"Envious of the power and wealth of corporate America, the head of U.S. intelligence has issued a new directive calling on the spy agencies to “routinize” and “expand” their partnerships with private companies. Agencies are even authorized to incur “risk” in these relationships, the directive says. The move underscores the awesome power of corporations — the appistocracy, as I call them, or “non-state entities,” the directive’s euphemistic term.
Called Intelligence Community Directive 406, the order was signed on January 16 by then-President Biden’s Director of National Intelligence in the final days of the administration. It lays out new ways for spy agencies to capitalize on the information and expertise of these corporate superpowers, which could be anything from social media platforms to AI firms. It is not yet clear how the Trump administration plans to exercise these authorities.
There is an unspoken and unsettling context to this effort: these corporations have become more powerful than many nation states. Top companies are now worth more than the GDPs of most countries. Where the CIA once might have coveted the secrets of Albania, now it is Apple, whose wealth exceeds all but the four richest countries."
https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/big-brother-becomes-little-brother
#USA #Surveillance #PoliceState #SocialMedia #BigTech #Privacy