Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Ellison run companies that are increasingly taking on the characteristics of independent governments. Acting as states within a state, these tech oligarchs are building powerful blocks that resist democratic regulation, for example from the EU.

The global economy no longer revolves around rule-based competition. Today, might makes right. For contemporary tech multinationals, this means obtaining a monopoly on a planet where resources are finite, argues the French economic historian Arnaud Orain. In doing so, the current rogue capitalism of companies like Meta and Oracle harks back to the state capitalism of the Dutch East India Company in the seventeenth century.

What parallels can we draw from history, and is the economic world order indeed at a tipping point? This edition of Techdenkers, organised by de Balie, explores with Arnaud Orain how his long historical view helps us understand the power dynamics of today’s technological landscape.