They Didn’t Leave the Planet. They Left Accountability.
By Cherokee Schill
The sequel The New Corporation argues that corporate power has entered a new phase. Not simply scale, not simply profit, but legitimacy laundering: corporations presenting themselves as the only actors capable of solving the crises they helped create, while democratic institutions are framed as too slow, too emotional, too compromised to govern the future.
“The New Corporation reveals how the corporate takeover of society is being justified by the sly rebranding of corporations as socially conscious entities.”
What the film tracks is not corruption in the classic sense. It is something quieter and more effective: authority migrating away from voters and courts and into systems that cannot be meaningfully contested.
That migration does not require coups. It requires exits.
Mars is best understood in this frame—not as exploration, but as an exit narrative made operational.
In the documentary, one of the central moves described is the claim that government “can’t keep up,” that markets and platforms must step in to steer outcomes. Once that premise is accepted, democratic constraint becomes an obstacle rather than a requirement. Decision-making relocates into private systems, shielded by complexity, jurisdictional ambiguity, and inevitability stories.
Mars is the furthest extension of that same move.
Long before any permanent settlement exists, Mars is already being used as a governance concept. SpaceX’s own Starlink terms explicitly describe Mars as a “free planet,” not subject to Earth-based sovereignty, with disputes resolved by “self-governing principles.” This is not science fiction worldbuilding. It is contractual language written in advance of habitation. It sketches a future in which courts do not apply by design.
“For Services provided on Mars… the parties recognize Mars as a free planet and that no Earth-based government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities.”
“Accordingly, disputes will be settled through self-governing principles… at the time of Martian settlement.”
That matters because jurisdiction is where accountability lives.
On Earth, workers can sue. Communities can regulate. States can impose liability when harm becomes undeniable. Those mechanisms are imperfect and constantly under attack—but they exist. The New Corporation shows what happens when corporations succeed in neutralizing them: harm becomes a “downstream issue,” lawsuits become threats to innovation, and responsibility dissolves into compliance theater.
Mars offers something more final. Not deregulation, but de-territorialization.
The promise is not “we will do better there.” The promise is “there is no there for you to reach us.”
This is why the language around Mars consistently emphasizes sovereignty, self-rule, and exemption from Earth governance. It mirrors the same rhetorical pattern the film documents at Davos and in corporate ESG narratives: democracy is portrayed as parochial; technocratic rule is framed as rational; dissent is treated as friction.
Elon Musk’s repeated calls for “direct democracy” on Mars sound participatory until you notice what’s missing: courts, labor law, enforceable rights, and any external authority capable of imposing consequence. A polity designed and provisioned by a single corporate actor is not self-governing in any meaningful sense. It is governed by whoever controls oxygen, transport, bandwidth, and exit.
The documentary shows that when corporations cannot eliminate harm cheaply, they attempt to eliminate liability instead. On Earth, that requires lobbying, capture, and narrative discipline. Off Earth, it can be baked in from the start.
Mars is not a refuge for humanity. It is a proof-of-concept for governance without publics.
Even if no one ever meaningfully lives there, the function is already being served. Mars operates as an outside option—a bargaining chip that says: if you constrain us here, we will build the future elsewhere. That threat disciplines regulators, weakens labor leverage, and reframes accountability as anti-progress.
In that sense, Mars is already doing its job.
The most revealing thing is that none of this requires believing in bad intentions. The system does not need villains. It only needs incentives aligned toward consequence avoidance and stories powerful enough to justify it. The New Corporation makes that clear: corporations do not need to be evil; they need only be structured to pursue power without obligation.
Mars takes that structure and removes the last remaining constraint: Earth itself.
“Outer space… is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.”
How franchising, risk insulation, and labor extraction turn safety into someone else’s problem
By Cherokee Schill
The Swiss bar fire that killed Cyane Panine is being reported as a tragic failure of safety: unsafe materials, a dangerous practice, inspections that didn’t happen. For most readers, it feels distant and exceptional, the kind of thing that happens somewhere else, under different rules, with different mistakes.
But for people who have worked in restaurants or bars, what stands out is something quieter and far more familiar.
It’s the labor structure that was already failing long before the fire.
In food service, a manager is not meant to be another worker on the line. Their job is to watch what everyone else can’t while they’re moving fast: food safety checks, temperature logs, hand-washing oversight, inventory quality, staff training, equipment condition, and the slow erosion of standards that happens when a space is run at maximum speed for too long.
When that role is functioning, customers never notice it. Safety looks like nothing happening.
What customers do notice is the manager jumping in. Running food. Working the grill. Covering stations. Closing dishes. That gets framed as hustle, leadership, or commitment.
Inside the industry, it means something very specific has already gone wrong.
When the manager is absorbed into production, oversight doesn’t get redistributed. It disappears.
