Silicon Empires
The Fight for the Future of AI

Nick Srnicek (Author)

9781509550487, Polity Press

Hardback, published 31 October 2025

200 pages
21.8 x 14.5 x 2.5 cm, 0.408 kg

"This is a sobering but essential, must-read book. It lays bare the economic dynamics that are driving the development of AI and sheds new light on who will control its future, using which business practices and geopolitical strategies and towards which ends."
Helga Nowotny, Emerita of Science and Technology Studies, ETH Zurich, and Former President of the European Research Council

"Silicon Empires pulls back the curtain on the AI gold-rush, tracking how chips, clouds and capital are marshalled by tech titans and rival states to lock down tomorrow's power and profits. With clear, panoramic insight, Srnicek slices through the hype to show who wins, who loses; and why the future of AI should belong to all of us."
Mark Graham, Oxford University

"By carefully charting AI's development within its proper economic and geopolitical context, and spanning analysis of both the US and China, Srnicek's guide to AI can help us maintain a long-term, realistic perspective of the technology's likely trajectory."
Jacobin

Since the emergence of ChatGPT, generative AI has been heralded as a technology poised to revolutionize our world. But beyond the hype and hyperbole, who truly wields power over this transformative technology?

In Silicon Empires, Nick Srnicek explores the geopolitical economy of artificial intelligence, revealing how a handful of powerful corporations and states are engaged in a monumental struggle to control its future. Srnicek moves beyond the headlines to lay bare the elaborate strategies that these silicon empires - from tech giants to great powers - are deploying to capture the immense value of AI. This incisive analysis uncovers the deep-seated tensions between corporate ambitions and national interests, and the profound consequences of this new era of technological competition.

As the race for AI supremacy accelerates, Srnicek compellingly demonstrates that the decisions being made in the boardrooms of Silicon Valley and the halls of government will shape the distribution of wealth and power on a global scale for decades to come.

Now available as an audiobook.

1 / Where is the Value of Generative AI?
Beyond ChatGPT
The Generative AI Stack
Tensions and Trajectories
Conclusion

2 / Strategies of Capture
Strategies of Capture
Amazon and the Infrastructure Strategy
OpenAI and the Frontier Strategy
Google and the Conglomerate Strategy
Meta and the Open Strategy
Conclusion

3 / An Interregnum
The Silicon Valley Consensus 
Technodevelopmentalism
Consensus Undone
The Tech-Industrial Complex
The Disorderly Expansion of Capital
Conclusion

4 / The Future of Silicon Empires
America’s Innovation Strategy
China’s Diffusion Strategy
Silicon Empires
Conclusion

Subject Areas: Society & culture: general [JF]