Investigative Reporter
January 23, 2026
January 23, 2026
RAW STORY
Donald Trump and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg smile at the White House. REUTERS/Brian Snyder
From Alphabet to X, eight of the largest tech giants spent a record of $71 million combined on U.S. political lobbying in 2025, according to a new report from Issue One, a bipartisan nonprofit working to reduce the influence of money in politics.
“Big Tech is using every tool in the toolbox to gain access and influence in Trump's Washington,” said Michael Beckel, senior research director at Issue One and report co-author.
It’s the latest example of “pay-to-play politics” under President Donald Trump, the report says — highlighting how tech, artificial intelligence (AI) and social media companies spent nearly $330,000 each day Congress was in session in 2025, and came away with a series of wins around industry regulations.
For one, this week the U.S. and China signed off on an agreement to sell social media company TikTok’s U.S. business to investors including Oracle, run by billionaire Trump backer Larry Ellison.
ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, spent $8.3 million on lobbying in 2025, after spending a record $10.4 million in 2024, according to the report.
“We're talking massive political contributions, massive lobbying expenditures, and these new filings show that there's been a huge boom for many of the highest profile tech players in Washington, making sure that they've got friends and ways to influence people in Washington,” Beckel said.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, spent the most among the tech giants on federal lobbying in 2025, at $26.29 million — up 8 percent from the previous year.
‘Delivering what AI wants’
AI companies “skyrocketed” lobbying spending in 2025, Beckel said.
That’s because AI companies stand to win “substantially” by such expenditure as they look to expand data centers and get ahead of competitors, said Jonathan Ernest, an assistant professor of economics at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.
“They're finding that that lobbying can be reasonably successful in persuading the administration to potentially craft laws that are maybe more favorable to them in certain ways,” Ernest said.
“They've found that these additional dollars being spent on lobbying are now more worthwhile than they were before because the likelihood of them being successful goes up, and the potential gains have increased as well.”
Nvidia, an AI company, increased lobbying expenditures eightfold in 2025, spending nearly $5 million.
OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, spent just shy of $3 million, approximately 70 percent up on 2024.
“The overwhelming pattern that we've seen from the Trump administration is putting certain industries and certain companies at the forefront of how they're making policy decisions,” Beckel said.
In December, Trump signed an executive order limiting state AI regulation, which Beckel said was “basically delivering to the AI industry what it wants.”
“This seems pretty clear that the Trump White House is playing favorites, and the industry leaders who are able to make their voices heard in Washington through political contributions and lobbying expenditures have a prime seat at the table right now,” Beckel said.
Donald Trump and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg smile at the White House. REUTERS/Brian Snyder
From Alphabet to X, eight of the largest tech giants spent a record of $71 million combined on U.S. political lobbying in 2025, according to a new report from Issue One, a bipartisan nonprofit working to reduce the influence of money in politics.
“Big Tech is using every tool in the toolbox to gain access and influence in Trump's Washington,” said Michael Beckel, senior research director at Issue One and report co-author.
It’s the latest example of “pay-to-play politics” under President Donald Trump, the report says — highlighting how tech, artificial intelligence (AI) and social media companies spent nearly $330,000 each day Congress was in session in 2025, and came away with a series of wins around industry regulations.
For one, this week the U.S. and China signed off on an agreement to sell social media company TikTok’s U.S. business to investors including Oracle, run by billionaire Trump backer Larry Ellison.
ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, spent $8.3 million on lobbying in 2025, after spending a record $10.4 million in 2024, according to the report.
“We're talking massive political contributions, massive lobbying expenditures, and these new filings show that there's been a huge boom for many of the highest profile tech players in Washington, making sure that they've got friends and ways to influence people in Washington,” Beckel said.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, spent the most among the tech giants on federal lobbying in 2025, at $26.29 million — up 8 percent from the previous year.
‘Delivering what AI wants’
AI companies “skyrocketed” lobbying spending in 2025, Beckel said.
That’s because AI companies stand to win “substantially” by such expenditure as they look to expand data centers and get ahead of competitors, said Jonathan Ernest, an assistant professor of economics at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.
“They're finding that that lobbying can be reasonably successful in persuading the administration to potentially craft laws that are maybe more favorable to them in certain ways,” Ernest said.
“They've found that these additional dollars being spent on lobbying are now more worthwhile than they were before because the likelihood of them being successful goes up, and the potential gains have increased as well.”
Nvidia, an AI company, increased lobbying expenditures eightfold in 2025, spending nearly $5 million.
OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, spent just shy of $3 million, approximately 70 percent up on 2024.
“The overwhelming pattern that we've seen from the Trump administration is putting certain industries and certain companies at the forefront of how they're making policy decisions,” Beckel said.
In December, Trump signed an executive order limiting state AI regulation, which Beckel said was “basically delivering to the AI industry what it wants.”
“This seems pretty clear that the Trump White House is playing favorites, and the industry leaders who are able to make their voices heard in Washington through political contributions and lobbying expenditures have a prime seat at the table right now,” Beckel said.
‘Influentially large’
The report examined the latest lobbying disclosures from Alphabet, Microsoft, Snap, X, ByteDance, Meta, Nvidia and OpenAI.
Alphabet spent $16.62 million in 2025, second-most of the Big Tech players and up 12 percent from the previous year. Microsoft spent $10.1 million — just 2 percent less than its 2024 spending, according to the report.
All the companies either declined to comment or did not respond.
Issue One said curtailing the influence of Big Tech money on politics was supported by both Democrats and Republicans. The nonprofit advocates for "common sense reforms to the tech sector to help ensure that Congress holds Big Tech accountable," Beckel said.