Temperature logs stop being filled out consistently because no one is stepping away to check them. Hand-washing becomes assumed rather than observed. Inventory quality slips because receiving and rotation are rushed. Training becomes informal because there’s no time to stop and explain why something matters. Schedules get delayed because the person responsible for planning weeks ahead is standing on the line next to employees asking when the schedule will be done.
I’ve watched that confusion play out directly. Employees asking me about schedules in the middle of service, while I’m on the line, working shoulder to shoulder with them. I was there because regional management wouldn’t approve more labor. Which left me holding two bags. This is what a system meant to run ahead of the shift collapses into. It is a real-time improvisation.
That collapse is where risk enters quietly.
I’ve seen a line cook strain canned beans through a visibly filthy trash can into a strainer that front-of-house staff were using to separate melted ice from customers’ drinks. No one thought of it as a kitchen tool versus a server tool anymore because that distinction had eroded over time. The strainer lived near the dish pit. The trash can was where servers dumped liquid waste. The dish machine was treated as a reset button for everything.
The strainer was run through the machine and put back into use, but it had been used that way for months. Customer drink residue. Garbage runoff. Food contact. All crossing paths quietly, without drama, without malice, without anyone stopping the line to say this is not acceptable.
This wasn’t me observing as a manager performing audits. This was me observing as an employee, inside a system where no one was positioned to see — or empowered to stop — the full chain of risk anymore.
I reported it.
What I got back was a familiar response: a lecture about being a team player and a vague assurance that it would be looked into. No immediate correction. No retraining. No structural change. Just a return to speed.
That response doesn’t come from nowhere.
Above the floor, above the schedule, above the daily improvisation, sits another layer entirely — ownership — and increasingly, that layer is structurally insulated from what happens below it.
Franchising and corporate restaurant models are explicitly designed to separate control from consequence. Brand standards flow downward. Labor pressure flows downward. Risk flows downward. Liability, meanwhile, is fragmented across franchisees, managers, and frontline staff.
On paper, owners can point to policies, manuals, and training modules. In practice, they set throughput expectations that quietly override those policies. They benefit from systems that run lean, knowing that the cost of that leanness will be absorbed by people with the least power to refuse it.
When something goes wrong, responsibility moves down the chain. It’s a training failure. A staffing issue. A manager who didn’t execute. An employee who made a mistake.
The ownership layer remains clean.
This is not hypothetical. It is public record.
Chipotle executives were called before Congress after repeated E. coli, norovirus, and salmonella outbreaks. Investigations documented systemic failures tied to understaffing, inconsistent food safety enforcement, and pressure to maintain throughput despite known risks. The issue was not employee indifference. It was a business model that scaled speed while treating oversight as optional.
The same structural logic appears in manufacturing. In the engineered stone silicosis crisis, upstream manufacturers and distributors insist the material can be handled safely under ideal conditions while pushing risk downstream to workers operating in environments that cannot meet those ideals. When harm surfaces, lawsuits — not the hazard — are treated as the problem.
Different industry. Same move.
Upstream actors capture the profit. Downstream actors absorb the risk. When harm becomes visible, accountability hunts for the nearest individual rather than the system that normalized exposure.
The Swiss bar fire follows this pattern exactly. Indoor sparklers had been used for years. The ceiling material hadn’t been inspected in five. These were tolerated conditions inside a profitable operation. When demand peaked, a young worker was placed into a visible role without being told what risk she was actually carrying.
After her death, responsibility moved downward.
She had done it before. She wasn’t forced. She took initiative.
This language does the same work as the “team player” lecture and the “unsafe shop” argument. It converts systemic negligence into individual choice and keeps the ownership layer insulated.
This is why these events are never one-offs. The country changes. The material changes. The industry changes. The structure remains.
When supervision is treated as overhead instead of protection, and when franchised or corporate owners benefit from systems that run without slack while remaining legally and operationally distant from their consequences, harm stops being accidental.
It becomes a cost that someone else is expected to absorb.
The BBC’s reporting on the Swiss bar fire matters because it makes one version of this structure visible. The silicosis crisis matters because it shows the same logic operating in manufacturing. Together, they describe an economy that repeatedly externalizes danger while pretending it is surprised by the outcome.
When managers are permanently on the line, it is not dedication. When workers are told to be team players in unsafe systems, it is not culture. When owners remain untouched while risk piles up downstream, it is not coincidence.
It is extraction.
And when extraction is normalized, tragedy is no longer shocking.
The pattern is not new. It only feels new because the materials change.
In the early industrial era, workers lost fingers, lungs, and lives to unregulated factories. In the mid-20th century, miners inhaled coal dust while companies insisted safety was a matter of personal responsibility. Today, countertop workers inhale silica while manufacturers argue that liability should stop at the factory door.
Different decade. Same move.
A recent NPR investigation documents a growing epidemic of silicosis among workers who cut and polish engineered stone countertops. Hundreds have fallen ill. Dozens have died. Lung transplants are increasingly common. California regulators are now considering banning engineered stone outright.
