I wrote this in October 2018 as speculation. In 2025 it's just the news.
For centuries the power struggle was Church vs. State. Nations rose and fell over who controlled the narrative — the pious or the patriot.
That fissure is being replaced. The next one is Tech vs. State.
Tech companies now have more influence over daily life than most governments. They control information flow, commerce, communication, and increasingly — through AI — decision-making itself.
Seven years later
When I wrote this, people thought it was edgy contrarianism. Now it's baseline reality. We've watched tech CEOs testify before congress, get appointed to government roles, and shape policy in ways that would have seemed absurd a decade ago. AI regulation debates are fundamentally about this fissure — who gets to control the most powerful technology ever built? The people who built it, or the institutions elected to govern?
The Church vs. State fight lasted centuries. The Tech vs. State fight is just getting started, and it's moving at silicon speed, not human speed.