Hey World, We Have a Problem

How the entire planet outsourced its nervous system to a handful of American corporations born from Cold War paranoia—and why that’s now an existential threat under a rogue administration

Apr 24, 2025

As we move into the second part of this three-part series, I encourage you to first read my initial article, 'Your Fridge is Spying on You: How Big Tech Became Big Brother (and Brought Friends).' This foundational piece sets the stage for our ongoing exploration of the pervasive concerns surrounding technology and its entanglement with the current political landscapes around the world. By layering these discussions, I’ve aimed to illuminate the intricate relationship between our digital lives and the broader implications of surveillance in today’s world.

In this instalment, 'Hey World, We Have a Problem,' we’ll delve into how the planet has inadvertently outsourced its nervous system to a handful of American corporations, a legacy of Cold War paranoia that now poses an existential threat under a rogue administration in the U.S. and the concerning trend of right-wing extremist governments emerging in various countries. As 340 million Americans are now discovering, the notion of “that will never happen here” is no longer a guarantee in 2025. When authoritarianism takes hold, it can happen swiftly.

Don’t miss out on this important conversation or any future articles—subscribe now to stay in the loop! And hey, did you know there are over 70 articles in the Truth Decay archive? They cover a wide range of topics, from politics and global conflicts to economics, social trends and those hidden stories that often slip under the radar. So, let’s jump right in…

It’s 2025, and the world has never been more connected—or more compromised.

From swiping right on a date, to launching nuclear weapons (hopefully not in that order), nearly every modern function of life now runs on a technological stack built, owned, or operated by a handful of American firms. Your news feed? Filtered. Your medical history? Digitised. Your thoughts? Nudged. Your nation’s infrastructure? Hosted in Virginia. And your free time? Oh, gamified, tracked, and sold off like cheap confetti at a surveillance wedding.

And that’s on a good day.

What makes this more than just an eyebrow-raising factoid is that the man holding the keys to all this—well, one of them anyway—is currently waging a war on international cooperation while live-tweeting Fox News at three in the morning. Yes, with Donald Trump back in the White House, the internet hasn’t turned itself off in protest.

This isn’t just awkward. It’s a planetary vulnerability.

You Didn’t Opt In—You Were Born Into It!

Let’s get one thing straight: this didn’t happen by accident. The digital infrastructure of the modern world wasn’t grown in a commune by benevolent utopians humming about free speech. It was weaponised from the get-go.

The internet itself emerged from ARPANET, a Cold War military project. Its creators weren’t imagining a world of cat memes and recipe blogs—they were engineering a battlefield of information dominance. Everything that followed, from packet switching to AI, was built with surveillance, control, and strategic advantage in mind. The civilian applications came later, like leftover toys from a military play party.

Take IBM, often portrayed as the genteel grandfather of tech. After World War II, IBM recruited British codebreakers from Bletchley Park, the epicentre of wartime cryptanalysis. These weren’t nerds—they were intelligence operatives. IBM then used their talents to develop commercial computing solutions that slotted neatly into the ambitions of governments and financial institutions. You think you’re printing invoices; they were sketching blueprints for a world of data control.

Fast-forward to now, and IBM still has major contracts with defence departments, intelligence agencies, and national governments around the world. And they’re not alone.

Cue Google, which grew fat off DARPA-funded research and would later become the digital nervous system of the Western world. Or Palantir, a surveillance software company born out of CIA seed funding. Or Amazon Web Services (AWS), which hosts everything from Netflix to the CIA’s secure cloud. Or Meta, which started as a college hot-or-not app and is now one of the largest psychological manipulation machines ever built.

Even Apple—the supposed privacy darling—relies on a global production and app ecosystem dominated by U.S. interests and military-adjacent R&D.

You didn’t choose this. You were born into it. Like Neo in The Matrix, only with fewer cool sunglasses and more terms & conditions.

It’s Not Just Your Phone—It’s Everything.

If you think this only applies when you’re doomscrolling on your phone at midnight, think again.

Let’s talk about the technology wrapped around your everyday existence like cling film around a sweaty sandwich:

• Streaming Services: Netflix, Disney+, YouTube—all American, all data-mining, all algorithmically controlling not just what you watch, but what you think is worth watching. Even Spotify, the Swedish outlier, relies on Amazon’s AWS infrastructure.

• Gaming: Fortnite, Call of Duty, Roblox, and Grand Theft Auto Online—multi-billion-dollar engines of distraction and behavioural telemetry, built to be addictive, lucrative, and insightful (to advertisers, not you). Game engines like Unreal and Unity? American. Cloud gaming services? Amazon Luna, Google Stadia (RIP), Microsoft xCloud. Even the games that feel foreign often run on American-built tech.

• Smart Cities & Public Infrastructure: Surveillance cameras powered by facial recognition (often built with Israeli or American software), traffic control systems run on Cisco hardware, public Wi-Fi filtered through American content controls. Cities have become sentient, and they’re whispering your secrets to Palo Alto.

