Technology, ai, billionaires and the world order…

martha lane fox
4 min readJan 16, 2025

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There are constantly multiple challenges to our international rules based order. However there is one that is moving with alarming speed. This is the threat we are all facing from unregulated technologies and the unchecked influence of technology billionaires. These threats are eroding the very foundations of accountability, equity, and cooperation that sustain the global system.

Elon Musk’s current global dominance. exemplifies the dangers of concentrated power in unregulated domains. His Starlink satellite network, has become indispensable for global communications, particularly in remote regions and conflict zones. Yet, its control rests solely with Musk, allowing his whims to dictate access to vital infrastructure. This monopoly undermines state sovereignty and creates a “tragedy of the commons,” where a shared resource is privatized for profit.

X has become a global epicenter for misinformation. Under Elon’s leadership, the platform has abandoned traditional content moderation, dismantled trust and safety teams, and replaced verification with a paid subscription model. This has allowed bad actors to amplify lies about elections, public health, and climate change. Musk himself, with over 200 million followers, has promoted misleading narratives that have been viewed billions of times. His controversial comments on Taiwan and Ukraine highlight the risks of unelected individuals wielding disproportionate influence over our international affairs.

X’s reliance on a crowd-sourced “Community Notes” system to fact-check content has proven ineffective. Studies show that this approach fails to curb engagement with misinformation, instead creating a chaotic information landscape where truth is obscured. Musk’s aversion to transparency – such as restricting data access for researchers – further compounds the problem, making it nearly impossible to assess the scale of harm caused by his platform.

Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta is following a similar path. In a recent announcement, Meta revealed it would replace its third-party fact-checking program with a community-driven system akin to X’s. Zuckerberg justified this shift as a return to “free expression,” but clearly it is a political move aligned with the incoming Trump administration. By removing fact-checkers and reducing content visibility controls, Meta is becoming another breeding ground for disinformation.

Meta’s platforms – Facebook, Instagram, and Threads – reach billions of users worldwide. The decision to rely on community moderation not only weakens safeguards against falsehoods but also places the burden of truth-telling on users who lack expertise or accountability. This shift undermines years of progress made since the 2016 U.S. election when Meta first introduced fact-checking to combat misinformation.

Unregulated artificial intelligence compounds these issues. AI systems are already linked to biased decision-making, privacy violations, and job displacement. Worse still, authoritarian regimes exploit AI for mass surveillance and censorship, while democratic nations struggle to regulate its misuse. The lack of global AI governance leaves a vacuum where corporations prioritize profit over public safety, fostering inequality and undermining human rights.

We are ill-equipped to address these challenges. By enabling private actors to dominate critical sectors like digital communications and AI development, we have ceded control over public goods to corporate interests. This shift not only weakens state authority but also exacerbates global inequality and political instability. Mr. Musk’s accumulation of power is one of the most stark. outcomes of this failure:

In my opinion it is not sufficient to say that our UK focused online safety act will mean we are protected. The information ecosystem is global and the inter-relationship between traditional media and social media is complex. Noise and nonsensical opinions travel fast.

So what now?

Ofcom must accelerate its enforcement of the online safety act to ensure platforms comply with their duties under the act as soon as possible. This includes holding companies accountable for illegal content and misinformation through fines or criminal penalties for senior executives.

But the act has limited powers over disinformation.

We need to consider how to address “legal but harmful” content like election disinformation and health-related untruths that destabilize society.

We should consider including a mandate for transparency in algorithms and a requirement that platforms like X and Meta publish regular audits on content moderation practices.

In addition, Platforms should be legally required to share data with independent researchers to enable real-time monitoring of misinformation trends.

This will empower experts to identify high-risk narratives quickly and develop targeted interventions.

Secondly, we should bring together the many skills initiatives to ensure our local and global institutions are equipped with the digital understanding.

To counter both foreign interference and domestic vulnerabilities, we need a workforce equipped with cutting-edge technical expertise. Expanding initiatives like the UK Institute for Technical Skills and Strategy will build capacity in cybersecurity, AI governance, and digital resilience, but it is not enough.

We must also ensure collaboration between universities, employers, and training providers can ensure that technical education aligns with national security needs. Finally, where the government is able, it must keep pressure on our multinational partners to invest in the best talent.

In 2022 I was on the board of directors of Twitter and deeply involved in the sale to Elon Musk. As chair of the nomination and governance committee and the compensation committee we had multiple interactions. In one conversation I had with him he told me he had ‘solved the climate crisis by inventing electric vehicles, solved interplanetary travel by inventing SpaceX and was now going to save democracy by joining The board of Twitter’.

At the time I was bowled over by the arrogance of his words and thought he was wildly overestimating both his own power and that of the platform. How naive I was.

Fast forward to today and we have a man who with an investment of $250m dollars into a presidential campaign, has seen an increase in his own wealth of $200bn and who has become a figure who dominates global headlines on a near daily basis. He exerts massive cultural and geopolitical influence. It is too easy to see him as a cartoon like super villain. We do so at our peril.

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