Jorge Gonzalez Arocha
I couldn’t help but read with both expectation and surprise how the media reported Nvidia’s most spectacular fall on the New York Stock Exchange a few days ago.
The company, which had led the rally earlier this year thanks to the momentum created by artificial intelligence, lost more than $212 billion in market capitalization in a single session. The chipmaker’s shares fell 10% due to a widespread move in tech stocks, leaving the company below the $2 trillion valuation mark. The steep fall is the second-largest drop ever recorded by a company and Nvidia’s largest.
Analysts have attributed this downturn to various factors, including pressures on the semiconductor sector, forthcoming earnings reports, and a decline in shares of Super Micro Computer, a key Nvidia supplier. However, beyond the specific reasons, what should be most astonishing is the coldness with which we read and accept that the value of a company declines by $212 billion. Do you have any idea how much money is that? To illustrate the sheer scale of companies like Nvidia, which are at the forefront of our technological future, consider this: the amount in question exceeds the GDP of over 120 countries worldwide. Perhaps that highlights the massive volume of one -and only one- of the few companies dominating our future.
In addition, we understand that beyond any conceivable reason, it is primarily fear and the pursuit of wealth that continues driving the markets, the same markets where, at the end of the day, the future of communications, semiconductor production, and even the weapons we will use in the next wars are decided.
Clearly, this is not about concocting conspiracy theories; the data are clear, and none is secret. Consider Meta, which manages four of the largest social networking platforms, each boasting over one billion monthly active users: Facebook, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram. Notably, Facebook was the first to surpass one billion registered accounts and now has over three billion monthly active users. Similarly, numerous examples show how large corporations dominate vital public sectors: Microsoft and OpenAI lead in artificial intelligence development, Elon Musk ventures into electric vehicles, aerospace, and social networks, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company controls over 60% of the semiconductor market share, and both Meta and Apple are innovating in augmented and virtual reality.
Just by examining these facts, we recognize that the idea of the world being controlled by a few is not merely about power—it has become a part of a docile narrative that simplifies global dynamics into a vague they-and-we relationship. This oversimplification serves to perpetuate the very structures we aim to transform. The dichotomy of they-and-we creates an antinomic world with elusive solutions. Thus, the world remains perpetually incomplete if we fail to understand the nature of this domination within the cultural sphere, which thrives on fostering uncertainty and indeterminacy as foundational elements of global relations.
This is where many theorists get lost, thinking that the problem lies only with Elon Musk and his reckless but dangerous idea of wanting to control the space of public debate or future space exploration when both subjects should rather be discussed and directed by public opinion. The problem lies in the absolute and clear absence of control, in the excessive determination of a complex reason over human practice, in the fact that two centuries after Adam Smith, we still allow an invisible hand to control $212 billion or more, if you think about the valuation of all these mega-corporations that govern in practice the social relations on our planet. Then it is natural to answer by simply saying, “We can’t understand what is happening,” “Markets are reacting in this way…,” and a thousand other theories floating and barely connected to the real world of politics and economy. Unfortunately, the results of this new techno-feudal wave are not only metaphysical but very concrete. Today, it is about Nvidia, but tomorrow, it may be Meta and other spaces, as well as political, social, and cultural. In all these spheres, we come to discover “invisible forces” that control our lives.
Farhad Omar characterizes techno-feudalism as “the centralization of economic power and control in the hands of a few tech behemoths, which, through their dominion over vast data resources and digital platforms, have become the new masters of the global economy.” In his book Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, Yanis Varoufakis argues that modern markets have been” replaced by digital trading platforms which look like, but are not, markets.” He contends that entering amazon.com means leaving capitalism behind and stepping into something that resembles a “feudal fief”—a digital realm controlled by a single entity and its algorithm.
Beyond definitions, the new techno-feudal realm brings us not-so-promising results. Tycoon Bernie Madoff embezzled $65 billion from Wall Street in a Ponzi scheme. Sam Bankman-Fried, with apparently good intentions and a whole philosophy behind the good life based on utilitarianism and effective altruism, received 25 years in prison precisely for stealing $8 billion from his clients. “I never thought that what I was doing was illegal. But I tried to hold myself to a high standard, and I certainly didn’t meet that standard,” SBF said almost brazenly after being judged.
All of this speaks to how badly potential traps and crises undermine the current system. Because, in essence, we have disposed the regulation of it into completely uncertain, isolated, individual elements. Today, uncertainty dominates everything; we transpire indeterminacy and the absence of goals, consequences, or ends. The past is lost in the minute before we sit in front of our screens, and we can only see the immediate future at a distance of 100 clicks.
Guy Debord commented on The Society of Spectacle that, “The society which rests on modern industry is not accidentally or superficially spectacular, it is fundamentally spectaclist. In the spectacle, image of the ruling economy, the goal is nothing, development is all. The spectacle wants to get to nothing other than itself.”
From all this, it is clear that a critically sterile approach to managing our future has become the norm. The lack of regulations in the financial market, or any other segment of our society, requires a deep understanding of the political power and techno-feudal logic that underpin these circumstances. A good starting point might be to question how these facts contribute to the erosion of reality and, consequently, to our explosion-exploitation as social agents.