Rulers: Corporate Power in the Age of AI and the Cloud

Description: A brilliant analysis of capital accumulation in the AI era that charts a roadmap for battling against the predatory concentration of knowledge, data and narratives in the hands of Big Tech, by award winning economist.

Capitalism's rulers are not abstract entities or shadowy operators. Amazon, Microsoft and Google are the cloud hegemons that subsume the world through the exercise of their intellectual monopolies. Giants like Disney, McDonalds, Nike or Walmart depend on them to use AI for knowledge and value extraction and for disciplining workers. States see some of their core functions sequestered. Innovation is not a free and neutral game, but a hierarchy topped by the rulers.

Rikap's new theoretical framework is grounded in a unique trove of 112 interviews at the world's largest firms and data on venture capital, acquisitions, open source, AI conferences and patents. They picture a map of the complexities and political implications of corporate power. In Rikap's counterimage, technology is developed by the people and for the people and the planet through democratic planning.

Review Quotes: "Cecilia Rikap is one of the most interesting and energetic researchers on AI, and The Rulers is a magnificent, devastating book. Rather than provide character studies of rich men, Rikap advances the Big Tech argument with a trove of insider interviews and data and compelling heterodox analysis that demonstrates how a few companies are subjugating politics and academic knowledge. The Cloud is engulfing democracy."
--Aditya Chakrabortty, Senior Economics Commentator, Guardian

"In The Rulers, Cecilia Rikap delivers a powerful account of how Amazon, Microsoft and Google have become more than the world's largest corporations -- they are global economic planners and political actors. By revealing how Big Tech's control of the cloud and AI value chains enables them to capture knowledge and data across entire production networks, Rikap forces us to rethink what power means in the twenty-first century. Her concept of intellectual monopoly builds on and moves beyond surveillance capitalism or platform economics and exposes the limits of conventional antitrust responses. An essential read for anyone seeking to understand why governing AI and digital infrastructure in the public interest is one of the defining political challenges of our time."
--Mariana Mazzucato, author of The Value of Everything: making and taking in the global economy

"The definitive guide to Big Tech's power and how they came to dominate the commanding heights of the economy. Urgent and necessary reading!"
--Nick Srnicek, author of Silicon Empires: The Fight for the Future of AI

"A searing work that shines a forensic spotlight on the 21st century's Big Tech monopolists. Rikap's analysis and her insider accounts reveal how predatory AI hyperscalers feed on our data and are subverting the nature of knowledge itself. This is a timely, much needed intervention to help consumers and governments understand the distortive, dystopian nature of techno-feudal capitalism."
--Mehreen Khan, economics editor, The Times

"Amid the slew of books about the economic power of Big Tech, Cecilia Rikap's stands out--she shows us blueprints for the walled gardens we live in and helps us find a way out."
--Quinn Slobodian, author of Crack-up Capitalism

"The fight to tame big tech is probably the greatest challenge of our age, posing political and economic threats the world has never seen. Cecilia Rikap is one of the most exciting thinkers in this field, and this extensively researched book shows in terrifying detail how companies like Google, whose stated mission is "to organise the world's information," are increasingly able to organise us."
--Nicholas Shaxson, author of The Finance Curse: How Global Finance Is Making Us All Poorer

"An exhaustive and highly original examination of how just three companies dominate global knowledge production."
--Jacobin

"Rikap's book brilliantly sets out the stakes of political economy today ... formidable"
--Tim Christiaens, LSE Review of Books