For tech giants with billions in revenue, lobbying expenditures don’t represent “a huge chunk of their operating budget, but it's still a very influentially large amount of money,” Ernest said.
But, that doesn’t mean tech giants will continue to spend on lobbying at a growing rate.
“It will depend on how much it feels like it's needed for them,” Ernest said.
“If they feel like they already have an administration that's reasonably lax in terms of enforcement of regulatory matters or reasonably supportive of companies that even may be amassing some sort of advantage by growing very large and becoming more monopolistic, then they'll find it less useful to continue to put money towards those ends.”
The report examined the latest lobbying disclosures from Alphabet, Microsoft, Snap, X, ByteDance, Meta, Nvidia and OpenAI.
Alphabet spent $16.62 million in 2025, second-most of the Big Tech players and up 12 percent from the previous year. Microsoft spent $10.1 million — just 2 percent less than its 2024 spending, according to the report.
All the companies either declined to comment or did not respond.
Issue One said curtailing the influence of Big Tech money on politics was supported by both Democrats and Republicans. The nonprofit advocates for "common sense reforms to the tech sector to help ensure that Congress holds Big Tech accountable," Beckel said.
For tech giants with billions in revenue, lobbying expenditures don’t represent “a huge chunk of their operating budget, but it's still a very influentially large amount of money,” Ernest said.
But, that doesn’t mean tech giants will continue to spend on lobbying at a growing rate.
“It will depend on how much it feels like it's needed for them,” Ernest said.
“If they feel like they already have an administration that's reasonably lax in terms of enforcement of regulatory matters or reasonably supportive of companies that even may be amassing some sort of advantage by growing very large and becoming more monopolistic, then they'll find it less useful to continue to put money towards those ends.”
Alexandria Jacobson is a Chicago-based investigative reporter at Raw Story, focusing on money in politics, government accountability and electoral politics. Prior to joining Raw Story in 2023, Alex reported extensively on social justice, business and tech issues for several news outlets, including ABC News, the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune. She can be reached at alexandria@rawstory.com. More about Alexandria Jacobson.
US Union Leader Tells Davos Elites ‘You’re Gonna Have a Revolution’ If AI Wipes Out Jobs
The president of the AFL-CIO warned of a large-scale revolt if corporate leaders use artificial intelligence to “put people out on the street with no path forward.”
AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler speaks during a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on January 21, 2026.
(Photo: World Economic Forum/YouTube)
Jake Johnson
Jan 21, 2026
COMMON DREAMS
The leader of the AFL-CIO, the largest union federation in the United States, told elites and others gathered at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Wednesday that rapid advances in artificial intelligence risk turbocharging the worst inequities of the existing economic order, displacing workers en masse while enriching those at the very top.
The president of the AFL-CIO warned of a large-scale revolt if corporate leaders use artificial intelligence to “put people out on the street with no path forward.”
AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler speaks during a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on January 21, 2026.
(Photo: World Economic Forum/YouTube)
Jake Johnson
Jan 21, 2026
COMMON DREAMS
The leader of the AFL-CIO, the largest union federation in the United States, told elites and others gathered at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Wednesday that rapid advances in artificial intelligence risk turbocharging the worst inequities of the existing economic order, displacing workers en masse while enriching those at the very top.
Liz Shuler, the AFL-CIO’s president, said during a panel discussion that if the billionaires and corporate titans currently directing AI developments are “looking to just deskill, dehumanize, replace workers” and “put people out on the street with no path forward—then absolutely you’re gonna have a revolution.”
The economy in the US and around the world “isn’t working for working people now,” Shuler noted, citing unprecedented levels of inequality, workers being forced to take on multiple jobs to make ends meet, and widespread economic instability.
“Now, put AI on top of that,” she continued. “The insecurity that we’re all experiencing—the fact that people are waking up and some new technology is landing on them in their jobs, without training, without them having a say. Of course they’re going to be anxious, of course they’re going to be feeling insecure about what the future holds.”
“I think we really need to stop, and say: ‘Who are we doing this for, what are the results we want, and how we get there?’” said Shuler. “We get there by including workers in the process.”
The International Monetary Fund has estimated that roughly 40% of global employment is “exposed to AI.” In advanced economies, according to the analysis, around 60% of jobs could be impacted by AI, either positively or negatively—with some jobs expected to disappear entirely.
The economy in the US and around the world “isn’t working for working people now,” Shuler noted, citing unprecedented levels of inequality, workers being forced to take on multiple jobs to make ends meet, and widespread economic instability.
“Now, put AI on top of that,” she continued. “The insecurity that we’re all experiencing—the fact that people are waking up and some new technology is landing on them in their jobs, without training, without them having a say. Of course they’re going to be anxious, of course they’re going to be feeling insecure about what the future holds.”
“I think we really need to stop, and say: ‘Who are we doing this for, what are the results we want, and how we get there?’” said Shuler. “We get there by including workers in the process.”
The International Monetary Fund has estimated that roughly 40% of global employment is “exposed to AI.” In advanced economies, according to the analysis, around 60% of jobs could be impacted by AI, either positively or negatively—with some jobs expected to disappear entirely.
Multinational corporate behemoths such as Amazon are actively planning to replace many of their workers with robots, efforts that have sparked the kinds of dire warnings that Shuler expressed at Davos, where AI is a centerpiece of this year’s gathering.
In a letter to Amazon’s billionaire founder, Jeff Bezos, late last year, US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) asked, “Are you going to simply dump these workers out on the street, or will you treat them with the dignity they deserve?”
“If Amazon succeeds on its massive automation plan,” Sanders warned, “it will have a profound impact on blue-collar workers throughout America and will likely be used as a model by large corporations throughout America, including Walmart and UPS, to displace tens of millions of jobs.”
