I. Action Plan and its National Policy Framework, which corroborate and deepen many of the polemical themes in our reading list

 

    White papers and essays from Anthropic, Andreessen Horowitz, OpenAI and Meta, which offer a window into the way some of the most prominent tech companies and venture capitalists in America are thinking about this technology

 

    Pope Leo XIV’s much-discussed encyclical letter on A.I.

 

I’ll be talking with some of the authors on this list over the coming months to ask them about the ideas that most shook them and that should shake the rest of us. We’ll call this our “Reading Ahead” series. I hope that you’ll join me in reading these, and that this is just the start of a long, and much-needed, conversation.” [1]

 

1. Want to Fight Back Against Big Tech? Start Here.: Tressie McMillan Cottom.  New York Times (Online) New York Times Company. Aug 3, 2026.