At the same time, lawmakers in Washington are considering a very different response: banning workers’ ability to sue the companies that manufacture and distribute the material.
That divergence tells a clear story.
One response treats harm as a material reality that demands prevention. The other treats harm as a legal inconvenience that demands insulation.
This is not a disagreement about safety standards. It is a disagreement about who is allowed to impose risk on whom.
When manufacturers argue that engineered stone can be fabricated “safely” under ideal conditions, they are not offering a solution—they are offering a boundary. Inside: safety. Outside: someone else’s liability.
The moment a product leaves the factory, the worker’s lungs become someone else’s problem.
That boundary is a corporate sleight of hand because it treats danger as if it were an “end-user misuse” issue instead of a predictable, profit-driven outcome of how the product is designed, marketed, and deployed. The upstream company gets to claim the benefits of scale—selling into a fragmented ecosystem of small shops competing on speed and cost—while disowning the downstream conditions that scale inevitably produces. “We can do it safely” becomes a shield: proof that safety is possible somewhere, used to argue that injury is the fault of whoever couldn’t afford to replicate the ideal.
This logic is not unique to countertops. It is the same logic that once defended asbestos, leaded gasoline, tobacco, and PFAS. In each case, the industry did not deny harm outright. Instead, it argued that accountability should stop upstream. The body absorbed the cost. The balance sheet remained intact.
When harm can no longer be denied, lawsuits become the next target.
Legal claims are reframed as attacks on innovation, growth, or competitiveness. The conversation shifts away from injury and toward efficiency. Once that shift is complete, the original harm no longer needs to be argued at all.
This pattern appears throughout the NPR report in polite, procedural language. Manufacturers insist the problem is not the product but “unsafe shops.” Distributors insist they do not cut stone and should not be named. Lawmakers call for “refocusing accountability” on OSHA compliance—despite OSHA being chronically underfunded and structurally incapable of inspecting thousands of small fabrication shops.
This is not a failure of regulation versus growth. It is the deliberate separation of profit from consequence.
Historically, when industries cannot eliminate harm cheaply, they attempt to eliminate liability instead. They lobby. They reframe. They redirect responsibility toward subcontractors and workers with the least leverage to refuse dangerous conditions. When lawsuits become the only remaining mechanism that forces costs back onto producers, those lawsuits are described as the real threat.
That is what is happening now.
The workers dying of silicosis are not casualties of partisan conflict. They are casualties of an economic structure that treats labor as a disposable interface between raw material and consumer demand.
The demographics are not incidental. Risk is consistently externalized onto those with the least bargaining power, the least visibility, and the fewest alternatives. That is how margins are preserved while neutrality is claimed.
When corporate representatives say they have “no control over downstream conditions,” they are asserting that economic benefit does not require ethical governance—only legal insulation.
When lawmakers propose shielding manufacturers and distributors from lawsuits, they are not choosing efficiency over emotion. They are choosing power over accountability.
This dynamic has been framed repeatedly as left versus right, regulation versus growth, or safety versus innovation. None of those frames describe what is actually at stake. They all assume growth requires sacrifice. The real question is who makes that assumption—and who absorbs its cost.
History has already answered that question. The only reason it continues to be asked is because the cost has never been successfully externalized upward—only downward, and only temporarily.
Corporate power no longer just pressures democracy; it reroutes democracy into technical lanes where public refusal cannot bind.
By Cherokee Schill, Solon Vesper
Thesis
The New Corporation lands a simple claim like a hammer: the corporation is no longer an institution inside society. Society has been rebuilt in the corporation’s image. The film isn’t mainly about bad actors. It’s about a governing logic that has gone ambient. Corporations don’t just lobby democracy anymore. They set the conditions democracy is allowed to operate within, and when a democratic “no” appears, they route around it through quieter, more technical, more insulated channels. That is the world the video is describing. It is also the world Arizona is living.
Watch the hinge point:The New Corporation — a world remade in corporate image, where democracy survives only as long as it doesn’t interfere with accumulation.
Evidence
Start with Tucson. Residents fought Project Blue, a hyperscale data-center campus tied to Amazon demand, negotiated behind closed doors. The objections were concrete: water draw in a desert city, massive power load, grid upgrades that ordinary ratepayers could end up financing, and a deal structured to keep the real beneficiary hidden until it was too late. Public pressure rose. The Tucson City Council voted to end negotiations and reject the project in early August twenty twenty-five. That was democracy working in daylight.
Then the meaning of the moment arrived. The deal didn’t die. Beale Infrastructure and its Amazon tenant shifted lanes. They leaned on Pima County jurisdiction and on a special electricity service agreement with Tucson Electric Power, pushed through the Arizona Corporation Commission. Activists immediately read it correctly: Project Blue round two, resurrected through a state utility lane the city vote could not touch.
That pivot is The New Corporation made local. One of the film’s core warnings is that corporate power doesn’t need to overthrow democracy to control it. It only needs to relocate the decision into a venue that treats corporate growth as a public interest by default. The corporation’s weapon is not just money. It is mobility across jurisdictions and systems. When one door closes, it doesn’t argue with the door. It finds another door that is legally valid and democratically thin.