In a letter to Amazon’s billionaire founder, Jeff Bezos, late last year, US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) asked, “Are you going to simply dump these workers out on the street, or will you treat them with the dignity they deserve?”
“If Amazon succeeds on its massive automation plan,” Sanders warned, “it will have a profound impact on blue-collar workers throughout America and will likely be used as a model by large corporations throughout America, including Walmart and UPS, to displace tens of millions of jobs.”
Ruling-Class Control of AI Is Making Things More Expensive and You Poorer
That’s why billionaire techno-fascists are trying so hard to imprison us within their AI-dominated world.
Rural Michigan residents rally against the $7 billion Stargate data center planned on southeast Michigan farm land.
(Photo by Jim West/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Kenny Stancil
Jan 25, 2026
Skyrocketing Electricity Bills
Energy-hungry AI systems require immense amounts of computing power. That’s why tech giants like Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft are investing billions of dollars to expedite the construction of massive, primarily gas-powered data centers across the United States. This AI-driven surge in electricity demand, combined with the Trump administration’s ongoing attacks on renewable energy supply and battery storage, is putting increased strain on the power grid. The result? Higher utility bills.
According to a Bloomberg analysis published in 2025, “Wholesale electricity costs as much as 267% more than it did five years ago in areas near data centers. That’s being passed on to customers.” The rapid development of data centers connected to PJM Interconnection—the largest power grid operator in the United States, serving 67 million customers throughout the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic—increased the cost of procuring electricity by $9.3 billion from June 2024 to June 2025, with expenses only expected to rise further.
If this trend continues and data centers become the majority-users of a utility, then utilities may demand even deeper sacrifices from everyday ratepayers to keep their most powerful customers happy.
Residential ratepayers are shouldering this burden unfairly. As the beneficiaries of state-granted monopolies, for-profit utilities are subject to state regulation of prices. Public utility commissioners are supposed to set rates that enable customers to receive affordable power and utilities to cover operating costs and make enough profit to attract investors to fund infrastructure expansions and upgrades. For years, however, increasingly captured commissioners have been approving rate hike requests that pad the pockets of utility executives and shareholders (to the tune of $50 billion per year in excess profit, according to the American Economic Liberties Project).
Now, there’s mounting evidence that state regulators are subsidizing Big Tech’s out-of-control power consumption by forcing customers to fund discounted rates for data centers. This is a boon for investor-owned utilities, which profit from greater energy use. For the rest of us, it makes it harder to scrape by every month. If this trend continues and data centers become the majority-users of a utility, then utilities may demand even deeper sacrifices from everyday ratepayers to keep their most powerful customers happy.
Algorithmic Price Gouging
Two shoppers could walk into the same grocery store at the same time and purchase the same product—and yet be charged different prices. This was the conclusion of a recent experiment conducted by Groundwork Collaborative, Consumer Reports, and More Perfect Union. The study, which focused on online grocer Instacart, found that nearly three-quarters of items tested were offered to customers at multiple price points, with an average difference of 13% between the lowest and highest prices.
What the hell are we doing building ruinous housing for super-computers when we could—and should—be building healthy housing (and clean energy and mass transit) for people?
How is this possible? Unfortunately, this increasingly common practice of “surveillance pricing” is the logical outcome of allowing rent-seeking firms to transform our personal data into an asset that can be endlessly mined. AI is turbocharging this phenomenon, from RealPage’s rent-gouging software to Delta Air Line’s use of Fetcherr, an AI-fueled pricing technology.
Negative Environmental and Health Externalities
AI is already wreaking profound havoc on public and environmental health. The rare earth elements used in the microchips that power AI systems tend to be mined in ecologically harmful ways. Data center construction implies habitat destruction, and completed facilities produce significant amounts of toxic electronic waste, which typically contains mercury, lead, and other hazardous materials. Data centers consume tremendous amounts of water, sometimes dispossessing local residents of access in the process. Making matters worse, Big Tech’s quest for cheap electricity is leading it to build data centers in all kinds of places, including drought-stricken states like Arizona and Nevada, compounding preexisting water shortages.
Moreover, most data centers are being powered by planet-heating fossil fuels, especially methane gas. In addition, forecasted AI-related energy shortfalls are leading utilities to keep aging coal plants running and even to revive particularly dirty “peaker” plants, while the use of on-site diesel generators is also growing.
On top of the fact that fossil fuel-powered data centers spew heat-trapping gasses into the atmosphere, research has shown that AI degrades air quality in other ways. Specifically, across its full lifecycle—from chip manufacturing to data center operation—AI contributes to the emission of fine particulate matter or soot, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen dioxide. These pollutants are linked to numerous adverse health impacts, including lung cancer, asthma, heart attacks, cardiovascular disease, strokes, cognitive decline, and premature mortality. One study estimates that data centers are on track to account for at least 1,300 premature deaths and $20 billion in public health-related costs per year in the United States by 2030. These deleterious consequences are poised to hit already-disadvantaged populations the hardest. That includes the low-income, predominantly Black neighborhoods currently fighting back against Elon Musk’s xAI data centers in South Memphis.
Deferred Green Economic Development Means Climate-flation
What the hell are we doing building ruinous housing for super-computers when we could—and should—be building healthy housing (and clean energy and mass transit) for people? The opportunity costs of supporting Big Tech’s AI data center buildout are striking.
A new analysis from the Rhodium Group estimates that for the first time in two years, US greenhouse gas emissions increased in 2025. The 2.4% uptick in national GHG pollution was driven in large part by data centers and crypto mining. This regressive form of economic development is destabilizing the climate and leaving people less materially secure. It is also being pursued as a reactionary alternative to green economic populism.
