Warlords in the past controlled geographic territories. Today’s warlords control markets and digital territories. The basic idea of warlording is to seize control of a profitable territory or asset with a military-style hierarchy in which power and control are concentrated in the top leadership. This hierarchy is then deployed to defend the warlord / fiefdom’s source of profits and power by any means necessary.
In the past, this defense included making political deals with other warlords and the central authority, and warfare. Today, it means making political deals with other warlords and the central authority, controlling the narrative (some version of obey and grow rich ). and establishing a monopoly so the populace has no other option other than to bow down and accept the warlords’ control of their lives.
Here’s a short list of the Big Tech Corporate Warlords . The market capitalization is a recent estimate, and may vary from today’s valuation, but what’s important here is not precision, it’s the scale of the digital / market domains under the corporate leaders’ control. A trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon we’re talking about real power.
Apple: $3.7 trillion
Microsoft: $3.3 trillion
Nvidia: $3 trillion
Amazon: $2.3 trillion
Alphabet (Google): $2.3 trillion
Meta (Facebook): $1.6 trillion
Tesla: $1.3 trillion
Comparing Warlord capitalization to national gross domestic product (GDP) is not an apples to apples comparison, but the point is once again scale : when a corporation’s capex (capital expenditures) exceeds an entire nation’s spending on research, it’s indicative of the scale of power held by Corporate Warlords , warlords whose sole focus is amassing more capital and profits by any means available.
The peasantry is of course disposable, except as cannon fodder should things get serious, and central authorities are obstacles that are best co-opted or bought off.
The trick is to become so useful that the central authorities are forced to accept the threat posed by the warlords’ rising power. Eventually, the warlords control the high ground and the central authority is beseeching the warlords to leave the shell of central authority in place for public consumption.
Hm seems an accurate description of the US corporatocracy.