Heavy investment in AI raises critical issues: bubble risks, few jobs, huge energy consumption, plus Trump & sons self-dealing. Do the positives outweigh the negatives?

The US economy has been undergoing a profound transformation in recent years. An extraordinary amount of the nation’s goods and services are produced by a small group of seven big tech companies – Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Nvidia, Meta/Facebook, and Tesla, otherwise known as the Monopoly Seven.

In the first half of 2025, these seven companies accounted for nearly all economic growth in the United States, and projections estimate that trend will continue into 2026. Without Big Tech, growth would have slowed to just 0.1% annually.

These companies now make up nearly one third of the total value of the US stock market. They have become so central to the overall economy that they determine employment trends and investment decisions. Their domination of the stock exchanges means that a significant portion of American wealth, including retirement accounts, is dependent on their performance.

Tech expert Paul Kedrosky notes that these companies’ ever-bigger share of the pie are “eating the economy”, much like the railroad barons and monopolies did in the late 19th century. With such a narrow, tech-focused economic engine, it means America’s future growth will be highly dependent on the spending decisions of these handful of companies, the seven Data Barons who have hooked the national economy like a junkie on their brand of Surveillance Capitalism.