It seems clear that a major reason why the ruling class is so heavily invested in AI’s triumph is because they dream of burying organized labor and worker demands once and for all.
Despite recent efforts to decouple climate and affordability, the two issues remain inextricably linked. There’s mounting evidence that climate inaction is exacerbating the cost-of-living crisis. The best way forward is to fight for policies that would simultaneously decarbonize and democratize our society, to confront climate chaos and grotesque inequality at the same time.
Failing to do so, as we are now amid AI-mania, will only lock-in more fossil fuel pollution, thus aggravating extreme weather and with it, supply chain disruptions and price shocks. Current and future generations will be forced to endure a more brutish and expensive world full of economic insecurity and uneven, but rampant, suffering.
Endgame: Wage Repression, Tyranny, and Unlimited Rent Seeking
Some AI-related costs have not yet been realized. But if Silicon Valley oligarchs succeed in empowering firms all across the economy to eliminate jobs (and deskill further pockets of the workforce), skyrocketing unemployment would empower bosses to suppress wages. It seems clear that a major reason why the ruling class is so heavily invested in AI’s triumph is because they dream of burying organized labor and worker demands once and for all. Meanwhile, the collision of declining pay and rising prices would push more and more people closer to the brink.
How are people supposed to enjoy the leisure time ostensibly provided by AI advancements if they can’t afford basic necessities? Is rapid access to information a net-positive no matter the quality of that information? Isn’t it more likely that society’s capacity for critical thinking will be further degraded? And if we deprive the next generation of literacy while immersing them in a poisoned information ecosystem, doesn’t that increase the likelihood that authoritarian demagogues will retain power?
That’s why billionaire techno-fascists are trying so hard to imprison us within their AI-dominated world. Whether by preempting regulation of AI inside existing borders or violently establishing new, regulation-free jurisdictions where they can impose their will, a tiny class of digital overlords and their political allies are seeking to end democracy so they can extract rents with no constraints. We can’t afford to let their dystopian vision become reality.
Kenny Stancil is senior researcher at the Revolving Door Project and a former staff writer for Common Dreams.
Full Bio >
A double-exposure photograph shows a portrait of Elon Musk and a telephone displaying the grok artificial intelligence logo in Kerlouan in Brittany in France on February 18 2025.
(Photo by Vincent Feuray / Hans Lucas via AFP/ Getty Images)
That’s why billionaire techno-fascists are trying so hard to imprison us within their AI-dominated world.
Rural Michigan residents rally against the $7 billion Stargate data center planned on southeast Michigan farm land.
(Photo by Jim West/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Kenny Stancil
Jan 25, 2026
Revolving Door Project
More focus is needed on the downsides of the AI “revolution,” which is better understood as a speculative bubble (built in part through shaky circular financing deals between chip maker Nvidia, cloud provider Oracle, and model builder OpenAI, among others) that’s liable to burst. If and when that happens, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s preemptive lobbying for a taxpayer-funded bailout is likely to pay off, leaving the public on the hook. That would be outrageous, of course, considering how much direct and indirect financial support tech giants have already received from federal and state governments, before and throughout the ongoing artificial intelligence frenzy. On the other hand, if AI “succeeds”—destroying millions of jobs, pillaging communities, and despoiling ecosystems in the process—working people will have subsidized our own subjugation. Widespread opposition to planned data centers across the political spectrum suggests that the public understands this.
Here’s a tangible downside: The prices of many essential goods are already rising as a result of the anti-democratic rush to build hyperscale data centers and the growing use of AI programs in numerous sectors. In what follows, we explain how the proliferation of both AI software (i.e., seemingly immaterial computational tools) and hardware (i.e., the resource-intensive and highly polluting infrastructure underpinning those tools) is driving up the costs of necessities now and in the future.
More focus is needed on the downsides of the AI “revolution,” which is better understood as a speculative bubble (built in part through shaky circular financing deals between chip maker Nvidia, cloud provider Oracle, and model builder OpenAI, among others) that’s liable to burst. If and when that happens, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s preemptive lobbying for a taxpayer-funded bailout is likely to pay off, leaving the public on the hook. That would be outrageous, of course, considering how much direct and indirect financial support tech giants have already received from federal and state governments, before and throughout the ongoing artificial intelligence frenzy. On the other hand, if AI “succeeds”—destroying millions of jobs, pillaging communities, and despoiling ecosystems in the process—working people will have subsidized our own subjugation. Widespread opposition to planned data centers across the political spectrum suggests that the public understands this.
Here’s a tangible downside: The prices of many essential goods are already rising as a result of the anti-democratic rush to build hyperscale data centers and the growing use of AI programs in numerous sectors. In what follows, we explain how the proliferation of both AI software (i.e., seemingly immaterial computational tools) and hardware (i.e., the resource-intensive and highly polluting infrastructure underpinning those tools) is driving up the costs of necessities now and in the future.
Skyrocketing Electricity Bills
Energy-hungry AI systems require immense amounts of computing power. That’s why tech giants like Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft are investing billions of dollars to expedite the construction of massive, primarily gas-powered data centers across the United States. This AI-driven surge in electricity demand, combined with the Trump administration’s ongoing attacks on renewable energy supply and battery storage, is putting increased strain on the power grid. The result? Higher utility bills.
According to a Bloomberg analysis published in 2025, “Wholesale electricity costs as much as 267% more than it did five years ago in areas near data centers. That’s being passed on to customers.” The rapid development of data centers connected to PJM Interconnection—the largest power grid operator in the United States, serving 67 million customers throughout the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic—increased the cost of procuring electricity by $9.3 billion from June 2024 to June 2025, with expenses only expected to rise further.