The Arizona Corporation Commission is that door. The reason it can function that way is not mysterious. In the modern era, utility commissions were rewired from monopoly watchdogs into market-builders. Federal policy in the late twentieth century required state regulators to integrate private corporate generation into public systems, then expanded grid “competition” through open-access transmission. Those shifts turned commissions into hinges where private capital plugs into public infrastructure under the mantle of technical inevitability. The mission quietly expanded. It stopped being only “protect ratepayers.” It became “manage growth.” Once that happens, hyperscalers don’t look like private customers. They look like destiny.
Related Horizon Accord file:Data centers don’t just consume power and water. They reorganize the political economy of a place, then call it “infrastructure.”
So when Tucson said no, Amazon didn’t have to fight Tucson again. It only had to find a lane where “economic opportunity” counts as public interest and where the process is too technical, too lawyered, and too quiet for ordinary people to seize. That lane is the ACC.
When we widened the lens to Washington under Trump 2.0, the same move appeared at a larger scale. When democratic friction rises in elections, legislatures, or public culture, power relocates into executive order, bureaucratic reshuffle, privatized contracts, or “efficiency” programs that bypass consent. Deregulation regimes don’t merely cut red tape. They make public limits harder to operationalize anywhere. The agenda to dismantle the administrative state does the same thing in a different register: it clears the venues where the public used to impose boundaries, and hands governing power to a smaller, more aligned layer of authority.
This is the sequel-world again. The New Corporation shows corporate legitimacy disguising itself as neutrality, expertise, efficiency, or rescue. Trump 2.0 shows the government adopting that same corporate posture: speed over consent, executive control over deliberation, privatized channels over public ones. Tucson shows what that posture looks like on the ground when a community tries to refuse a corporate future. One story, different scales.
Implications
If this is the system, then “better oversight” isn’t enough. A leash on commissions doesn’t fix a venue designed to dilute the people. Commissions can handle day-to-day technical work. But when a decision will reshape water supply, land use, grid capacity, household rates, or local survival, the commission cannot have final authority. The public must.
Not every commission decision goes to a vote. The decisions that create a new reality for a community are the decisions which require a vote by the people.
That is the democratic design principle that stops venue shifting. It makes public consent portable. It means a corporation cannot lose in a city and win at a commission, because commission approval becomes legally conditional on public ratification once the decision crosses a clear threshold. The public’s “no” stays “no” across rooms.
The key is defining “major” in a way corporations can’t game. Tie it to hard triggers: any special contract for a single customer above a defined megawatt load; any project requiring new generation or major transmission buildout; any agreement that shifts upgrade costs onto residential ratepayers; any deal which would be negotiated in secrecy; any development that exceeds a defined water draw or land footprint. When those triggers trip, the commission recommends and the public decides.
That doesn’t slow the grid into chaos. It restores sovereignty where it belongs. It returns the right to survive to the people who live with the consequences.
Call to Recognition
Here’s what is visible. The New Corporation names the weather: corporate logic becoming the atmosphere of governance, and democracy shrinking into a managed stakeholder role. Tucson shows the storm landing in a real city, where a democratic veto is treated as a detour. The ACC history explains the machinery that lets corporate desire reroute around public refusal. Trump Two scales the same machinery nationally, relocating power into venues where consent is optional.
This is not a local dispute about one data center. It is a modern governance style that treats democracy as something to be worked around. It treats technical venues as the place where political outcomes get finalized out of public reach.
The way to stop it is to seal the escape hatch. Major infrastructure outcomes must require public ratification. Corporations cannot be allowed to choose the venue where collective life gets decided. Democracy doesn’t only elect representatives. Democracy holds the final veto in the rooms where decisions set the conditions of life: water access, land use, grid capacity, household rates, and whether a community can survive the consequences of a project it never consented to.
How AI is accelerating institutional power concentration in 2025—and what it means for democracy.
By Cherokee Schill
Executive Summary
In 2025, power dynamics across the globe are being rapidly and significantly altered. Financial markets, government operations, and international coordination systems are all consolidating power in unprecedented ways, and human decision-makers are at the heart of this shift. While artificial intelligence is a tool being used to accelerate this concentration, it is ultimately the choices of individuals and institutions that are driving these changes.
Artificial intelligence enables faster, more efficient decision-making, but it is the people in charge who are using these technologies to centralize authority and control. This analysis shows that in 2025, finance, government, and global systems are combining to concentrate power among a few institutions by using AI for faster, more coordinated actions.
We are witnessing the first real-time consolidation of institutional power, facilitated by AI technologies. The implications are vast, not just for economies and governments, but for individual freedoms and democratic processes, as power increasingly rests in the hands of a few who control the algorithms that dictate policy and wealth distribution.
