Why Does The End Of The World Look So Profitable?

Authored by Michael Kern via OilPrice.com,

• Sovereignty is shifting from public institutions to private tech entities like Palantir and SpaceX, which secure massive government contracts and offer “governance as a service.”
• The AI boom’s massive resource demands, particularly for energy and water, are being subsidized by the public, driving up costs while “efficiency” in the workplace leads to widespread job deletion and the flattening of the middle class.
• To address this shift, a new social contract is required, including adopting a Sovereign Equity Model for government-funded ventures, implementing an automation tax to replace eroded payroll taxes, and moving toward Universal Basic Services.

The stock market is hitting record highs. GDP growth is in the green. Tech valuations are defying gravity… fueled by a promise that artificial intelligence is going to generate trillions of dollars in wealth.

And yet… everything feels kinda…terrible? 

Jobs are disappearing, not in a crash, but in a slow fade. Prices for essentials remain stubbornly high. The divide between the digital economy and physical reality has never been wider.

We are told this is just a transition period. We are told that “efficiency” is messy… but necessary.

But the unease you feel isn’t irrational. The green arrows on the stock charts aren’t measuring the health of the everyday economy anymore. They are measuring the success of a takeover.

We are watching a fundamental shift in how the state operates. Sovereignty is shifting from public institutions to a network of private entities. And in many ways, we are holding the door open for them.

When Silicon Valley Bought the State

For years, we talked about the “revolving door” between business and government.

The idea was that regulators would leave office and take cushy jobs at the companies they used to police. It was a conflict of interest… but one we understood.

That metaphor doesn’t really fit anymore. This is more like a merger.

A specific network of billionaires and venture capitalists has moved beyond lobbying. They are now building the state infrastructure themselves.

They don’t want to influence the rules. They want to be the ones writing the code that executes the rules.

Look at the players involved…

• Peter Thiel: The billionaire founder of Palantir, who has explicitly stated that he no longer believes “freedom and democracy are compatible.”
• Elon Musk: Who uses his platforms to amplify “techno-populism” while securing massive government contracts.
• Marc Andreessen: The venture capitalist whose “techno-optimist manifesto” calls for unlimited acceleration of technology, regardless of the social cost.

These aren’t just businessmen. They are state-builders.

And they’ve spent the last decade funding a pipeline of personnel to place into key government positions. 

Thiel’s former chief of staff, Michael Kratsios, directed the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

An executive from Anduril, a defense contractor backed by Thiel’s Founders Fund, was nominated as Army under-secretary while still holding up to $1 million in company stock.

This pipeline has paid off. In late 2024 and 2025, we saw a massive consolidation of federal power into private hands.

• SpaceX: The company secured a $1.8 billion classified contract with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) to build a vast spy satellite network.
• 1789 Capital: A venture firm joined by Donald Trump Jr. backed a company called Vulcan Elements… which immediately landed a $620 million Pentagon contract.
• Palantir: By late 2024, 55% of their revenue—roughly $1.7 billion—came directly from government sales.

They have realized that the most profitable business model isn’t just selling products to consumers. It is offering “governance as a service.”

We look at this efficiency and applaud it. But it raises a difficult question: When a private company runs the software that powers the state, who is actually in charge?

Abundance for Them, Scarcity for You

This new system requires fuel. A lot of it.

The leaders of this shift love to talk about “abundance.” Listen to Sam Altman or other AI evangelists, and they will tell you we are on the verge of a “fusion utopia.” They promise that AI will eventually solve climate change and give us limitless, clean energy.

That is the sales pitch. And maybe, one day, it will be true. But the reality today is a story of immediate resource pressure.

To power the massive data centers required for their AI models, these companies are tapping into the American energy grid at an unprecedented scale.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), power consumption from data centers is projected to more than double… rising from 415 terawatt-hours in 2024 to 945 TWh by 2030.