If this trend continues and data centers become the majority-users of a utility, then utilities may demand even deeper sacrifices from everyday ratepayers to keep their most powerful customers happy.
Residential ratepayers are shouldering this burden unfairly. As the beneficiaries of state-granted monopolies, for-profit utilities are subject to state regulation of prices. Public utility commissioners are supposed to set rates that enable customers to receive affordable power and utilities to cover operating costs and make enough profit to attract investors to fund infrastructure expansions and upgrades. For years, however, increasingly captured commissioners have been approving rate hike requests that pad the pockets of utility executives and shareholders (to the tune of $50 billion per year in excess profit, according to the American Economic Liberties Project).
Now, there’s mounting evidence that state regulators are subsidizing Big Tech’s out-of-control power consumption by forcing customers to fund discounted rates for data centers. This is a boon for investor-owned utilities, which profit from greater energy use. For the rest of us, it makes it harder to scrape by every month. If this trend continues and data centers become the majority-users of a utility, then utilities may demand even deeper sacrifices from everyday ratepayers to keep their most powerful customers happy.
Automated Health Insurance Denials, Home Insurance Rate Hikes
Earlier this month, the US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) launched the so-called Wasteful and Inappropriate Service Reduction (WISeR) Model. This pilot program allows six companies in six states to use AI to determine whether traditional Medicare enrollees’ requested medical care should be covered.
Reporting on this AI-powered prior authorization program last year, the New York Times noted that “similar algorithms used by insurers have been the subject of several high-profile lawsuits, which have asserted that the technology allowed the companies to swiftly deny large batches of claims and cut patients off from care in rehabilitation facilities.” Firms tapped to manage the WISeR Model “would have a strong financial incentive to deny claims,” the newspaper observed. “Medicare plans to pay them a share of the savings generated from rejections.”
An early warning that CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz is imposing “AI death panels” aimed at preventing seniors from accessing needed healthcare is apt. It’s also worth stressing that Medicare Advantage and private insurance plans have already been using AI-powered prior authorization, with costly and deadly effects for ordinary people.
Property insurers, too, are increasingly relying on AI to project—with zero transparency and questionable accuracy—climate risks, which is contributing to coverage withdrawals and rate hikes in communities around the United States. According to a recent report from McKinsey & Company, the insurance industry’s growing use of AI has led to “a 10 to 15% increase in premium growth.” While industry profits and executive compensation are on the rise, homeowners and renters alike are being hurt by the declining availability and affordability of home insurance. A climate and insurance-driven foreclosure wave, which would starve municipal budgets and could trigger a broader economic crisis, is a real possibility.
Earlier this month, the US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) launched the so-called Wasteful and Inappropriate Service Reduction (WISeR) Model. This pilot program allows six companies in six states to use AI to determine whether traditional Medicare enrollees’ requested medical care should be covered.
Reporting on this AI-powered prior authorization program last year, the New York Times noted that “similar algorithms used by insurers have been the subject of several high-profile lawsuits, which have asserted that the technology allowed the companies to swiftly deny large batches of claims and cut patients off from care in rehabilitation facilities.” Firms tapped to manage the WISeR Model “would have a strong financial incentive to deny claims,” the newspaper observed. “Medicare plans to pay them a share of the savings generated from rejections.”
An early warning that CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz is imposing “AI death panels” aimed at preventing seniors from accessing needed healthcare is apt. It’s also worth stressing that Medicare Advantage and private insurance plans have already been using AI-powered prior authorization, with costly and deadly effects for ordinary people.
Property insurers, too, are increasingly relying on AI to project—with zero transparency and questionable accuracy—climate risks, which is contributing to coverage withdrawals and rate hikes in communities around the United States. According to a recent report from McKinsey & Company, the insurance industry’s growing use of AI has led to “a 10 to 15% increase in premium growth.” While industry profits and executive compensation are on the rise, homeowners and renters alike are being hurt by the declining availability and affordability of home insurance. A climate and insurance-driven foreclosure wave, which would starve municipal budgets and could trigger a broader economic crisis, is a real possibility.
Algorithmic Price Gouging
Two shoppers could walk into the same grocery store at the same time and purchase the same product—and yet be charged different prices. This was the conclusion of a recent experiment conducted by Groundwork Collaborative, Consumer Reports, and More Perfect Union. The study, which focused on online grocer Instacart, found that nearly three-quarters of items tested were offered to customers at multiple price points, with an average difference of 13% between the lowest and highest prices.
What the hell are we doing building ruinous housing for super-computers when we could—and should—be building healthy housing (and clean energy and mass transit) for people?
How is this possible? Unfortunately, this increasingly common practice of “surveillance pricing” is the logical outcome of allowing rent-seeking firms to transform our personal data into an asset that can be endlessly mined. AI is turbocharging this phenomenon, from RealPage’s rent-gouging software to Delta Air Line’s use of Fetcherr, an AI-fueled pricing technology.
Negative Environmental and Health Externalities
AI is already wreaking profound havoc on public and environmental health. The rare earth elements used in the microchips that power AI systems tend to be mined in ecologically harmful ways. Data center construction implies habitat destruction, and completed facilities produce significant amounts of toxic electronic waste, which typically contains mercury, lead, and other hazardous materials. Data centers consume tremendous amounts of water, sometimes dispossessing local residents of access in the process. Making matters worse, Big Tech’s quest for cheap electricity is leading it to build data centers in all kinds of places, including drought-stricken states like Arizona and Nevada, compounding preexisting water shortages.