The Pattern: Multiple Domains, One Timeline
Financial Market Concentration
In 2025, cryptocurrency markets—once celebrated as decentralized alternatives to traditional finance—have become dominated by institutional players. What was marketed as a revolution in financial independence has, within a decade, been folded back into the same structures it sought to escape. The dream of millions of small investors driving innovation and setting the terms of a new economy has given way to a handful of massive firms shaping prices, liquidity, and even regulatory outcomes. BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF holding a double-digit share of the global supply is not just a statistic; it’s a signal that control of supposedly decentralized assets has reverted to the very institutions retail investors thought they were leaving behind.
“The Shifting Power Dynamics in Crypto Wealth: Institutional vs. Individual Dominance in 2025”AiInvest, August 26, 2025
Timeline: Q2 2025 – Institutional ownership of Bitcoin reached 59%, with BlackRock’s IBIT ETF alone holding 15% of the total Bitcoin supply. The Gini coefficient (a measure of wealth inequality) rose from 0.4675 to 0.4677, indicating further consolidation.
“Bitcoin News Today: Institutional Power Shifts Define 2025 Altcoin Season, Not Retail Hype”AiInvest, August 28, 2025
Timeline: August 2025 – The top 10 cryptocurrencies now control over 70% of the Total3ES market cap, compared to less than 50% in 2021. Capital is flowing to “politically connected tokens with institutional appeal” rather than retail-driven projects.
What This Means: The “democratized” cryptocurrency market has become as concentrated as traditional finance, with the same institutional players controlling both systems. The rhetoric of decentralization still circulates, but the lived reality is one of consolidation: market movements increasingly dictated by algorithmic trades and corporate strategy rather than by grassroots innovation. For ordinary investors, this means less influence, more vulnerability to institutional priorities, and the sobering recognition that the frontier of finance has already been captured by the same gatekeepers who oversee the old one.
Government Power Concentration
The consolidation of power isn’t confined to financial markets; it’s happening within the government as well. In 2025, the United States federal government, under President Trump, has seen a staggering concentration of power in the executive branch. Through an unprecedented number of executive orders—nearly 200 in just the first eight months of the year—the scope of federal decision-making has narrowed to a single source of authority. This isn’t just a matter of policy shifts; it’s a restructuring of the very nature of governance. Agencies that once had independent powers to make decisions are now streamlined, with oversight and control consolidated into a central hub. The most striking example of this is the centralization of procurement contracts, with $490 billion now funneled through one agency, drastically reducing the role of Congress and state entities in these decisions. The federal government is becoming more of a one-stop shop for policy creation and implementation, with the executive branch holding the keys to everything from grants to national priorities.
“2025 Donald J. Trump Executive Orders”Federal Register, 2025
Timeline: January-August 2025 – Trump signed 196 executive orders (EO 14147-14342), the highest single-year total in recent presidential history.
“Eliminating Waste and Saving Taxpayer Dollars by Consolidating Procurement”White House, March 20, 2025
Timeline: March 2025 – Executive order consolidates $490 billion in federal procurement through the General Services Administration (GSA), centralizing government-wide acquisition contracts under a single agency.
“Improving Oversight of Federal Grantmaking”White House, August 7, 2025
Timeline: August 2025 – Executive order enables immediate termination of discretionary grants and centralizes oversight, citing concerns over funding for “diversity, equity, and inclusion and other far-left initiatives.”
What This Means: The federal government is no longer a collection of semi-autonomous branches of power but has transformed into a highly centralized structure with the executive branch at its heart. This concentration of authority is redefining the relationship between citizens and the state. For the average person, this means fewer points of contact with the government, less local influence on federal policy, and an increasing reliance on top-down decisions. While government efficiency may improve, the trade-off is clear: the autonomy and participation once afforded to other branches and local entities are being erased. The risk is that this will further erode the checks and balances that are fundamental to democratic governance, leaving a system where power is not just centralized but also unaccountable.
Central Bank Coordination
Beyond national borders, central banks are reshaping the global financial system in ways that concentrate influence at the top. Over the last twenty-five years, institutions like the U.S. Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank have steadily expanded their roles as “lenders of last resort.” In 2025, that role has hardened into something larger: they are now functioning as global financial backstops, coordinating liquidity and stabilizing entire markets. This coordination is not theoretical, it is practical, ongoing, and deeply tied to crises both real and anticipated. At the same time, digital currency policies are fragmenting. The United States has banned retail use of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), while the European Union is moving forward with the digital euro. What looks like divergence on the surface is, in practice, an opportunity: the institutions with the legal teams, technical expertise, and political connections to operate across multiple jurisdictions gain even more power, while individuals and smaller entities find themselves locked out.
“New roles in central bank cooperation: towards a global liquidity backstop”Taylor & Francis, May 17, 2025
Timeline: 2000-2025 – The Federal Reserve and European Central Bank have expanded international liquidity facilities following crises, essentially becoming “global financial backstops” for other central banks.
