Big tech companies and the bosses behind them are becoming as politically powerful as nation-states, the new head of Britain’s foreign intelligence agency has warned.
In his first public address as head of MI6 this month, Blaise Metrewery said new technological products were “reshaping our world” in ways previously only depicted in science fiction.
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Speaking at MI6 headquarters in London, she warned that technology was “merging to create sci-fi tools that are rewriting the reality of conflict”. He said some algorithms used by social media platforms could become “as powerful as nation states.”
Metreweri warned that the “defining challenge of the 21st century” is “not just who wields the most powerful technology, but who guides it with the greatest wisdom.”
Only a handful of tech giants now control how information reaches the public, raising concerns that their executives can manipulate information and communications to achieve their desired political outcomes.
Metrewery didn’t give specific examples, but a few American companies dominate social media, and Elon Musk, owner of X (as well as SpaceX and Tesla), also controls Starlink, a satellite communications network considered vital to Ukraine’s military, which is at war with Russia.
This is a type of monopoly, but although Metreweri was primarily talking about political power and influence, monopolies can also wield enormous economic power.
Monopolies are wreaking havoc in other industries as well. India’s aviation market has recently been reeling from soaring prices and a shortage of pilots, but a proposed merger between Netflix and Warner Bros. has raised concerns that a streaming monopoly could harm the creative arts industry and limit consumer choice.
Which other monopolies are causing controversy?
Monopolies are not just a technology problem. They are disrupting other industries as well.
Netflix and Warner Bros.
On December 5, Netflix agreed to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery in an $82.7 billion deal, following the merger of Paramount and Skydance Media earlier this year and Disney’s acquisition of fellow studio 21st Century Fox in 2019.
Experts and government officials have raised antitrust concerns about the planned acquisition, saying such a merger could increase market share controlled by one group and create problems.
Consumers seem to agree. On December 9th, Netflix was hit with a lawsuit seeking to block the merger.
The lawsuit alleges that the deal with Warner Bros. eliminates HBO Max, one of Netflix’s closest rivals, and gives Netflix control of several major Warner Bros. franchises, including Harry Potter, DC Comics and Game of Thrones.
A proposed class action lawsuit filed by subscribers in California federal court alleges this reduces competition, increases prices and limits content choice for U.S. viewers.
Netflix has proposed that social media video platforms such as YouTube and TikTok be included in any market research, arguing that doing so would reduce its market power and that Discovery Warner Bros.’ services could be bundled with Netflix subscriptions, lowering costs for consumers.
indigo
On December 2, air travel across India was thrown into chaos as the country’s largest airline IndiGo canceled thousands of flights, leaving hundreds of thousands of passengers stranded at airports across the country.
IndiGo, which operates about 2,200 flights a day, faced mass passenger cancellations due to a shortage of pilots after it failed to implement new pilot rest and work rules introduced by the government in 2024.
The airline was granted a temporary exemption from the new rules to maintain operations, but it still failed to meet the Nov. 1 deadline for revisions. Former AirAsia chief financial officer Vijay Gopalan criticized IndiGo’s “very, very lazy and cavalier attitude” in adapting to the rule changes.
On December 6, India’s aviation watchdog, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), sent a letter to IndiGo CEO Peter Elbers warning him of regulatory action. Reuters reported: “You failed in your duty to ensure timely arrangements to carry out credible operations.”
Currently, IndiGo is exempt from the limit on the number of weekly landings between midnight and early morning until February 10. Meanwhile, the government has ordered a high-level investigation to determine the cause of the flight disruption.
IndiGo and Air India together control 92 per cent of the Indian market, raising questions about the lack of competition.
The recent crisis in particular highlighted the risks of over-reliance on a single telco, with IndiGo controlling 65% of the market share.
This month, it was revealed that Indians are facing soaring airfares as a direct result of a lack of competition, effectively locking out large swaths of the population from air travel.
Domestic airfares in India rose 43% in the first half of 2024 compared to 2019, making it the second-highest in the Asia-Pacific and West Asia region after Vietnam, according to a study released last November by Airports Council International (ACI), a global industry association representing more than 2,000 airports in more than 180 countries.
Why should monopolies be restricted?