To put that in perspective… that is roughly the equivalent of adding the entire electricity consumption of Japan to the global grid in just six years.

Where will this power come from?

Not from the magic fusion reactors of the future. It is coming from the grid you rely on today.

In the PJM electricity market, which covers 13 states from Illinois to New Jersey, the demand from data centers has already driven capacity prices up.

To meet this need, the government is pivoting.

The Department of Energy is increasingly financing coal and natural gas expansion to keep the servers humming.

It creates a difficult dynamic:

• Tech giants lock down “clean” baseload power… like Microsoft’s deal to restart the Three Mile Island nuclear plant solely for their own use.
• The public grid is pushed to rely more on the volatile “spot market,” often powered by gas.
• Communities deal with the environmental cost… including the 6 billion gallons of water Google’s data centers consumed in 2024.

It isn’t necessarily malicious…It’s just math. But the math ends with the public paying higher bills to subsidize yet another part of the AI boom.

How “Efficiency” Is Deleting the Middle Class

This shift isn’t just happening on your electric bill. It is happening in the workplace.

The stock market is rallying on the promise of “efficiency.” And let’s be honest, technology does make things more efficient. But for the workforce, “efficiency” often looks like a closing door.

We often look at headline-grabbing layoff numbers. And they are significant. In the first few months of 2025 alone, over 126,000 tech workers lost their jobs, according to Crunchbase.

But the bigger story is what happens after the layoff.

It is a phenomenon called “silent firing.”

Companies aren’t just letting people go. They are simply… not hiring replacements. When a worker leaves, the role is dissolved, or the tasks are handed over to software.

According to a report by Zety and Allwork, 73% of workers reported experiencing “quiet firing” tactics in 2025… where support is withdrawn and roles are made redundant without a formal announcement.

The entry-level jobs are being automated first. If you are a junior analyst, a copywriter, or a coder fresh out of college… the job you would have taken five years ago is harder to find.

This flattens the middle class. It creates a gap where new careers should be. And the industry leaders know this is happening.

The Trap of Outsourcing Global Sovereignty

This isn’t just an American dynamic. This new model of “privatized sovereignty” is being exported globally.

Europe, for example, talks a lot about “Digital Sovereignty.” 

They want to be independent. But building your own tech stack is expensive and slow.

A report by the Centre for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) estimates that achieving true digital independence would cost Europe €3.6 trillion.

Most nations aren’t willing…or able…to pay that bill. So, they sign contracts.

74% of publicly listed European companies now depend entirely on U.S. tech stacks.

Look at the United Kingdom.

The NHS signed a £330 million deal with Palantir to build its data platform. It’s efficient. It works. But it means a U.S. company now manages the health data of the British public.

Look at Ukraine. Their defense relies heavily on Starlink. It has saved countless lives. But it also means their military communications rely on the goodwill of a single American company.

It is a trade-off. These nations get the best technology in the world. But they become ‘client states’ in the process. You cannot have a truly independent foreign policy when your defense infrastructure is leased from a company in California.

And if a G7 nation can be reduced to a client state, the individual American worker doesn’t stand a chance.

The architects know this. That is why they have prepared a specific ‘safety net’ for the people they intend to make obsolete.

UBI Is a Trojan Horse

We need to talk about the “safety net” the architects are promising us.

Every tech billionaire has the same talking point: AI is going to take all the jobs, so we will need Universal Basic Income (UBI).

It sounds generous. It sounds inevitable. But if you look at their actions, it looks less like a safety net and more like a trap. While they preach UBI in the future, they are actively dismantling the machinery required to fund it in the present.

Elon Musk frequently claims that UBI will be “necessary” in an AI future. Yet, he lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an initiative explicitly designed to slash federal spending by trillions.

You cannot have it both ways. 

You cannot gut the federal budget, fire the administrators, dismantle the tax collection agency (IRS), and then claim you are going to distribute a monthly check to 330 million Americans.

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