• Retail and Commerce: Step into a shop and smile—you’re on candid cloud. From smart shelves to predictive analytics tracking your eye movements, the very act of browsing is now a data event. Point-of-sale systems, loyalty cards, facial recognition for queue management—all funnelled through U.S.-developed platforms.

• Leisure & Travel: Want to book a rollercoaster ride? That biometric scan at the gate goes to a U.S.-based server. Visiting a museum? The ticketing software is tracking your preferences. Ride-sharing apps like Uber and Lyft don’t just move you—they map you. Globally.

• Back-End Business Tech: Nearly every business you interact with—from your GP and dentist to your bank, to your local falafel stand—relies on services like Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Oracle, Square or Adobe. Even if you’re offline, they aren’t.

In short, American technology doesn’t just dominate the digital world—it is the digital world. Every tap, beep, scroll and click echoes across the servers of companies who are legally bound to comply with U.S. intelligence agencies under laws like FISA and the CLOUD Act.

And Then Came Trump. Again.

The global tech infrastructure has always been an American asset, but now it’s being wielded like a weapon by a man who sees foreign policy as a game show and diplomacy as a personal insult.

In his second term, Trump has doubled down on economic isolationism, retaliatory tech bans, and vindictive executive orders. Entire sectors are being militarised. Allies are being treated like enemies. And the same tech that promised to connect the world is being used to divide, blacklist, and surveil it.

Remember when Trump threatened to ban TikTok because it was Chinese? Imagine that, but now flipped: what if your entire national infrastructure—email, payments, cloud storage, and AI models—can be throttled or sanctioned on a whim?

We’re watching data colonialism in real time. Your country’s sovereignty depends on the mood of a 78-year-old man who once suggested nuking hurricanes.

Global Dependency, Local Consequences.

The most terrifying part of all this isn’t the centralisation of power—it’s that most governments haven’t the faintest clue what’s actually going on behind the scenes. National infrastructure is often cobbled together with off-the-shelf solutions from Google, Amazon, or Microsoft. Most public servants couldn’t spot a backdoor if it came labelled with a neon sign and a free tote bag.

And if the infrastructure goes dark? Chaos. Hospitals can’t access records. Planes can’t land. Payments fail. Elections become logistical nightmares.

Even “neutral” technologies like AI models—ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude—are trained on culturally biased, Western-centric data, then embedded into global education, hiring, and justice systems. This isn’t just soft power. It’s algorithmic empire.

How Do We Fix It Without Breaking Everything?

The good news? We’re not completely doomed. Yet.

The bad news? We need to act like this is a wartime scenario. Because in many ways, it is.

What Governments Must Do:

1. Build Sovereign Infrastructure: Data centres, national cloud services, and encryption standards that don’t route through the U.S.

2. Invest in Domestic Talent: Fund your own Palantirs, without the sociopathic branding. Create tech for civic strength—not just stock valuation.

3. Audit Everything: Know what’s in your systems. Every third-party vendor, every cloud API, every dependency.

4. International Tech Alliances: The EU, ASEAN, and African Union must unite on digital standards and invest in shared infrastructure.

5. Open Source Everything Critical: If it runs a hospital or a nuclear plant, you should know what the code is doing.

What Citizens Can Do Right Now:

1. Use Alternatives: Switch to services like ProtonMail, Tutanota, and Signal (with European relay servers). Pay for services that don’t sell your soul.

2. Minimise Data Exposure: Don’t fill in unnecessary forms. Say no to cookies unless they’re edible.

3. Think About Devices: Your smart TV, speaker, fridge and even your vacuum are all phoning home. Unplug when not in use. Or go analogue.

4. Vote For the Digitally Literate: Demand your leaders understand this stuff. If they don’t, educate them—or replace them.

5. Teach Digital Sovereignty: At schools, in families, in communities. This is the new literacy.

Final Thoughts from the Edge of the Firewall.

We built a digital civilisation that was supposed to democratise the world. Instead, it’s starting to feel more like feudalism—only this time the lords wear hoodies, and the peasants scroll.

And in 2025, as Trump plays emperor with the master switch, the dangers are no longer hypothetical. The internet has become a single point of failure for democracy, liberty, and, yes, even your lunch delivery.

The tech is global. The control is American. And the emperor? He’s not just naked—he’s tweeting in all caps.

So: world, we have a problem. The question is, are we ready to start solving it—or are we just going to keep asking Alexa, Siri and “Hey Google” for answers?

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Coming next: The last part of this little trilogy: ‘The Great Tech Taming: China Gagged Its Unicorns—Maybe the West Should’ve Taken Notes’. We look at how the world mocked Beijing’s tech crackdown, but now with Washington’s digital darlings now looking like they’re auditioning for “Dancing with the Autocrats”, it's worth asking the question, maybe China got a few things right? Subscribe below to not miss it.

Hey World, We Have a Problem

How the entire planet outsourced its nervous system to a handful of American corporations born from Cold War paranoia—and why that’s now an existential threat under a rogue administration

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