How Facebook, Apple, Google, Amazon, and others increasingly rival states for geopolitical influence and are reshaping the global order as we know it
After rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, some of the United States' most powerful institutions sprang into action to punish the leaders of the failed insurrection. Tweets: @ianbremmer , @matthewstoller , @jimnewsmorrison , @tedgover , @malex_eq , @tedgover , @justinformn , @ianbremmer , @amnestyelycity , @jihadwazir , @antirapani , @jojoliciosa , @alexisserfaty , @sarabarderas , @melaniegarson , @verabunse , @rajit_h , and @greglewicki Tweets: Ian Bremmer / @ianbremmer : Tech giants like Facebook, Google and Amazon increasingly rival states for geopolitical influence... and they are reshaping the global order as we know it. My latest for @ForeignAffairs -> https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ ... Matt Stoller / @matthewstoller : This article is a useful summary of the philosophy of inevitabilism that colors elite discourse around dominant firms. It goes, ‘Multinationals are too big and clever and are their own sovereign power.’ The reality is these firms are creatures of state policy. https://twitter.com/... @jimnewsmorrison : .@ianbremmer: Are we living in the final years of the primacy of the nation state? A thought-provoking piece https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ ... Ted Gover / @tedgover : ... It is a thorough layout of the ways in which these tech companies are, in his words, “increasingly geopolitical actors in and of themselves.” ... https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ ... Mark Alexander / @malex_eq : The advent of the digital superpowers. The cyber-pillars energizing the global addiction economy are the next sovereign order. Objet Trouve' https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ ... Ted Gover / @tedgover : ... @ianbremmer argues that in order to understand the dynamics of the digital age, policymakers will need to grasp that big technology companies hold increasing influence & leverage in how governments act. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ ... Justin Stofferahn / @justinformn : “It is time to start thinking of the biggest technology companies as similar to states.” 👀 This is the danger of unchecked corporate power. Instead of self-governance, the monopolists are put in charge. A great, but frightening read. ⬇️ #BreakEmUp https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ ... Ian Bremmer / @ianbremmer : 3 Tech company models: - globalists (unfettered access to markets) - national champions (core partnership with some govts) - techno-utopians (think govts will become irrelevant) These companies are geopolitical actors. @gzeromedia #QuickTake https://www.gzeromedia.com/... https://twitter.com/... Amnesty Ely City / @amnestyelycity : Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Apple, Google, PayPal & Stripe will define the economic, social, & political life of the twenty-first century. They are increasingly geopolitical actors in & of themselves https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ ... Jihad Alwazir / @jihadwazir : “It is one thing to wield power in the smoke-filled rooms of political power brokers; it is another to directly affect the livelyhoods, relationships, security, and even thought patterns of billions of people across the globe” https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ ... Alessandro N. Tirapani / @antirapani : “It is one thing to wield power in the smoke-filled rooms of political power brokers; it is another to directly affect the livelihoods, relationships, security, and even thought patterns of billions of people across the globe” Outstanding piece https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ ... Joanna Caraballo / @jojoliciosa : The Technopolar Moment : “States have been the primary actors in global affairs for nearly 400 years. That is starting to change, as a handful of large technology companies rival them for geopolitical influence.” https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ ... via @ForeignAffairs Alexis Serfaty / @alexisserfaty : Tech companies are increasingly shaping the global environment in which governments operate, ultimately yielding influence over factors that will drive the next industrial revolution @ForeignAffairs @EurasiaGroup https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ ... Sara Barderas / @sarabarderas : Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Twitter are no longer merely large companies; they have taken control of aspects of society, the economy, and national security that were long the exclusive preserve of the state. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ ... Melanie Garson / @melaniegarson : Great to read the expansion of some of the ideas @ianbremmer touched on in the @InstituteGC webinar with @zatlyn on How to Save the Global Internet, and the potential futures of Big Tech as geopolitical actors. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ ... Vera Bunse / @verabunse : How Digital Powers Will Reshape the Global Order: ‘But it is simply no longer tenable to talk about big technology companies as pawns their government masters can move around on a geopolitical chessboard’ https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ ... Rajit Hewagama / @rajit_h : Technology companies' orientations are no less diverse than the states with which they compete. Strands of globalism, nationalism, and techno-utopianism often coexist within the same company. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ ... https://twitter.com/... Greg Lewicki / @greglewicki : “Political scientists classify governments: there are “democracies,” “autocracies,” and “hybrid regimes”... But they have no such tools for understanding #BigTech. It's time they started developing them”, says @ianbremmer https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ ...
Context & Ripple Effects
This Foreign Affairs argument lands at the peak of a two-year arc in the coverage: the November 2020 case for stripping Big Tech of its gatekeeper role over information, followed by the finding that governments worldwide were moving to limit tech power with an urgency no single industry had faced before (that regulatory wave). What changed with January 6 was proof of capacity — Facebook, Apple, Google, Amazon, Twitter, PayPal, and Stripe acted on domestic political actors faster than any state apparatus could.
The piece therefore reads less as commentary than as a status report on a sovereignty contest: platforms exercising quasi-state enforcement while states answer in kind, with the related coverage already documenting the rhetorical turn from championing a free, open internet toward imposing limits to protect national interests.
First-order effects
- The named platforms demonstrated they can punish senior political figures — cutting distribution and payments where states were slow or constrained — making corporate enforcement an immediate fact of U.S. political life rather than a hypothetical.
Second-order effects
- Governments responded with the broadest regulatory push against a single industry on record, and the framing shifted from techno-globalism to national interest — each side now treating the other's moves as exercises of geopolitical power.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, control over speech infrastructure becomes formal statecraft: the later Signal critique that a TikTok ban would entrench U.S. social networks' dominance shows states and platforms bargaining over market access as an instrument of foreign policy — a structural rivalry between corporate and state authority over the global information order.
The trend: Platform enforcement decisions are being absorbed into geopolitics, pushing states from regulating tech as industry to contesting tech as a rival source of sovereign power.