CALL FOR PAPERS Science as Culture Forum on “Tech Oligarchy” Forum Editor Kean Birch, York University, Canada “What is happening is not just a battle for market control. A small number of tech titans are busy designing our collective future, presenting their societal vision, and specific beliefs about our humanity, as the only possible path. Hiding behind an illusion of natural market forces, they are harnessing their wealth and influence to shape not just productization and implementation of AI technology, but also the research.” – Judy Estrin, 2024 1 Echoing US President Eisenhower’s warning about the rise of a ‘military-industrial complex’ over 60 years ago, President Biden’s farewell address in January 2025 did something similar, stating: “Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights, the freedoms and the fair shot for everyone to get ahead”. 2 Cautioning against the concentration of wealth and concomitant political influence it brings, Biden’s words can be seen as the most visible statement of the growing concern with the implications of an increasingly powerful and power-focused elite. This elite is defined not just by its wealth – which has reached astonishing levels – but also by the source of this wealth, namely the outputs of science, technology, and innovation. Primarily centred on digital and now algorithmic technoscience, this oligarchy has been described by Julie Cohen (2024) and others as a specifically ‘tech oligarchy’, marrying together wealth and technology in ways that threaten our collective futures as this oligarchy flexes its political muscles. 3 Why the concept of tech oligarchy? Others are already writing about the entanglement of ‘tech’ and political-economic power, using terminology like ‘techno-feudalism’ for example (Varoufakis, 2023; Durand, 2024). These writers especially focus on the rise of intellectual and knowledge monopolies, presenting this as a distinct phase in techno-political economy in which a few entities have captured control over the key factors of production in society today (e.g. IP, data). However, as Morozov (2022) points out, this feudal framing does not address the continuity at play in an economy dominated by Big Tech firms; there is certainly evidence of growing control and ownership over intellectual resources, but this change has not sidelined the continuing innovation spending on and control over physical assets (e.g. data centres) (Birch et al., 2021). Whether it concerns intangible or physical assets, Morozov’s (2022) argument is that there is no significant shift in the basic capitalist logics and dynamics in contemporary 1 https://time.com/6302761/ai-risks-autonomy/ 2 https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/01/15/oligarchy-meaning-biden-farewell- address/77731224007/ 3 For journalistic examples: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/01/tech-zuckerberg-trump- inauguration-oligarchy/681381/; https://www.npr.org/2025/01/24/1226561708/trump-billionaires-tech-oligarchy; and https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/what-the-tech-industrial-complex-looks-like-under-trump.html