HOW WE CAN STOP BROLIGARCHS CONTROLLING US (10 Steps)

Big tech companies and their bosses have a lot of power – some suggest – to influence, and even change, our governments, our laws, our democracy, our privacy, our data, our freedom, create fear,  stop whistleblowers, fragment society, polarise opinions, spread hate, enable abuse, create a controlling cult, and in return, take our money, time and data. How can this be? An even better question is: How can we stop this?

This post is inspired specifically by two talented professionals  with these 3 must-watch/must-read items:
1. Journalist, Carole Cadwalladr and her two stunning TED Talks 2025 and 2019.
2. Author and former Facebook global public policy director Sarah Wynn-Williams’ shocking book, Careless People (just released, although she is already banned from promoting it).
3. Carole Cadwalladr’s final piece for the Observer: ‘It’s not too late to stop Trump and the tech broligarchy from controlling our lives, but we must act now’ The Observer 20 Apr. See links at the end.

 

First, let’s look at ‘what is a broligarch?’, then ‘how do they control us?’, and finally, most importantly, how can we stop them?

WHAT IS A BROLIGARCH?

A broligarchy is a ‘small group of men who control a situation or political power structure. It differs from an ordinary oligarchy in that a broligarchy carries with it a connotation of toxic masculinity.’

Broligarchs comes from a play on bro + oligarchy. Wikipedia suggests broligarchs are ultra-wealthy men often in the tech industry, who wield significant political and economic influence while embodying a certain “tech bro” culture.

ChatGPT defines ‘tech bro’ as ‘a slang term used to describe a certain kind of (usually male) figure in the tech industry who blends Silicon Valley startup culture, tech optimism, and bro culture – often with a dose of arroganceor tone-deafness.’ ChatGPT’s definition continues with these broligarch descriptors:

• Works in tech, usually a startup or big-name company (Meta, Google, etc.)
• Often involved in entrepreneurship, coding, crypto, AI, or VC funding
• Talks like a thought leader—buzzwords, big visions, “disruption”
• Bro-ish attitude: overconfident, self-important, sometimes dismissive of regulation or social responsibility
• Might wear the “uniform”: hoodie/t-shirt/baseball cap

Journalist, Stephen Poole, highlighted META’s CEO: ‘… Zuckerberg’s recent appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast. He complains that corporate culture has become too “neutered” and needs a new injection of “masculine energy”. In February, he visited the White House to talk to Donald Trump about AI.’ (Poole 2025).

HOW DO BROLIGARCHS CONTROL US?

It has been suggested that they: Relentlessly Collect Data, Steal Data, Dissolve Privacy, Destroy Information/Truth, Stop Anyone Revealing Information about Broligarchs and their companies, Increase Fear, Create a Cult that lobbies for deregulation, reduces safety-checks, exploits vulnerable teenagers, allows hate speech, manipulates elections and damages democracy as long as it makes lots of money? This is the antithesis of stakeholder capitalism (where corporations actually care about more than just their shareholders). So, let’s explore briefly each one of these Broligarch identifiers and whether they are real.

Relentlessly Collect Data?

Data is the world’s most valuable resource (Economist 2017). It used to be oil. Data is also a Broligarch’s ‘Crack Cocaine’, says Carole Cadwalladr in her amazing 2025 TED Talk. Today, tech companies gather an awful lot of data about us. Did you know Uber cars record your conversations in Ubers? Other tech companies collect swathes of data from us.

However, there’s nothing really new here. Do you remember the now-defunct Cambridge Analytica getting access to Facebook data (was it 2016), to help Donald Trump win his first election? Ditto Facebook and Cambridge Analytica helping the BREXIT campaign by tailoring and targeting very specific incorrect messages to individual clusters of Facebook users to swing their opinions, playing on fears and prejudices. Trump won the 2016 campaign by a small, yet critical margin. See my Facebook Data: How it was used by Cambridge Analytica? They can access our private thoughts and arguably, even our unconscious desires (see below – how FB & Cambridge Analytica explored this).