Moreover, most data centers are being powered by planet-heating fossil fuels, especially methane gas. In addition, forecasted AI-related energy shortfalls are leading utilities to keep aging coal plants running and even to revive particularly dirty “peaker” plants, while the use of on-site diesel generators is also growing.
On top of the fact that fossil fuel-powered data centers spew heat-trapping gasses into the atmosphere, research has shown that AI degrades air quality in other ways. Specifically, across its full lifecycle—from chip manufacturing to data center operation—AI contributes to the emission of fine particulate matter or soot, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen dioxide. These pollutants are linked to numerous adverse health impacts, including lung cancer, asthma, heart attacks, cardiovascular disease, strokes, cognitive decline, and premature mortality. One study estimates that data centers are on track to account for at least 1,300 premature deaths and $20 billion in public health-related costs per year in the United States by 2030. These deleterious consequences are poised to hit already-disadvantaged populations the hardest. That includes the low-income, predominantly Black neighborhoods currently fighting back against Elon Musk’s xAI data centers in South Memphis.
Deferred Green Economic Development Means Climate-flation
What the hell are we doing building ruinous housing for super-computers when we could—and should—be building healthy housing (and clean energy and mass transit) for people? The opportunity costs of supporting Big Tech’s AI data center buildout are striking.
A new analysis from the Rhodium Group estimates that for the first time in two years, US greenhouse gas emissions increased in 2025. The 2.4% uptick in national GHG pollution was driven in large part by data centers and crypto mining. This regressive form of economic development is destabilizing the climate and leaving people less materially secure. It is also being pursued as a reactionary alternative to green economic populism.
It seems clear that a major reason why the ruling class is so heavily invested in AI’s triumph is because they dream of burying organized labor and worker demands once and for all.
Despite recent efforts to decouple climate and affordability, the two issues remain inextricably linked. There’s mounting evidence that climate inaction is exacerbating the cost-of-living crisis. The best way forward is to fight for policies that would simultaneously decarbonize and democratize our society, to confront climate chaos and grotesque inequality at the same time.
Failing to do so, as we are now amid AI-mania, will only lock-in more fossil fuel pollution, thus aggravating extreme weather and with it, supply chain disruptions and price shocks. Current and future generations will be forced to endure a more brutish and expensive world full of economic insecurity and uneven, but rampant, suffering.
Endgame: Wage Repression, Tyranny, and Unlimited Rent Seeking
Some AI-related costs have not yet been realized. But if Silicon Valley oligarchs succeed in empowering firms all across the economy to eliminate jobs (and deskill further pockets of the workforce), skyrocketing unemployment would empower bosses to suppress wages. It seems clear that a major reason why the ruling class is so heavily invested in AI’s triumph is because they dream of burying organized labor and worker demands once and for all. Meanwhile, the collision of declining pay and rising prices would push more and more people closer to the brink.
How are people supposed to enjoy the leisure time ostensibly provided by AI advancements if they can’t afford basic necessities? Is rapid access to information a net-positive no matter the quality of that information? Isn’t it more likely that society’s capacity for critical thinking will be further degraded? And if we deprive the next generation of literacy while immersing them in a poisoned information ecosystem, doesn’t that increase the likelihood that authoritarian demagogues will retain power?
That’s why billionaire techno-fascists are trying so hard to imprison us within their AI-dominated world. Whether by preempting regulation of AI inside existing borders or violently establishing new, regulation-free jurisdictions where they can impose their will, a tiny class of digital overlords and their political allies are seeking to end democracy so they can extract rents with no constraints. We can’t afford to let their dystopian vision become reality.
Kenny Stancil is senior researcher at the Revolving Door Project and a former staff writer for Common Dreams.
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The Algorithms of Collapse
Capitalism has elected AI as the next tool to distribute and dismantle labor, create a new power structure in the world, and repress social and political movements.
Capitalism has elected AI as the next tool to distribute and dismantle labor, create a new power structure in the world, and repress social and political movements.
A double-exposure photograph shows a portrait of Elon Musk and a telephone displaying the grok artificial intelligence logo in Kerlouan in Brittany in France on February 18 2025.
(Photo by Vincent Feuray / Hans Lucas via AFP/ Getty Images)
João Camargo
Jan 25, 2026
Jan 25, 2026
Common Dreams
AI is being diffused throughout society under chatbots, models, and agents which are explicitly reactionary and create communicative and physical walls to defend the status quo.
Capitalism has elected AI as the next tool to distribute and dismantle labor, create a new power structure in the world, and repress social and political movements. Unchecked, it will bring us right up to a collapse brought on by war and climate chaos.
Forget about the Terminator stories of Artificial General Intelligence and Artificial Superintelligence. These are closer to sci-fi than to reality. We don’t need to speculate about things that don’t exist in the AI realm. What we do need to look at are the things that already exist and are being deployed massively.
The main objective of AI is the automation of historical automation itself. AI holds an irresistible promise for capitalist elites: to be able to automatically direct most of the instructions that guide human activity, reducing the power of social classes other than the owners of the algorithms. Complete economic and social planning for the rich. In particular, they want to reduce the power that the working class has exercised in the past, the power to push toward the future and gain the political, social, and economic transformations that reduce or eliminate inequality and injustice.
Data centers today are nightmare factories.
A key and complementary objective of AI is to create an overwhelming monopoly over knowledge, codified via Large Language Models, Computer Vision, Convolutional Neural Networks, and other Machine “Learning” models. This monopoly is being designed to utterly transform social relations and install a reactionary hegemony that widely surpasses neoliberal capitalism and feeds a far-right dystopia.
