How California Inc. Runs Your Life

Nadim Siraj

May 1, 2023:

Apple, Intel, Google, Yahoo!, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, ChatGPT, HP, LinkedIn, Adobe, Zoom, Netflix, Warner Bros., Sony Pictures, Fox Entertainment, Disney, Universal Pictures, MetroGoldwyn-Mayer, Paramount Pictures, DC Comics, Visa, PayPal, eBay, Uber, SpaceX, Chevron, Cisco, Qualcomm, McAfee, Logitech, Seagate, SanDisk, Nvidia, Gap, Forever 21, Levi’s, Taco Bell…

What’s common to these companies, conglomerates, and brand names? No, they are not just American corporations. They are among the world’s most powerful brands that are all headquartered in the US state of California alone.

Over the past couple of decades since the internet revolution captured our imagination –and our brains – California Inc. has swelled into a gigantic tech and business clique. Many among us in India and elsewhere are unable to see it that way, but Corporate California is now collectively the biggest empire to influence and run our dayto-day life.

If we take a step back and look at a wider timeline of human civilisation, then this rising Californian Empire matches the charm, and sway that empires from the past enjoyed – such as the Romans, Greeks, British, Spanish, Russians, and Mongols.

The modus operandi of California Inc. is technically different from the way empires from the past ruled the world. This empire is a superorganism of corporate powers looking to perpetual do business in economies around the world, as against historical empires that were alliances of kingdoms, religious institutions, and merchants annexing distant lands and physically governing the people.

More Powerful Than 190 Countries

For quite some time, especially since the internet exploded onto the scene, California has been home to dozens of high-ranked Fortune 500 and Fortune 1000 companies. As a result of new-age corporate power deciding to get headquartered in California, the self-styled western US state has actually become more powerful than 190 countries.

If California is hypothetically considered as a nation, then by the end of 2022, it had emerged as the fifth largest economy on the planet – after the US, China, Japan, and Germany. In fact, it is estimated that by the end of this year, it could leapfrog Germany and become the world’s fourth biggest economy.

Most of us, however, don’t realise that we have become de facto citizens of this Californian Empire. We are largely unaware of this empirecolony relationship between us and the American state’s corporations because the mainstream media, academic institutions, think tanks, and pop-culture platforms only teach us to look at corporate power from the narrow lens of commerce and industry. Mainstream narratives hardly tell us that dozens of MNCs today are way stronger than most governments around the world.

Before we dig deep into the reason behind this basic knowledge gap, let’s take a close look at the transnational businesses that are based out of California, and how they have become an integral part of our lives.

UNDERSTANDING THE DNA: HOLLYWOOD EFFECT

Today, a vast majority of the world’s population of 8 billion people are charmed, dedicated, and lifelong customers of multiple California-based companies. Social media platforms, Hollywood movies, smart gadgets, essential software and hardware, payment gateways, fashion brands, fast food chains – the average Indian and the public around the world are hooked on to these offerings dished out by California-based corporate players.

Let’s start with the fanatical worldwide love for Hollywood. The Californian film industry is well known for scripting narratives that ensure moviegoers see America and the world in certain ways in which they want them to be seen.

There is a small but extremely powerful bunch of conglomerates and companies that produce films that are revered as the benchmark of cinema – primarily because of flashy marketing campaigns and the use of the English language, the superimposed lingua franca. These moviemaking companies are household names in most countries on the planet.

Columbia, Walt Disney, Paramount, Warner Bros., and Universal Pictures – these factories of influential films are located around the Hollywood area in California’s upscale Los Angeles.

These names are as popular as the movies that Hollywood beams into millions of multiplexes and drawing-room TVs across continents, such as the James Bond series, the Godfather trilogy, the Star Wars package, heroic war flicks, superhero franchises, action hits, spy thrillers, family soaps, animation artworks, and all sorts of other blockbusters.

Today, the worst-kept secret in geopolitics is how the US imperialist machine uses the CIAPentagon-Hollywood nexus to brainwash global audiences and control their hearts and minds, as this article exposes.

