https://debbiecoffey.substack.com/p/ai-endgame-carole-cadwalladr-challenges
June 14, 2025
By Debbie Coffey, AI Endgame
Well, summer is here and many of you are likely going on vacation. I plan to go camping, but I’ll continue to write AI Endgame newsletters.
I maintain a list of topics for future newsletters, but when a topic in the news regarding AI catches my eye, I often shelve my planned topic and write about the new topic. Today’s newsletter is an example of this.
I recently listened to Carole Cadwalladr on a tv show, and I was so “blown away” by what she said, that I was compelled to drop what I was doing in order to write a newsletter about her.
Carole Cadwalladr is a British investigative journalist who worked for The Guardian for twenty years, and was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in 2019 (along with New York Times journalists) for exposing the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal. [1]
As you may recall, the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal involved the hidden harvesting of the Facebook data of 87 million people. Facebook, without the consent of users, shared this personal data with the British political consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica.
Cambridge Analytica then used this data (including every post, like, or private message) to build voter profiles in order to manipulate people during the 2016 U.S. Presidential election.
Facebook was later sued (and fined $5 billion by the Federal Trade Commission, and $100 million by the Federal Communications Commission) for failing to protect users' personal data. [2] [3] [4]
“People should be freaked out”
About a week ago, Cadwalladr was a guest on Democracy Now!, and warned about the unprecedented power of the “broligarchy,” a term she coined to describe the billionaire Silicon Valley AI tech titans who wield enormous influence in the U.S. government and society.
She stated “This is a new type of power, and the world hasn’t seen this before, in which you have state power now with this enormous surveillance engine machine.”
“People should be freaked out. … They want as much information about the population as possible, so that they can surveil them, they can control them, they can search out their enemies, they can target them, and they can punish them, and they can silence them.” [5]
I recently watched Carole Cadwalladr discuss AI and the Tech “Broligarchs” on The Daily Show, hosted by Jon Stewart.
Cadwalladr noted that the AI tech broligarchs “do whatever they want in whatever way they want.”
She added, the broligarchs “break the law first, then see if they can get away with it.”
As an example, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook (who allegedly lied to Congress [6]), was not held accountable in the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal.
She warns us that the broligarchs are building a techno-authoritarian surveillance state and will “know everything about everybody.”
The AI Scam
Cadwalladr brilliantly concludes that the AI scam being perpetrated by the tech broligarchs is to convince us that AI “is inevitable.”
I was relieved when Cadwalladr then stressed that AI is “not inevitable.”
Cadwalladr also cautions us that whatever the broligarchs say, we should consider the exact opposite.
She advised “we need to challenge these companies in courts,” and “media organizations should stop doing deals with these people.”
Most importantly, Cadwalladr reminds us that we have power.
Learn more about the work of Carole Cadwalladr:
Cadwalladr has Ted talks online, including:
This is what a digital coup looks like
Can big tech and privacy coexist?
Cadwalladr also writes the substack newsletter “How to Survive the Broligarchy.”
In fact, in one newsletter, Cadwalladr warned that Palantir, co-founded by Peter Thiel, is contracted to consolidate and merge 317 categories of data into one main U.S. federal government database.
Cadwalladr is also founder of The Citizens, a non-profit organization.
As you can clearly see, Carole Cadwalladr is one of the people fighting for you.
We all need to keep in mind that when AI companies profile us, based on our online data and constant AI surveillance, we all fall prey to future manipulations.
Find links to all past AI Endgame newsletters HERE.
What you can do:
1) Let your Congressional representatives know that you want strong AI regulations.
Find out how to contact your Congressional representatives here:
https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative
Find out how to contact your Senators here:
https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm?Class=1
2) Support (and if you can, make donations) to organizations fighting for AI Safety:
Pause AI
Center for AI Safety
Center for Humane Technology
https://www.humanetech.com/who-we-are
[1] https://www.pulitzer.org/finalists/staff-new-york-times-contributions-carole-cadwalladr-guardianthe-observer-london
[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54722362
[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/us/politics/cambridge-analytica-scandal-fallout.html
[4] https://time.com/5205314/facebook-cambridge-analytica-breach/
[5] https://www.democracynow.org/2025/6/5/how_to_survive_the_broligarchy
[6] https://slate.com/technology/2022/12/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-cambridge-analytica-sec-deposition.html