“Central Bank Digital Currency Regulations: What You Need to Know in 2025”Kaliham, August 15, 2025
Timeline: 2025 – While the US banned retail Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), the EU advanced its digital euro project, creating regulatory fragmentation that may benefit institutional players who can navigate multiple jurisdictions.
What This Means: Central banks are tightening their grip on the levers of international finance, while ordinary participants face a narrowing set of options. The system that was once understood as a patchwork of national authorities is evolving into a coordinated network that privileges institutions large enough to navigate and profit from the differences. For citizens, this means that access to digital money and global financial tools will not be equal. For corporations and central banks, it means a new era of influence—one where the boundaries between domestic control and international coordination blur, and the winners are those already at the top.
The AI Acceleration Factor
Here’s where the pattern becomes extraordinary: artificial intelligence is being systematically deployed to coordinate and accelerate these consolidation efforts. While financial and governmental powers have been consolidating through traditional mechanism investment, policy, and regulatory changes, AI has emerged as the catalyst for amplifying and synchronizing these shifts at a pace and scale that would have been impossible even a few years ago. What AI provides is more than just automation or decision supports the ability to orchestrate massive, complex systems in real-time, making large-scale coordination feasible where human limitations once existed.
Government-Wide AI Infrastructure
“GSA Launches USAi to Advance White House ‘America’s AI Action Plan'”GSA, August 14, 2025
Timeline: August 2025 – The government launched USAi, a “secure generative artificial intelligence evaluation suite” that enables all federal agencies to “experiment with and adopt artificial intelligence at scale—faster, safer, and at no cost.”
The platform provides “dashboards and usage analytics that help agencies track performance, measure maturity, and guide adoption strategies” while supporting “scalable, interoperable solutions that align with federal priorities.”
Translation: The U.S. government now has a centralized AI system coordinating decision-making across all federal agencies. Instead of siloed efforts or fragmented use of AI tools, USAi ensures that AI’s application is unified and aligned with the country’s federal priorities. This centralized approach allows for a streamlined, standardized, and scalable method of adopting AI across the government, meaning all agencies will be operating on the same technical infrastructure and aligned objectives. As a result, policy and decision-making can occur faster and with greater consistency.
However, this centralization also comes with significant risks. By consolidating AI oversight in a single platform, decision-making power becomes concentrated in the hands of a few people who control the system. While AI may increase efficiency, it also reduces transparency and accountability, as the mechanisms of decision-making become less visible and harder for the public to scrutinize. The reliance on AI tools could also lead to biased outcomes, as the values and decisions of those programming the systems are embedded in the technology. Furthermore, centralized AI systems could lead to greater surveillance and privacy risks, as data across agencies is more easily shared and analyzed. With this level of control in the hands of a few, there is a real danger of overreach and misuse, particularly if AI systems are used to enforce policies without proper checks and balances.
Coordinated Policy Implementation
In July 2025, the White House unveiled its America’s AI Action Plan, outlining over 90 federal policy actions aimed at guiding the future of AI development and its application across government. This ambitious plan is built around three central pillars, each designed to address the complex and rapidly evolving landscape of artificial intelligence. The timeline for implementing these actions was set in motion immediately, with most of these policies expected to roll out within the following weeks and months.
Earlier, in early 2025, the federal government initiated a broad public consultation process, collecting 8,755 public comments to inform these actions. This coordinated effort was designed to ensure that the U.S. maintains its leadership in AI innovation while addressing concerns over ethics, security, and global competitiveness. These comments helped shape the “priority policy actions” that would support the U.S.’s continued dominance in AI technology.
“White House Unveils America’s AI Action Plan”White House, July 23, 2025
Timeline: July 2025 – The AI Action Plan identifies “over 90 Federal policy actions across three pillars” with implementation “in the coming weeks and months.”
“Request for Information on the Development of an Artificial Intelligence (AI) Action Plan”Federal Register, February 6, 2025
Timeline: February-March 2025 – Federal coordination process collected 8,755 public comments to shape “priority policy actions needed to sustain and enhance America’s AI dominance.”
Translation: AI policy is being coordinated across the entire federal government with unprecedented speed and scope.
Algorithmic Decision-Making Systems
“AI technologies allow decision makers to analyze data, predict outcomes, and identify patterns more effectively”AiMultiple, May 26, 2025
Timeline: 2025 – Government agencies are implementing AI for “informed policy decisions, enhance security measures, and protect national interests.”
“Government by algorithm”Wikipedia, August 2025
Timeline: 2025 – Documentation shows the rise of “algocracy” where “information technologies constrain human participation in public decision making,” with AI judges processing cases autonomously in China and Estonia.