The American film industry, largely based out of Hollywood, was worth more than $95 billion in 2022, and it had reported a combined revenue of over $35 billion in 2019. The numbers point to the staggering amount of moolah that California’s movie factories make from global audiences.

The best way to get a sense of Hollywood’s grip on populations around the world is to take a look at the number of people who watch the Oscar Awards ceremony on TV every year – it was a whopping 18.7 million on the night of the 2023 ceremony.

UNDERSTANDING THE DNA: SOCIAL MEDIA IMPACT

The next major way in which California’s corporate class ends up controlling much of the world’s population is through social media. We live in times when most of us swear by smartphonebased, internet-powered platforms such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Google search, Gmail, Google Maps, Wikipedia, Twitter, YouTube, Uber, LinkedIn, etc.

The majority of the world population, including a staggeringly high number of Indians, are hooked on to most of these so-called ‘social’ platforms right from the time they wake up till they hit the bed.

Posting our intimate details online, sharing one-on-one messages, microblogging political thoughts, watching viral videos, following maps on the phone, searching for products and offers, exchanging letters, hailing cabs – we do most of these activities on platforms owned by Big Tech giants headquartered in California.

These hugely popular tech companies are worshipped as modern marvels, but most of us are least conscious of how Corporate California ends up controlling and accessing our brains and ideas through their smart products and smart services.

Activist and former CIA worker Edward Snowden once famously said, “Businesses that make money by collecting and selling detailed records of private lives were once plainly described as ‘surveillance companies’. Their rebranding as ‘social media’ is the most successful deception since the [US] department of war became the department of defence.”

A look at the numbers gives a feel of the sheer size of California’s Big Tech giants. Alphabet, which owns Google and YouTube, recorded a revenue of $283 billion in 2022. Spearheaded by CEO Sundar Pichai, Alphabet had an employee strength of over 190,000 before recently announcing unpopular mass job cuts. The conglomerate’s assets were worth $365 billion last year.

Apple Inc., the maker of iPhones and iMac computers, and led by CEO Tim Cook, posted a mind-boggling revenue of $394 billion last year. While it employs 164,000 people all over the world, Apple’s assets were worth $353 billion in 2022.

Let’s look at Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, which owns Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram. It earned a revenue of $117 billion last year, when its combined assets were worth $186 billion. Meta Platforms employed over 86,000 people as of December last year before making a much-criticised decision to sack numerous workers.

Take Hewlett-Packard as another example of California’s corporate muscle power. HP Inc., one of the world’s leading laptop makers, is not a new kid in town, which is the case with many other American technology giants that were born only since the internet revolution started. HP has been around for 84 long years. Last year, it recorded a revenue of $63 billion, while its assets totalled $39 billion. The printer-and-computer company employs 58,000 people.

Streaming giant Netflix is another cog in the wheel of the Californian Empire. While many people aren’t aware that the film production titan has been in the business for 25 years, it became the rockstar of streaming movies only in recent years. In 2022, it posted a revenue of $32 billion, boasting assets worth $49 billion. Although it employs just under 13,000 people, Netflix is now a household name; it’s almost as popular as Google and Facebook.

Equally influential as a corporation is Intel Corporation, one of the world’s top semiconductor and hardware producers. The 54-year-old company, which became a household name worldwide ever since the first PCs or desktop computers arrived, saw a revenue of $63 billion last year. Its assets are worth $182 billion, while it has a staff strength of 1,31,000.

To get a sense of the Californian tech companies’ firm grip on our lives, imagine a scenario where the world has to spend one full week without Big Tech platforms. For seven days, imagine there’s no Google search, no Gmail, no Facebook, no WhatsApp, no Netflix, no Google maps, no Wikipedia, no Apple products, no YouTube, no Visa, no Adobe Photoshop – if this sounds like a dystopian lockdown to you, that means you are indeed a devoted citizen of California Inc.

UNDERSTANDING THE DNA: ELON MUSK AND OTHERS

There’s a whole bunch of other powerful companies that help Corporate California dominate the world, as well as some celebrated tycoons, such as Elon