Data is power. No one understands this better than the Chinese Communist Party. Facebook whistleblower, Sarah Wynn-Williams, was surprised to read an internal email that said ‘Facebook will agree to grant the Chinese government access to Chinese users’ data, including Hong Kongese users’ data. (p.151).

Data also has value inside an organisation, such as the US Government’s data. Cadwalladr’s final piece for the Observer newspaper suggests that data is also used within government offices for all sorts of reasons: ‘The first thing that Elon Musk did was to send his cyber troops into the US Treasury to get access to the data.  That is not a coincidence. It’s a hack. That data is now feeding AIs that are choosing who to sack and who to replace – sorry – eliminate fraud and waste.’

Destroy Privacy?

Facebook Has Your Private Information FB and other tech companies harvest vast amounts of data. They learn what you like and then serve you more of it, to keep you on their platforms.  Wyn-Williams reports that: ‘Facebook employed a series of “addictive by design” features specifically targeted and tailored to exploit the vulnerabilities of young users, while hiding the risky and harmful nature of such features.’ P.348.

They use data to target messages and ads that will have more impact as they use ‘signals’ from data, e.g. a teenage girl deleting a selfie photo could be a signal that the girl is worried or dislikes the way she looks. This signal suggests this girl might read a message (or ad) about cosmetic surgery or slimming pills. Facebook make big money from targeted ads. The teenage girl and her very private worries get exploited.

This is not new. 10 years ago, researchers from the University of Cambridge and Stanford University revealed how

FB can knows you better than your:

– Work colleagues – if they analyse 10 of your ‘likes’.

– Parents and family – if they analyse 150 of your ‘likes’.

– Spouse – if they analyse 300 of your ‘likes’.

(Lapwosky 2015)

Steal Data: ‘Theft & Rape’?

There are, and have been, many objections and lawsuits (e.g. New York Times and Getty Images) against AI companies training their AI with other people’s data (stories, pictures, photographs, text, posts, articles, books, newspapers and more).

During her 2025 TED Talk, Carole highlighted how her own work, research and writing style has been taken when she unveiled a ‘Chatgpt writing a TED Talk in the style of Carole Cadwalladr’.  And it is creepily plausible.  But what it doesn’t know, because AI is actually as dumb as a rock, is that I am going to turn to Sam Altman, who is coming here, a TED speaker, and say that this does not belong to you. ChatGPT has been trained on my IP, my labour, my personal data. And I did not consent.’

Carole also publicly objected to the Guardian Group’s sale of the Observer (Sunday newspaper) and subsequent deal with Open AI. She continued her TED Talk: ‘You know, “The Guardian” has effectively got rid of more than 100 journalists. We actually leave the building next week.  And shortly afterwards, it signed a syndication deal with OpenAI.  Or, as I think of it, IT MARRIED ITS RAPIST.’

Destroy Information/Truth?

Carole Cadwalladr continues her Ted Talk: ‘If you want to know what the FIRST GREAT AI APOCALYPSE is, we’re already living it. It’s total information collapse. And if you take one thing only away from this talk, it’s politics is technology now.  And that’s why everybody in this room, you can’t look away.  It’s why your CEOs have been taken captive and are paraded on TV like hostages. But you, you have a choice. So Trump, he calls the press – the enemies of the people.’

Incidentally, Vice President JD Vance went further by saying: ‘we have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country.’ (Front Burner hosted by Jayme Poisson ‘Professors are the enemy’: Trump’s war on higher education – Transcript: 26/3/2025)

Disinformation is not new. The 2016 BREXIT campaign posted ads on Facebook that were, simply, lies. e.g. they claimed ‘Turkey’s 76m people are joining the EU’. This is, as Carole Cadwalladr said in her first TED Talk: ‘A Total Lie. Turkey is not joining the EU. There’s not even any discussions of it joining.’ Here we are in 2025, and Turkey is still not a member of the EU. The funders of these Brexit ads got away with this. In addition to all of this, is it possible that Putin’s constant divisive disinformation secret campaigns have polarised and divided society and simultaneously mobilised extreme feelings, which have damaged democracy in the West?