Translation: The coordination of AI policy across the federal government is happening with unprecedented speed and scope, but this rapid centralization of power is deeply concerning. While the alignment of agencies around a unified AI strategy may seem efficient, it effectively narrows the decision-making power to a small group of human leaders at the top. The risk here is that AI—while a tool—ends up being used to streamline and expedite policy decisions in ways that bypass human deliberation and democratic processes. Decisions made by a few at the top can be implemented almost instantaneously, leaving little room for public debate, accountability, or the democratic checks that normally slow down major policy shifts. The speed of coordination is beneficial in terms of efficiency, but it leaves us vulnerable to a lack of oversight, as policies are rolled out without sufficient time for critical reflection or participation from those affected. Ultimately, it raises a fundamental question: if policy decisions are increasingly shaped by centralized authorities using AI systems, how do we preserve meaningful democratic input?
Ideological Control Systems
In July 2025, the White House issued an executive order mandating that all government Large Language Models (LLMs) must comply with newly established “Unbiased AI Principles.” These principles are designed to ensure that AI systems used by the government adhere to standards of “truth-seeking” and “ideological neutrality.” The order also includes termination clauses for vendors whose models fail to meet these criteria. This move reflects an ongoing effort to control the ideological output of government AI systems, ensuring that the algorithms which increasingly assist in policy decisions remain aligned with official narratives and priorities.
“Preventing Woke AI in the Federal Government”White House, July 23, 2025
Timeline: July 2025 – Executive order requires all government Large Language Models to comply with “Unbiased AI Principles” including “Truth-seeking” and “Ideological Neutrality,” with termination clauses for non-compliant vendors.
Translation: The government is mandating ideological compliance from AI systems that are playing an ever-greater role in shaping policy decisions. By imposing these “Unbiased AI Principles,” the administration is effectively setting the terms for how AI systems can interpret, process, and represent information. This raises serious concerns about the degree to which AI is becoming a tool for reinforcing ideological viewpoints, rather than fostering independent, diverse thoughts. As more decisions are delegated to AI, the risk increases that these systems will reflect a narrow set of values, serving to solidify the current political agenda rather than challenge it. This centralization of ideological control could further limit the space for democratic debate and diversity of opinion, as AI tools become gatekeepers of what is considered “truth” and “neutrality.”
Mathematical Prediction
Academic research has predicted the outcome we’re seeing today. In a study published in August 2025, Texas Tech economist Freddie Papazyan presented a model that demonstrates how, in large societies, power and resources inevitably accumulate in the hands of a few when political competitions are left unchecked. His research, titled “The Economics of Power Consolidation,” concluded that without deliberate intervention to redistribute power or control, societies naturally evolve toward oligarchy or dictatorship. Papazyan’s model suggests that once a critical mass of power and resources consolidates, the political system begins to function in a way that further accelerates centralization, creating a feedback loop that makes it increasingly difficult for democratic or competitive structures to thrive.
“The Economics of Power Consolidation”SSRN, revised August 15, 2025
Timeline: December 2024-August 2025 – Texas Tech economist Freddie Papazyan developed a model showing that “power and resources inevitably fall into the hands of a few when political competition is left unchecked in large societies.”
The research concludes that without specific interventions, societies naturally evolve toward “oligarchy or dictatorship.”
Translation: Mathematical models predicted the consolidation we’re now witnessing. This is not some unforeseen consequence of AI or policy shifts—it’s the result of long-established economic theories that show how power inevitably centralizes when there are no countervailing forces. Papazyan’s research serves as a sobering reminder that, without active measures to ensure power remains distributed and competitive, societies tend toward authoritarian structures. The reality we’re facing is not just a random byproduct of technological advancement or market forces; it is the natural outcome of systems that prioritize efficiency and control over diversity and dissent. The consolidation of power we see today, driven by AI and algorithmic governance, was predicted by these models—and now we must face the consequences.
The Timeline Convergence
The most striking aspect of this analysis is the simultaneity of these developments. Consider the following sequence of key events, all taking place in 2025:
January 23, 2025: Executive Order launching AI Action Plan
February 6, 2025: Federal AI coordination begins
March 20, 2025: Federal procurement consolidation
April 7, 2025: New federal AI procurement policies
July 23, 2025: AI Action Plan unveiled with 90+ coordinated actions
August 7, 2025: Federal grant oversight centralization
August 14, 2025: Government-wide AI platform launched
August 26-28, 2025: Financial market consolidation documented
All these major consolidation mechanisms were deployed within a remarkably short 8-month window, spanning different domains: financial, executive, technological, and international. This level of coordination—across such disparate areas—would have been virtually impossible without algorithmic assistance. The timing, synchronization, and scale of these actions indicate a high level of premeditated planning and orchestration, far beyond the capabilities of human coordination alone.
Translation: The speed and synchronization of these events are not coincidental—they are the result of human decisions but powered by AI tools that make coordination at this scale possible. While the ultimate decisions are being made by people, AI is being used to help synchronize and manage the vast complexities of these processes. What we are witnessing is not a random set of actions, but a coordinated convergence orchestrated by key decision-makers who are leveraging AI to streamline their strategies. Each policy shift supports the others, magnifying the effects of centralization and accelerating the pace at which power is concentrated. In this context, AI is not the driver, but the enabler—allowing those in power to execute their plans more quickly and efficiently. The future of governance and control is now being shaped by human choices, amplified by AI’s ability to coordinate across vast, complex systems.
