Nick Srnicek

Yes! Out in early January there

Silicon Empires: The Fight for the Future of AI Silicon Empires: The Fight for the Future of AI, Since the emergence of ChatGPT, generative AI has been heralded as a technology poised to revolutionize our world

You can order a copy here: www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?b...

Ultimately, I want the book to give people a clear understanding of where the world of AI is headed and of the key forces driving its development. Understanding the nature of power is essential to any project of resisting it, and I hope this book can contribute to that.

Understanding the different elite interests at play (different fractions of tech capital, different elements of the state apparatus) helps to understand why strategies are developing the way they are.

4️⃣ Ch 4 sets out a framework for thinking about US & China's AI strategies. While the stated aims of both are clear-cut (and notably different, contra any claims of an AI race), competing elite interests have meant a much more fractured strategy in practice.

Since then, this consensus has come undone, and in its place has arisen a more conflictual and partial set of interests. This lack of elite consensus helps explain the US-China trade war & the contradictory nature of recent US policies.

3️⃣ Ch 3 looks to how capitalist interests are intersecting with rising geopolitical concerns. It argues that a hegemonic coalition of interests existed between tech elite & political elite in the US & China up until the mid-2010s.

Simply inventing a GPT hasn't been a surefire way to capture value - and in different and competing ways, the big AI companies are all trying to ensure their ability to capture most of AI's future value.

2️⃣ Ch 2 lays out a framework for understanding the behaviours of the big AI companies - building upon profit incentives, but also taking into account the historical experiences of companies that have produced general-purpose technologies.

The book tries to make a number of contributions:

1️⃣ The first chapter aims to provide an up-to-date accounting of where AI stands as of 2025 - in both economic and technological terms. For anyone new to the field, I hope this provides a concise introduction.

Today is the official UK publication day for Silicon Empires! I'm excited to have it out and hear what people think.

There's an enormous amount happening every day in AI, and it's difficult to gain a stable perspective. I wrote the book to try and get some secure hold on that constant flux. 🧵

They also make OpenAI an increasingly 'too big to fail' company - and which is likely part of the strategic intent behind these moves

Both extend the fallout range from any bursting of an AI bubble, entwining elements of the financial system and the heart of the US economy into it

Two big changes to the precarity of the AI industry in the last year: (1) more and more companies are turning to debt to finance AI capex (see Meta, xAI, Oracle), and (2) OpenAI's flurry of deals in the past month are tying major companies to the fate of this startup

NEW clip from our new video essay with @nsrnicek.bsky.social.

Essential viewing for understanding the AI economy.

Full video here:

youtu.be/2vN7vr0qwMo?...

Thanks Alex! Hope you enjoy it

Thanks!

"This is a sobering but essential, must-read book. It lays bare the economic dynamics that are driving the development of AI and sheds new light on who will control its future, using which business practices and geopolitical strategies and towards which ends." -Helga Nowotny, Emerita of Science and Technology Studies, ETH Zurich, and former President of the European Research Council "Silicon Empires pulls back the curtain on the AI gold rush, tracking how chips, clouds and capital are marshalled by tech titans and rival states to lock down tomorrow’s power and profits. With clear, panoramic insight, Srnicek slices through the hype to show who wins, who loses; and why the future of AI should belong to all of us." -Mark Graham, Oxford University

I'm excited to share the final cover for Silicon Empires and very grateful for the kind words that others have offered. Pre-order here: www.amazon.co.uk/Silicon-Empi...

Link to article here: www.ft.com/content/a76f...

Link to book here: www.amazon.co.uk/Silicon-Empi...

Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found at https://www.ft.com/tour. https://www.ft.com/content/a76f238d-5543-4c01-9419-52aaf352dc23 Perhaps the most intriguing difference, though, is how far today’s AI companies will themselves benefit from the financial gains they help unleash. The technology is accelerating advances in many areas: biotech, robotics and material science, for instance. AI companies could well exploit their technological advantage to become significant healthcare, drug discovery or autonomous car companies. To what extent can they morph into general purpose companies and capture the fruits of the golden age?

This is one of the core questions I try to answer in my upcoming book. Research has shown it's incredibly difficult for GPT producers to capture much, if any, of the downstream value. But big AI firms are all making a play to do precisely that - fuelling a series of different expansionary logics.