Monopolies are formed when one firm out-competes other firms through innovation or control of scarce resources, creating barriers to rivals. Although often criticized for limiting choice and raising prices, they can sometimes offer goods and services that cannot be sustained through fragmented competition.
Still, there are many reasons why many economists caution against allowing monopolies to emerge.
Monopolies can harm a country’s economic activity by weakening competition and stifling innovation. Monopolies can also distort prices. Powerful companies can restrict supply and squeeze consumers to keep prices artificially high.
Max Lawson, Oxfam’s head of policy and advocacy, said: “In a world experiencing a cost-of-living crisis, anything that drives up the price of goods should make people anxious.”
Finally, monopolies stifle entrepreneurship. Groups that can control infrastructure, data, or supply chains do so to favor themselves or other preferred companies by raising entry barriers for new companies and potential competitors.
Economically, this could mean fewer jobs, less innovation, and greater wealth inequality. And in the case of social media, it can also be used to obscure reporting, opinion, and even political alternatives.
Guy Standing, economist and research fellow at SOAS University, said: [monopolies] Economies of scale can be obtained, and the unit production cost is [goes] They lower prices for consumers and then raise them…because there’s no more competition. ”
He noted that across a variety of industries, private monopolies “generate enormous wealth and profits for shareholders at the expense of consumers, which exacerbates income inequality.”
Has monopoly been a big problem in the past?
The economic history of the United States is replete with examples of monopoly power. In the late 1800s, John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil outmaneuvered its competitors through “predatory pricing,” deliberately undercutting competitors’ prices to put them out of business, then raising prices.
By the 1890s, Standard Oil controlled about 90 percent of the oil refining in the United States.
Around the same time, railroad monopolies used discriminatory fares to distort regional economies, favoring certain regions and industries while undermining companies that challenged their dominance.
Modern technology monopolies also reflect these. Google, for example, dominates digital advertising and uses massive data collection to determine what people see and how businesses and politicians reach their audiences, effectively shaping online markets.
Elsewhere, Amazon is leveraging the power of e-commerce and logistics to overwhelm rivals. The company leverages its vast logistics network, warehousing, and data-driven pricing to offer lower prices and faster delivery than its competitors, strengthening its market power.
“Over the past 30 years, we have seen an extreme concentration of market power. [in the tech sector] …made the economy even better. inefficient, [has] It has caused income inequality,” Lawson told Al Jazeera.
Professor Standing of SOAS University expressed a similar opinion, saying, “Modern economies have developed and monopolies increasingly exist in all fields of activity.”
“This is especially true in information services, where plutocrats like Elon Musk are increasingly able to dictate the political direction of the services.” [such as social media platform X] They use their wealth to buy and finance politicians,” he added.
How can governments fight monopolies?
Governments can curb monopolies through antitrust laws, which refer to legal measures to prevent anticompetitive behavior. Antitrust laws give regulators the power to break up overbearing companies into smaller units, as seen in the 2011 breakup of U.S. telecommunications giant AT&T.
At its peak in the 1980s, AT&T oversaw many regional service providers, covering nearly every telephone network in the United States, limiting choice and jacking up prices. Regulators broke them up into smaller companies to increase competition and ultimately reduce costs.
In the United States, the Department of Justice has two important antitrust cases underway against Google. Google announced an overhaul of its global advertising business in 2021 and agreed to pay a $268 million fine as part of an antitrust settlement with French watchdogs.
Regulators may also impose fines for unreasonable pricing and seek to promote transparency and open standards to reduce barriers to market for new entrants. For example, in March 2025, the European Commission ordered Apple to open device connectivity to other companies and fined the tech giant for hiding cheaper options from consumers.
Beyond fines, regulators are mandating interoperability and fair practices under laws such as the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA). The DMA requires dominant platforms to share data, allow rivals to connect to their systems, and disclose transparent advertising and ranking practices, giving small businesses a fair chance to compete.
As the UK Information Commissioner recently warned, through a combination of legal action, economic oversight and structural reforms, authorities can prevent monopolies from stifling innovation or concentrating too much market power that could give them political power.
Lawson said he believes that “we can regulate super-powerful giants either by shrinking them and breaking them up into smaller private companies or by nationalizing them.”
“We’ve been here before,” he added. “Standard Oil was broken up in the 1910s. That was over a century ago. There’s no reason it can’t happen again.”