Meanwhile, Sarah Wynne-Williams reports that Facebook ‘put staff in with the Trump campaign to help them stage the war of misinformation, trolling and lies that won him the election.’ P.380

Remember this sobering piece of advice from Wynne-Williams: ‘So look after facts. You’ll miss them when they’ve gone.’

Increase Fear?

The illegal anti-Brexit ads on Facebook bred fear when they warned people about 76m Turks were about to invade the UK. Similar disinformation about migrants is regularly spread around the world.

The most blatant proof of using fear appeared on youtube when Palantir USA, CEO, Alex Karp seemingly proudly came out and said: ‘There are two ways America can be strong in the face of our adversaries: (1) to put the fear of death, into our adversaries at any random moment, which I think is happening for the first time in a long time.   (2) Economy…….’   CNBC Exclusive Interview (Jan 2025).

Then the AI oligarchs scare me even more when we realise that robots might decide when to drop a nuclear bomb. There might not be any humans involved in triggering nuclear weapons. This is yet another worry or fear about the application of AI to military weapons. This shocking thought comes from Wynn-Williams’ book (P.386): We ‘live in an era when intelligent weapons can autonomously identify and kill human targets without human input.’ This triggers an obvious question:

‘Should a human be involved before nuclear weapons are triggered?’

Stop Whistleblowers?

Broligark companies have endless resources to Harass, Bully and Sue in court anyone who challenges their power. e.g. Carole Cadwalladr’s description, during her TED Talk, of the disgusting harassment and bullying she suffered on social media was horrifying. It was relentless. It seemed organised. Personal. Destructive. Abusive. Relentless. It was, in a word, shocking. She also has had a 3-year legal case against her, which went all the way to the High Court in the UK.

Carole’s final article for the Guardian quoted her TED 2025 talk when she said:

‘…the last time that I stood on this stage (TED), it led to a three-year legal battle,  culminated in London’s High Court, in which it felt like I was on trial for my life, because I was.  My career, my reputation, my finances,  even my home, was on the line.  All because I came here to warn you that I didn’t think democracy was going to survive the technology that you’re building, however incredible it is.’

 

Create a Fragmented Society?

Divide and conquer. Polarise opinions. Reduce room for the middle ground. Push people apart into one extreme view or another. Here’s Christopher Wylie,  Cambridge Analytica whistleblower: ‘If you want to fundamentally change society, you first have to break it.  And it’s only when you break it is when you can remould the pieces into your vision of a new society. This was the weapon that Steve Bannon* wanted to fight his culture war.’ See PR Smith’s  ‘The Dark Arts of Marketing (2019). *Trump’s former right-hand man.

Create A Cult?

Broligarks appear to behave like a cult. In fact, Palantir (founded by Peter Thiel, early investor in Facebook & founder of PayPal) was referred to, somewhat proudly, as ‘a cult’ at the recent Asset Management CEO Forum, New York (12-13 Dec 2024). In her introduction, the interviewer (who was about to interview Palantir’s USA CEO, Alex Karp) referred to ‘Palantirians’. She then went on to say:

‘It is a cult. That is what this is all about. It is a very important cult that is changing the shape of the world and controlling much of how the world order is going to happen.’  After this ‘cult’ intro, Alex Karp (with his untidy hair) then went on to talk about putting ‘the fear of death, into our adversaries’ (see above).

As already mentioned, cult members working in tech have a Bro-ish attitude: overconfident, self-important, sometimes dismissive of regulation or social responsibility.

After her TED talk, Carole Cadwalladr wrote her final article for the Guardian about AI: ‘It’s going to blast away whole industries, concentrate even greater power in an even smaller group of men, deplete the planet’s resources even further, and it’s in the hands of reckless, careless people who seem to have no understanding of society. To them, it’s just a race; a winner-takes-all competition.’

Carole continues to explain why most of us just don’t see what’s happening: ‘All while the world still looks much the same
– same streets
– same houses
– same politicians talking on the
– same TVs.
It’s why it’s so hard to get your head around it.’

 

HOW TO BEAT THE BROLIGARCHS’ ATTEMPTED COUP

‘It’s a coup’,said Cadwalladr in her TED Talk 2025.  ‘We can’t fight it if we can’t see it, I said, and we can’t see it if we can’t name it’.