The third essential objective has to do with the control of violence and political repression. For that effect, AI provides different tools to be used in declared and now mostly-undeclared states of war. During the Gaza genocide, human targets were chosen with AI, its models were used to determine the biggest impacts for sequences of targets in order to achieve maximum infrastructure and human suffering consequences. Obviously, AI is used to maximize efficiency in all war logistics, calculating payloads, schedules, and material distribution. In Ukraine, most of the war is being conducted with drones, many of them autonomous and with self-selecting target capabilities powered by AI. Automated killing machines that don’t question orders or targets are not only available, but already deployed in different war fronts. On the other hand, automated political repression and persecution in the streets and protests is growing, though it is currently at the data gathering and training phase. In the USA, Immigration and Customs Enforcement is deploying different apps developed by companies like Palantir to maximize social disruption and to capture the most vulnerable people in the country.
There is huge pressure to prevent any meaningful regulation of AI, in particular for AI used by police and the military. Surveillance with facial (FRT) and body recognition is used outdoors to map out movements and participants in protests and actions. Mapping of movement connections and alliances can be done via online pattern recognition, as well as out in the streets. Automatic protest repression combined with purposeful miscommunication and disinformation might make the usual protests simply nonviable.
And of course, AI can is being used for hacking by private companies and states. Considering the hackable systems now in place throughout society and the economy—banking systems, social security, electric and transport systems, aviation and navigation systems, pension management, surveillance apparatus, healthcare systems and, of course, all the internet and the data in public and private servers—massively disruptive events at large or small scale are inevitable. Many political and social movements will be targeted. This can mean accounts erased, financial assets blockaded, and growing personal political repression via the suppression of communication capacities. This can also happen at a much bigger scale, targeting cities, countries or entire regions.
For the most important investments and political efforts, AI is being introduced as a labor replacement tool, a cultural hegemony monopoly creator, a military and surveillance weapon. Most of this is being done with people actively engaging and inviting the models into their everyday life (even more than it already was). The resistance to large data center projects is important and inspiring, but the overwhelming threat of AI goes well beyond its emissions, water consumption, and land occupation (although they plan on multiplying by many factors the current numbers, especially in Europe). Data centers today are nightmare factories.
So far, AI hasn’t been able to deliver on a key aspect: successfully automated processes that allow for the mass firing of people, substituted by effective algorithms. This is clear: 95% of all investment made by companies in AI has led to no profit, which is making capitalists nervous. But it hasn’t in any meaningful way stopped its spread.
When we say AI, we mean Machine Learning, Robotics, and Expert Systems. Currently AI is mostly a process of recognition, classification, and very high probability calculation, based on massive amounts of data with a good human interface. The interface is the most important trick for the general public. The public debate surrounding this issue is deeply anti-historical and anti-materialist, almost entirely it is white noise.
AI is not replicating or reproducing human intelligence. It is trying to encode human activities into repeatable procedures that can create reproducible algorithms. As it is not imitating our biological intelligence, it is trying to imitate what it can more or less “comprehend” about the previously referred algorithms—it is copying labor and social relations, their mechanisms and their predictable outcomes. Like other abstractions that rule our lives, such as money, algorithms produce real outcomes. AI ushers an irresistible promise for capitalist elites: to be able to automatically direct most of the instructions that guide human activity, reducing the power of social relations, in particular the power of the working class to impose political, social, and economic transformations that reduce inequality and injustice.
AI’s neural networks don’t mimic the human brain at all, but instead automate the “labor of perception,” classifying and interpreting written, numeric, and visual data and establishing associations. This creates a synthesis of knowledge, of the collective form of knowledge that comes from social cooperation. As explained before, another of its objectives has been to establish a monopoly over knowledge, scrapped from every website, database, online encyclopedia, and bite it is fed. It is then no wonder that Elon Musk and the far-right are going after Wikipedia.
These are some of the reasons why attempting to hard-code ethical rules or constraints into these models will not work, as they will not change the underlying political and economic functions of the data it is trained under and the algorithms generated and fabricated. Of course we understand that language itself is an algorithm, all the data as well and, of course, the internet as well. But with AI, we’re talking about a new level of control. The fundamental abstract purposes of AI as it exists now are the extension of quantification, control, and exploitation. The Labor Theory of Automation posits that AI is the result of a set of technological advancements that have abstracted automation to the point where it can automate itself. As we now have the technical ability to make such machines and capitalism has the economic incentive to massively deploy them, they want to use it to reorganize the division of labor even further in their favor. It is the apex of automation: Automation of Automation.
Facing such seemingly insurmountable odds, social and ruptural movements cannot but ask what to do about AI. There are basically two options: Drop out of the grid or acquire tech capabilities that allow us to resist the onslaught of these algorithms of collapse.
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
João Camargo
Joao Camargo is a climate activist in grassroots movement Climaximo in Portugal and in the Climate Jobs campaign. He's an environmental engineer and climate change researcher at the University of Lisbon and the author of two books: Climate Change Combat Manual (in Portugal and Spain) and Portugal in Flames - How to rescue the forests.
Full Bio >
AI is being diffused throughout society under chatbots, models, and agents which are explicitly reactionary and create communicative and physical walls to defend the status quo.
Capitalism has elected AI as the next tool to distribute and dismantle labor, create a new power structure in the world, and repress social and political movements. Unchecked, it will bring us right up to a collapse brought on by war and climate chaos.
Forget about the Terminator stories of Artificial General Intelligence and Artificial Superintelligence. These are closer to sci-fi than to reality. We don’t need to speculate about things that don’t exist in the AI realm. What we do need to look at are the things that already exist and are being deployed massively.
