The new head of the UK’s foreign intelligence agency has warned that ambitious tech companies and their backers are gaining as much political power as nation-states.
In her first public speech as MI6 chief this month, Blaise Metreweli said, “our world is being remade” by new technology products in a way once only depicted in science fiction.
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Speaking from the MI6 headquarters in London, she warned that technologies are “rewriting the reality of conflict as they converge to create science fiction-like tools”. She claimed that some social media platform algorithms could “become as powerful as states.”
Metreweli asserted that “the greatest wisdom of the 21st century” lies in in the hands of those who wield the most powerful technologies.
Just a handful of tech giants now control how information reaches the public, raising concerns that their owners could manipulate information and communications for their preferred political outcomes.
Two or three US companies dominate social media, according to Metreweli, and Elon Musk, the owner of X (as well as SpaceX and Tesla), also controls Starlink, a satellite communications network that is regarded as crucial for the Ukrainian military’s ongoing conflict with Russia.
Although Metreweli was primarily referring to political power and influence, monopolies also have enormous economic power.
Monopolies in other industries are also causing havoc. A rising price and pilot shortage in India’s airlines recently shook the industry, and Netflix’s proposed merger with Warner Bros has raised concerns that a streaming monopoly might hurt the creative and artistic industries and stymie consumer choice.
Which other monopolies are causing controversies?
Monopolies are not just an issue for the technology sector, they are disrupting other industries as well.
Warner Bros. and Netflix
Netflix and Warner Bros. split up on December 5 to buy Discovery in an $82.7 billion deal, which follows Paramount’s acquisition of Skydance Media earlier this year and Disney’s acquisition of a related studio, 21st Century Fox.
Experts and government officials have raised antitrust concerns about the planned acquisition, noting that the enlarged market share controlled by one group following such a merger could throw up problems.
Consumers appear to concur. On December 9, Netflix filed a lawsuit to stop the merger.
The lawsuit asserts that the Warner Bros deal would eliminate one of Netflix’s closest rivals – HBO Max – and give Netflix control over several major Warner Bros franchises, including Harry Potter, DC Comics and Game of Thrones.
A subscriber in a federal court in California filed a class action claim that this will lower competition, raise prices, and restrict the choice of content for US viewers.
Netflix has argued that the costs for consumers would be lower because Discovery Warner Bros services could be bundled with a Netflix subscription, and that social media video platforms like YouTube and TikTok should be included in any market survey, which would lessen its perceived market dominance.
IndiGo
On December 2, air travel across India was thrown into chaos when the country’s largest airline, IndiGo, cancelled thousands of flights, stranding hundreds of thousands of passengers at airports across the country.
Because IndiGo, which operates roughly 2,200 flights per day, had failed to adhere to new pilot rest-and-duty regulations that the government introduced in 2024, passengers faced mass cancellations as a result of pilot shortages.
The airline continued to fail to meet the revised November 1 deadline despite having been granted temporary exemptions from the new regulations to keep it running. Former AirAsia CFO Vijay Gopalan blamed IndiGo’s “very, very lackadaisical, nonchalant attitude” in adapting to rule changes.
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), India’s aviation watchdog, issued a letter to IndiGo CEO Pieter Elbers on December 6 outlining regulatory action. According to the Reuters news agency, “You have broken your duty to make sure reliable operations are conducted in accordance with your obligations.”
For now, IndiGo has been exempted from capping the weekly number of landings between midnight and early morning until February 10. In order to find out the cause of the flight disruptions, the government has ordered a high-level investigation.
In India, IndiGo and Air India jointly control 92 percent of the market, which raises concerns about the absence of competition.
The recent crisis, in particular, has highlighted the risk of overreliance on a single carrier, with IndiGo controlling 65 percent of the market share.
This month, it was revealed that Indians are experiencing steep increases in their airfares as a result of the absence of competition, effectively excluding a sizable portion of the population from air travel.
India saw a 43% increase in domestic airfares in the first half of 2024, the second-highest increase in the Asia Pacific and West Asia regions after Vietnam, according to a study released in November of last year by Airports Council International (ACI), a global trade association representing more than 2, 000 airports in more than 180 countries.
