AI Empires
This debate examines the rise of ‘AI empires’ and the geopolitical struggle over AI’s future. Dr Nick Srnicek will discuss his latest book Silicon Empires: The Fight for the Future of AI (Polity, 2025), analysing how corporations and states use AI to consolidate power. The discussion panel will address platform capitalism, Big AI, and control of chips, data, cloud and energy, with responses from Dr Anne Helmond and Prof Thomas Poell.
This debate will explore the emerging landscape of ‘AI empires’ and the struggle over the future of AI. We begin with a talk by Dr. Nick Srnicek (King’s College London) on his latest book: Silicon Empires: The Fight for the Future of AI (Polity, 2025). The book offers a critical analysis of the geopolitical economy of AI, examining how powerful corporations and states are competing for dominance. Srnicek argues that AI competition has evolved into a geopolitical struggle between state-backed ‘empires’, particularly in the U.S. and China, which deploy AI to reshape global wealth, power, and infrastructural control.
Following the introduction, Srnicek will be joined by Dr. Anne Helmond (Utrecht University), who will discuss her latest work on Big AI and platformisation, and Prof. Thomas Poell (University of Amsterdam), who will present his research on AI and platform power. Their debate will critically examine the expansion of “platform capitalism”, in which tech giants scale up models based on data extraction, network effects, and infrastructural control to dominate the entire AI value chain from chips and data to cloud services as well as the material foundations of AI, including the scramble for advanced semiconductors, escalating energy demands, and control over global supply chains. Prof. Tobias Blanke (University of Amsterdam) will moderate the debate.
Speakers
Nick Srnicek is Senior Lecturer of Digital Economy at King’s College London. His research focuses on the digital economy, artificial intelligence, anti-work politics, and postcapitalist futures. His book, Platform Capitalism (Polity, 2016), was translated into 15 languages. His latest book is Silicon Empires: The Fight for the Future of AI (Polity, 2025). In addition, he has written or co-written more than 30 academic articles and book chapters for a variety of publications, as well as editing two collections.
Anne Helmond is Associate Professor of Media, Data & Society at Utrecht University. Her research places particular emphasis on platformization: the expansion of platforms across the web, the mobile ecosystem, AI technologies, and various societal domains. She focuses on developing methods for empirically and historically studying platformization, the politics and governance of platforms, how platform power is operationalized in practice, and the rise of AI as a platformized infrastructure. She is author of the forthcoming book Platforms: A Critical Introduction (Polity, June 2026) with Fernando van der Vlist.
Thomas Poell is Professor of Data, Culture & Institutions at the University of Amsterdam. His research focuses on platforms, AI, and the transformation of the cultural industries. With colleagues from around the globe, he is currently developing a research project on Generative AI and Creative Work, which connects platform studies with ideas from postcolonial and decolonial theory in a Global Perspectives program. And with David Nieborg and José van Dijck, he is writing a book on Platform Power.
Tobias Blanke (moderator) is Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Humanities at the University of Amsterdam. His research focuses on long-term interdisciplinary initiatives connecting artificial intelligence (AI) and the human sciences both on new AI methods for cultural and social data and the critical studies of AI. His most recent book is Algorithmic Reason – The new Government of Self and Other with Claudia Aradau (OUP, 2022).