So here are Cadwalladr’s 10 Steps from her TED Talk 2025.

10 Steps to Beat the Broligarchs

We have to learn how to digitally disobey.

That can be as simple as the drop-down box.

1. Don’t accept the cookies

2. Don’t give your real name

3. Download Signal, the encrypted messaging app.

4. Don’t bomb Yemen

5. Don’t add the editor of “The Atlantic” to your group chats!! [Note: Jeffrey Goldberg was, in error, added to a white house chat group revealing strategic defence messages)!!!

6. Don’t experiment on children. You know, social mores change. We don’t send children down coal mines anymore.  And in years to come, allowing your child to be data-harvested from birth will be considered child abuse. You didn’t know, but now you do.

7. Privacy is power.  And we have more of it than we think. I had this little epiphany yesterday in which I realised, actually, the moments when I felt most powerless were the moments that I felt I was actually most powerful. It was because my journalism had an impact. They want us to feel powerless. That’s the plan. There is so much, though, that we can learn from people who’ve been through this before. TED 2025 12:39

8. It is going to take a movement. But we can

9. Learn from movements that there have been before us.

10. But you definitely won’t win if you don’t fight.

Carole Cadwalladr.

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Stay optimistic. AI can help society instead of destroying it (see PR Smith 2021 link). Watch Mo Gawdat talks (see PR Smith 2023 links). Talk about the Broligarchs. Do not sit back. Take action.

Summary:

1. Be aware of broligarchs and their control
2. Do not sit back and accept this
3. Take action against broligarchs: petitions, protests, stop buying/using their brands (where possible), only invest in non-broligarch brands.

I welcome your suggestions, comments and feedback.

Who is Carol Cadwalladr? Carole Cadwalladr is a reporter and was a feature writer for the Observer. Carole has written some profound articles and delivered possibly two of the greatest TED Talks ever (one in 2019 and the other in 2025). See full references/links below.

Who is Sarah Wynne Williams? Facebook’s former global public policy director, Sarah Wynne Williams, joined Facebook in 2011 and left in 2018. Wynne-Williams alleges FB #sexual #harassment and #human #rights failures in her recently published shocking book, Careless People.   See full references/links below.

 

Carole Cadwalladr’s 2025 TED Talk This is what a digital coup looks like
Carole Cadwalladr’s original shocking 2019 TED Talk and review by PR Smith
Sarah Wynn-Williams shocking book Careless People
Carole Cadwalladr’s final article for the Guardian: It’s not too late to stop Trump and the tech broligarchy from controlling our lives, but we must act now. Guardian 20 Apr 2025

All other references are listed below

BBC (2023) Meta stops ex-director from promoting critical memoir 13 March
CNBC Exclusive Interview 1:38 – 1:55 CNBC Exclusive interview with Alex Karp Palantir CEO.   posted by Pascal Hetzscholdt  Jan 31, 2025
Lapowsky, I. (2015) How Facebook Knows You Better Than Your Friends Do, Wired Jan 13
Poisson, J. (2025)   ‘Professors are the enemy’: Trumps war on higher education – Transcript: Burner 26 Mar.
Poole, S. (2025) Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams review – Zuckerberg and me, Guardian 13 Mar.
Smith, PR (2018) The Dark Arts Of Marketing – Breaking Down Society to Create a New Culture – Using Data & IRD  prsmith.org/blog 22 Mar
Smith, PR (2019) Facebook Data: How it was used by Cambridge Analytica prsmith.org/blog 3 Sep
Smith, PR (2019) Marketing Gone Wrong: Is the Dark Web Worse Than Subliminal Seduction?  ** Carole Cadwalladr’s original Shocking video about Facebook’s role in the BREXIT referendum PRSmith.org blog 3 May
Smith, PR (2021) AI and Data – Crisis Coming? prsmith.org/blog 10 Aug
Smith, PR (2023) Will ChatGPT + ChatBots + Avatars Make Us Immortal? PRSmith.org blog 10 Mar
Smith, PR (2023) AI Today, Tomorrow and How To Save Our World – Mo Gawdat prsmith.org/blog 18 Oct

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