Why should monopolies be restricted?
Monopolies develop when one company overtakes another due to innovation or limited resources, creating barriers for rivals. They frequently face criticism for limiting choice and raising prices, but they occasionally deliver goods and services that fragmented competition could not support.
Still, there are a number of reasons that many economists warn against allowing monopolies to emerge.
Monopolies can stifle innovation and weaken competition, which could undermine a nation’s economic activity. Additionally, monopolies can cause price distortion. Dominant firms may limit supplies in order to keep prices artificially high, squeezing consumers.
Anything that raises the cost of goods should cause people to be concerned, according to Max Lawson, director of policy and advocacy for Oxfam.
Finally, monopolies stifle business. One group having control over infrastructure, data, or supply chains allows that group to favour itself or other preferred firms by raising the barrier to entry for new firms or potential competitors.
Economically, this might lead to fewer jobs, less innovation, and greater wealth inequality. In addition, it can be used to smother opinions, social media, or even political alternatives.
Guy Standing, an economist and research associate at SOAS University, said, “They]monopolies] can gain economies of scale, where the unit price of production]goes] down and then raise the price for consumers … as there’s no competition left”.
He noted that private monopolies “reap vast wealth and benefits for their shareholders at the expense of consumers, which furthers income inequality” across a range of different industries.
Have monopolies previously been a major problem?
US economic history is awash with examples of monopoly power. Through “predatory pricing,” John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil deliberately undercutting competitors’ prices to cause them to go out of business before later raising prices, crushed rivals in the late 1800s.
About 90% of US oil refining was being handled by Standard Oil in the 1890s.
At roughly the same time, railroad monopolies distorted regional economies by using discriminatory freight rates, favouring certain regions and industries while undercutting firms that challenged their dominance.
These modern technology monopolies echoe. Google, for instance, dominates online marketing and effectively shapes online markets by analyzing user behavior to determine what users see and how politicians and politicians interact with audiences.
Elsewhere, Amazon leverages its e-commerce and logistics power to undercut rivals. It consolidates its market position by using its extensive logistics network, warehousing, and data-driven pricing to compete with competitors for lower prices and faster delivery.
According to Lawson, “in the last 30 years, we’ve seen an extreme concentration of market power]in the tech sector] that has] increased income inequality and made economies more inefficient.”
SOAS University’s Standing echoed that sentiment: “Modern economies have evolved so that monopolies are increasingly present across all sectors of activity”.
“This is particularly true of information services. Elon Musk, a plutocrat, and others who use their wealth to buy politicians are now able to influence the political direction of the services they offer, such as the social media platform X, he continued.
How can governments combat monopolies?
Antitrust laws refer to legal measures that stop anticompetitive practices and are used by governments to combat monopolies. As evidenced by the 2011 dissolution of AT&, T, a US telecom company, domineering companies are given the authority to split up into smaller groups by antitrust laws.
At its height, in the 1980s, AT&, T oversaw many regional service providers, covering almost all telephone networks in the US, limiting choice and inflating prices. Regulators reduced their size, thereby boosting competition and ultimately lowering costs.
The US Department of Justice has two significant antitrust lawsuits against Google going on. In 2021, Google said it would overhaul its global advertising business and agreed to pay a $268m fine as part of an antitrust settlement with French watchdogs.
Regulators may also impose fines for unfair pricing and work to lower new entrants’ access to markets by promoting transparency and open standards. For instance, the European Commission imposed a ban on Apple in March 2025 for using a device to connect to other businesses and forbidding the tech giant from disclosing alternatives at the expense of consumers.
Regulators have gone beyond fines to mandate interoperability and fair practices under laws like the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA). In order to give smaller businesses a fairer chance to compete, the DMA mandates that dominant platforms share data, allow rivals to connect with their systems, and disclose transparent advertising and ranking practices.
Authorities can stop monopolies from stifling innovation and concentrating excessive market power, which could give them political power, as the UK’s intelligence chief recently warned, by combining legal action, economic oversight, and structural reform with economic oversight.
Lawson said he believes that “to regulate super-powerful corporate titans, you can cut them down to size, either break them up into smaller private firms or nationalise them”.