The main objective of AI is the automation of historical automation itself. AI holds an irresistible promise for capitalist elites: to be able to automatically direct most of the instructions that guide human activity, reducing the power of social classes other than the owners of the algorithms. Complete economic and social planning for the rich. In particular, they want to reduce the power that the working class has exercised in the past, the power to push toward the future and gain the political, social, and economic transformations that reduce or eliminate inequality and injustice.
Data centers today are nightmare factories.
A key and complementary objective of AI is to create an overwhelming monopoly over knowledge, codified via Large Language Models, Computer Vision, Convolutional Neural Networks, and other Machine “Learning” models. This monopoly is being designed to utterly transform social relations and install a reactionary hegemony that widely surpasses neoliberal capitalism and feeds a far-right dystopia.
The third essential objective has to do with the control of violence and political repression. For that effect, AI provides different tools to be used in declared and now mostly-undeclared states of war. During the Gaza genocide, human targets were chosen with AI, its models were used to determine the biggest impacts for sequences of targets in order to achieve maximum infrastructure and human suffering consequences. Obviously, AI is used to maximize efficiency in all war logistics, calculating payloads, schedules, and material distribution. In Ukraine, most of the war is being conducted with drones, many of them autonomous and with self-selecting target capabilities powered by AI. Automated killing machines that don’t question orders or targets are not only available, but already deployed in different war fronts. On the other hand, automated political repression and persecution in the streets and protests is growing, though it is currently at the data gathering and training phase. In the USA, Immigration and Customs Enforcement is deploying different apps developed by companies like Palantir to maximize social disruption and to capture the most vulnerable people in the country.
There is huge pressure to prevent any meaningful regulation of AI, in particular for AI used by police and the military. Surveillance with facial (FRT) and body recognition is used outdoors to map out movements and participants in protests and actions. Mapping of movement connections and alliances can be done via online pattern recognition, as well as out in the streets. Automatic protest repression combined with purposeful miscommunication and disinformation might make the usual protests simply nonviable.
And of course, AI can is being used for hacking by private companies and states. Considering the hackable systems now in place throughout society and the economy—banking systems, social security, electric and transport systems, aviation and navigation systems, pension management, surveillance apparatus, healthcare systems and, of course, all the internet and the data in public and private servers—massively disruptive events at large or small scale are inevitable. Many political and social movements will be targeted. This can mean accounts erased, financial assets blockaded, and growing personal political repression via the suppression of communication capacities. This can also happen at a much bigger scale, targeting cities, countries or entire regions.
For the most important investments and political efforts, AI is being introduced as a labor replacement tool, a cultural hegemony monopoly creator, a military and surveillance weapon. Most of this is being done with people actively engaging and inviting the models into their everyday life (even more than it already was). The resistance to large data center projects is important and inspiring, but the overwhelming threat of AI goes well beyond its emissions, water consumption, and land occupation (although they plan on multiplying by many factors the current numbers, especially in Europe). Data centers today are nightmare factories.
So far, AI hasn’t been able to deliver on a key aspect: successfully automated processes that allow for the mass firing of people, substituted by effective algorithms. This is clear: 95% of all investment made by companies in AI has led to no profit, which is making capitalists nervous. But it hasn’t in any meaningful way stopped its spread.
When we say AI, we mean Machine Learning, Robotics, and Expert Systems. Currently AI is mostly a process of recognition, classification, and very high probability calculation, based on massive amounts of data with a good human interface. The interface is the most important trick for the general public. The public debate surrounding this issue is deeply anti-historical and anti-materialist, almost entirely it is white noise.
AI is not replicating or reproducing human intelligence. It is trying to encode human activities into repeatable procedures that can create reproducible algorithms. As it is not imitating our biological intelligence, it is trying to imitate what it can more or less “comprehend” about the previously referred algorithms—it is copying labor and social relations, their mechanisms and their predictable outcomes. Like other abstractions that rule our lives, such as money, algorithms produce real outcomes. AI ushers an irresistible promise for capitalist elites: to be able to automatically direct most of the instructions that guide human activity, reducing the power of social relations, in particular the power of the working class to impose political, social, and economic transformations that reduce inequality and injustice.
AI’s neural networks don’t mimic the human brain at all, but instead automate the “labor of perception,” classifying and interpreting written, numeric, and visual data and establishing associations. This creates a synthesis of knowledge, of the collective form of knowledge that comes from social cooperation. As explained before, another of its objectives has been to establish a monopoly over knowledge, scrapped from every website, database, online encyclopedia, and bite it is fed. It is then no wonder that Elon Musk and the far-right are going after Wikipedia.
These are some of the reasons why attempting to hard-code ethical rules or constraints into these models will not work, as they will not change the underlying political and economic functions of the data it is trained under and the algorithms generated and fabricated. Of course we understand that language itself is an algorithm, all the data as well and, of course, the internet as well. But with AI, we’re talking about a new level of control. The fundamental abstract purposes of AI as it exists now are the extension of quantification, control, and exploitation. The Labor Theory of Automation posits that AI is the result of a set of technological advancements that have abstracted automation to the point where it can automate itself. As we now have the technical ability to make such machines and capitalism has the economic incentive to massively deploy them, they want to use it to reorganize the division of labor even further in their favor. It is the apex of automation: Automation of Automation.
Facing such seemingly insurmountable odds, social and ruptural movements cannot but ask what to do about AI. There are basically two options: Drop out of the grid or acquire tech capabilities that allow us to resist the onslaught of these algorithms of collapse.
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
João Camargo
Joao Camargo is a climate activist in grassroots movement Climaximo in Portugal and in the Climate Jobs campaign. He's an environmental engineer and climate change researcher at the University of Lisbon and the author of two books: Climate Change Combat Manual (in Portugal and Spain) and Portugal in Flames - How to rescue the forests.
Full Bio >
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