• Birch, Kean. ‘Technoscience Rent: Toward a Theory of Rentiership for Technoscientific Capitalism’. Science, Technology, & Human Values 45, no. 1 (2020): 3–33. https://doi.org/10.1177/0162243919829567. • Birch, Kean, and D. T. Cochrane. ‘Big Tech: Four Emerging Forms of Digital Rentiership’. Science as Culture 31, no. 1 (2022): 44–58. https://doi.org/10.1080/09505431.2021.1932794. • Christophers, Brett. Rentier Capitalism: Who Owns the Economy, and Who Pays for It? Verso, 2022. • Christophers, Brett. ‘The Problem of Rent’. Critical Historical Studies 6, no. 2 (2019): 303–23. https://doi.org/10.1086/705396. • Rigi, Jakob. ‘Foundations of a Marxist Theory of the Political Economy of Information: Trade Secrets and Intellectual Property, and the Production of Relative Surplus Value and the Extraction of Rent-Tribute’. tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique 12, no. 2 (2014): 909–36. https://doi.org/10.31269/triplec.v12i2.487. • Rigi, Jakob, and Robert Prey. ‘Value, Rent, and the Political Economy of Social Media’. The Information Society 31, no. 5 (2015): 392–406. https://doi.org/10.1080/01972243.2015.1069769. • Strauss, Ilan, Tim O’Reilly, and Mariana Mazzucato. ‘Amazon’s Algorithmic Rents: The Economics of Information on Amazon’. UC Law Science and Technology Journal 15, no. 2 (2024): 203–68. • Zacarés, Javier Moreno. Euphoria of the Rentier? 2021.

Nothing in my next book on this, but I did try to set out some thoughts on it here: www.elgaronline.com/edcollchap-o... I've attached a list of some other texts I've found useful too

Do Artifacts Have Political Economy? - Kean Birch, 2025 Harking back to Langdon Winner's now classic essay “Do artifacts have politics?,” my aim in this article is to ask a very similar question—namely, do artif...

I have a new article out: "Do artifacts have political economy?" It's a riff on an old argument by Langdon Winner about the embedding of politics in technology

#STS #sociology #technoscience #technology #innovation

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Announcing the new journal: "Historical Materialism: Workers and Capital"

We've launched a new Historical Materialism project with a CfP for the first issue. Abstracts due 31st of October

Full details and the new website here: workersandcapital.historicalmaterialism.org/index.php/jo...

AI's immense requirements for data, computation, and talent entrench the power of existing tech monopolies. Our podcast of the week frames AI as a general-purpose technology whose primary role is consolidating capital.

With @nsrnicek.bsky.social on @smartcookies.bsky.social

buff.ly/Nzoi8um

Happy to be part of this amazing speaker series organized by Utrecht University, especially @fabianlferrari.bsky.social . I'll talk about Latin American Critical AI studies. I'll be in such great company with @nsrnicek.bsky.social and @anavaldi.bsky.social

cdh.uu.nl/event/cdh-on...

A second collection of essays on #Michael-Heinrich #Science-of-Value is out, eds S. Breda & me for.

The special issue of #Dialettica-e-Filosofia can be downloaded at the link below.

The table of contents is attached.

www.dialetticaefilosofia.it/index.html

#Marx
#value
#capital
#money
#crisis

Forum 2029 Find out more about our Forum 2029 series of events.

This event is tomorrow and will be a great platform for the British left to build on autonomy.work/forum-2029/

NEW REPORT: Artificial Power, our 2025 Landscape Report, is out.

Today’s AI isn’t just being used by us, it’s being used on us. We urgently need to reclaim public power over the future trajectory of AI. Another path is possible.

Read the report: ainowinstitute.org/2025-landscape

The Wealth of Freedom: Radical Republican Political Economy Abstract. What is an economy for? The republican tradition in political thought offers a compelling way of exploring this question. The economy is for the

What would an anti-oligarchic, republican economy look like? UBI? Wealth tax? Workplace democracy? Strong trade unions? Investment democracy? I explore a radical republican economics in my new book, 'The Wealth of Freedom', which is now out online. academic.oup.com/book/60075

Reconsidering the relationship between home appliance owners A body of literature in conventional labor economics contends with multiple endogeneity concerns inexamining the impact of purportedly labor-saving home appliances on married women’s labor force parti

New working paper alert!!! In this paper, I reexamine the claim that clothes washing machines have a causal impact on married women’s labor force participation using microdata from Brazil and a discussion based on feminist STS!

ideas.repec.org/p/new/wpaper...