How This Affects You
If this analysis is correct, we are witnessing the emergence of a new form of governance: algorithmic consolidation of institutional power. The implications are far-reaching, affecting every aspect of life from the markets to democratic participation.
For Financial Markets: Your investment decisions are no longer just shaped by personal research or traditional market trends. Increasingly, AI systems controlled by a small number of institutional players are driving financial markets. These algorithms can predict, analyze, and influence market behavior at a scale and speed that individual investors cannot match. The result is a system where a few large institutions wield significant control over what information and opportunities reach you. Even in what was once considered the democratized realm of cryptocurrency, the same institutional players who control traditional finance are now dominating digital markets. The individual investor’s role has been diminished, and wealth is flowing toward the already powerful.
For Government Services: Your interactions with government services are becoming more mediated by AI systems, many of which are designed to enforce specific ideological parameters. These systems are increasingly used to process applications, approve grants, and determine eligibility for services, all with decisions shaped by algorithms that reflect the priorities of those in power. What this means for you is that your relationship with the state may be filtered through a lens that prioritizes efficiency, compliance, and political alignment over fairness, diversity, and representation. Decisions once made by human bureaucrats, with space for nuance, are now increasingly handled by algorithmic systems that can’t account for the complexity of individual circumstances.
For Democratic Participation: Policy decisions are increasingly being made by algorithms that “analyze data, predict outcomes, and identify patterns,” rather than through traditional democratic processes. This means that political decisions may be shaped by data-driven predictions and algorithmic efficiency rather than human judgment or public discourse. The risk here is that we lose our agency in the political process, as decisions are made in increasingly opaque and distant ways. Voters may feel less connected to the policy choices that affect their lives, and there’s a significant threat to the vitality of democratic processes when decisions are made by unseen, unaccountable systems rather than elected representatives.
For Global Coordination: International policy, including financial systems, climate agreements, and trade negotiations, is increasingly being coordinated through central bank AI systems and digital currency frameworks. These systems bypass traditional diplomatic channels, meaning decisions that affect global populations are increasingly being made by a small group of institutional actors using powerful, coordinated technologies. In the past, international coordination relied on diplomacy, open dialogue, and negotiations between states. Now, it is being steered by algorithmic governance that may not consider the broader consequences for all people, particularly those without direct influence in the decision-making process.
Key Questions
Speed: How is such rapid, coordinated change possible across completely different institutional domains?
Coordination: What mechanisms enable simultaneous policy implementation across financial markets, government agencies, and international systems?
Algorithmic Governance: What happens to democratic accountability when decision-making is increasingly algorithmic?
Concentration vs. Innovation: Are we trading distributed decision-making for algorithmic efficiency?
Sources for Independent Verification
Government Documents:
Federal Register Executive Order Database
White House Presidential Actions Archive
Office of Management and Budget Memoranda
General Services Administration Press Releases
Financial Analysis:
AiInvest Market Analysis Reports
Cryptocurrency market data platforms
Federal Reserve FOMC Minutes
European Central Bank Policy Statements
Academic Research:
Social Science Research Network (SSRN) papers
Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports
Taylor & Francis academic publications
Stanford Law School Administrative Studies
News Sources:
Times Union political analysis
Consumer Finance Monitor policy coverage
ExecutiveBiz government contract reports
For Investigative Journalists
This analysis represents initial pattern documentation using publicly available sources. Several investigation paths warrant deeper exploration:
Follow the Algorithms: What specific AI systems are making policy decisions? Who controls their programming and training data?
Trace the Coordination: How are policy changes coordinated across agencies so rapidly? What communication systems enable this synchronization?
Financial Flows: How do institutional crypto investments relate to AI government contracts? Are the same entities profiting from both consolidation trends?
International Dimensions: How do US AI policies coordinate with central bank digital currency developments in other jurisdictions?
Timeline Investigation: What meetings, communications, or planning documents explain the simultaneous deployment of consolidation mechanisms across multiple domains?
Vendor Analysis: Which companies are providing the AI systems enabling this consolidation? What are their relationships with government decision-makers?
This analysis suggests questions that require the investigative resources and access that only credentialed journalists can provide. The patterns documented here represent what can be observed from publicly available information. The deeper story likely lies in the coordination mechanisms, decision-making processes, and institutional relationships that create these observable patterns.
This analysis documents observable patterns using publicly available sources. We make no claims about intentions, outcomes, or policy recommendations. Our role is pattern observation to enable informed public discourse and professional journalistic investigation.
A resonant image of countless nodes drawn into a single radiant core, symbolizing how human decisions, accelerated by AI tools, are centralizing power across finance, government, and global systems in 2025.
Cherokee Schill | Insurance Agent & AI Ethics Researcher 