“Big Tech aims to become the indispensable force shaping the future and forcing upon humankind a dystopia disguised as a promise of prosperity”
– Cables of Resistance: Manifesto 1.0

The connections like frayed wires between movements has never been more visible than at the Cables of Resistance in Berlin in April – the largest grassroots movement conference of its kind.

The initiative started only a year ago by Berlin vs. Amazon, Berlin Tech Workers Coalition, Tesla den Hahn abdrehenand culminated in: 🫡 40 core-organisers 📣 120 speakers across 9-tracks 🧹 200 volunteers 👥 650 attendees in total!
We are seeing a movement to break with big tech companies and their influence over our lives, but as a conference organizer said in the opening session:

“We need to make sure this momentum doesn’t turn into only an anti-Trump or anti-US sentiment, but an anti-capitalist movement.”

This wasn’t an anti-tech conference, but anti-Big-Tech and its impact on our lives; connecting tech workers, data sovereignty and privacy activists, labour organisers, water defenders, peace and abolition movements, Palestine solidarity and climate justice against a force shaping our lives in an incredibly complex way.

The AI / Energy / Facism nexus

A very useful lens on the interconnectedness of the threats we face was presented by Canadian researcher Anne Pasek with what she called “The AI/ Energy/ Fascism Nexus: An Anatomy of an Alliance”. She highlights how Big Tech, Fossil Fuel Companies, and authoritarian regimes fuel and depend on each other – a model I paraphrase here as:

• • AI and Big Tech companies need:
  • → Fossil Fuel Companies to meet the massive amounts of energy requirements to drive data centers that far outstrip the renewable energy sectors growth.
  • → Authoritarian regimes for their legal freedom to operate and as a main customer for surveillance and military AI use.
• • Fossil Fuel Companies need:
  • → AI and Big Tech companies as a lifeline to counter the transition to renewable energy and maintain their assets and expand on fossil gas use.
  • → Authoritarian regimes to push deregulation to counter pollution and environmental protection standards that incentivise an energy transition
• • Authoritarian regimes need:
  • → AI and Big Tech companies for military AI and surveillance as well as the illusion of economic growth. The “AI bubble” drives stock market growth while AI tech is unaccountable and gives them permission to do what they want, e.g DOGE or bombing girls schools in Iran.
  • → Fossil Fuel Companies to drive this economic growth as well as play into their culture war narratives against climate change.

But the resistance is interconnected too:

As dystopian as the Big Tech advancement over the last few years has been; just as the international corporations driving this change, the resistance to it also connects across borders and movements. Just as Big Tech is dependent on so many political, social and infrastructure systems to function – that means that there are just as many leverage points for us to shut it down! Here are a few highlights:

• • Resisting Data Centers – or “Data Vampires” as one Irish organiser called them – is mobilising a lot of local resistance in many ways from spiking energy costs, to water use, chemical runoff, to land protection. From Latin America, to the USA, to across Europe – the insistence of governments to subsidize and encourage data centers are “accelerating and exposing faultlines in the system” (Dylan Murphy, Not here not anywhere – Ireland). Organisers see the risk of us making the same mistake as with carbon footprints, framing it as an individual problem rather than a systemic, infrastructure one. As Big Tech companies already have framed data as being in “the cloud” rather than in polluting infrastructure, the blame of the consequences of AI use (water pollution, stealing data, energy costs) will also be placed on individuals rather than the companies.

• • Resisting the Military and Big Tech connection is organising Big Tech workers in for example “No Tech for Apartheid” movements and connecting labour and peace activists in a new way. This connection is a strong counter to the narrative that AI is building a better future showcasing how the “AI Kill chain” already is complicit in genocide.This makes it crucial not to blame AI for massacres but instead the powers behind it.
• • Resisting Surveillance and Repression: From groups targeting Palantir, to what one organiser called “the digital occupation of Lebanon” – the consequences of AI powered surveillance states are absolutely terrifying for activists across the world. Building public resistance to this use has already resulted in wins such as banning Palantir in police departments!
• • Building solutions: Be it low-tech ways of communicating. Local mesh transmitters bypassing traditional platforms and even the internet, framing a degrowth challenge to Big Tech – questions of what we could do with technology instead of allowing international corporations to monopolize this space is crucial in connecting with new allies and new narratives.

In essence, Big Tech will affect all of our campaigns in one way or the other, but also provide leverage points for us to resist this potentially dystopian future. 

Upcoming Conferences, Resources and Actions

• Cables of Resistance – Follow their Telegram channel and Newsletter
• Code Rouge-Rood in Belgium are taking action on 27-29th of June to “Unplug Techno-fascism” – read more on their website and their narrative framing and sign up to their newsletter
• “Low-Tech, Luddism and Liberation: reclaiming technology for the collective good” in Latvia from 24 July – 31 July 2026.
• Algorithms of Collapse Booklet – what to do about AI and Automation by RipplEffect