Why do Americans fear big corporations and are we directing that fear at the right target?
The answer to the first portion of that question is not complicated: we fear concentrated power. Corporations can shape public policy, bankroll lobbying campaigns, win lucrative government contracts, and cultivate political allies. That skepticism is healthy. But too often, we direct our fear at the corporation itself rather than at the far more dangerous problem. The persistent strategy of corporations to accumulate state power in order to succeed, and the clearer recognition that the problem is not private enterprise itself, but a government willing to engage in cronyism.
Hillsdale historian Burt Folsom drew a useful distinction between two kinds of enterprise: the market entrepreneur and the political entrepreneur. The market entrepreneur succeeds by serving customers, improving products, lowering costs, innovating, and outcompeting rivals. The political entrepreneur succeeds by pursuing government favors: subsidies, special protections, exclusive contracts, regulatory advantages, and rules that crush or exclude competitors. Folsom’s point was not that every large business is virtuous, but that what matters is what a business pursues. Either success earned by serving consumers, or power secured through political privilege.
In nearly every case, the public’s fear of “Big Tech,” or of any powerful private company, stems from the same concern: that it operates as a political entrepreneur. The focus, then, should be less on the company itself and more on its relationship with the state and the incentive structure that rewards corporations for pursuing political favor over genuine competition.
The distinction becomes even more important when we see its effects in the real world.
Consider the tech barons who helped shape the Biden administration’s handling of COVID-era information and online speech, only to line up behind President Trump once he was elected. This was not some sudden change of heart. It was a recognition that government power can be wielded as a tool, and that American politicians are often too willing to make political access a worthwhile investment.
The same dynamic is driving today’s debate over AI data centers.
Statistician Nate Silver recently noted that many activists are not primarily motivated by fears about artificial intelligence itself. Their anger is directed at local governments they believe have “sold out” to technology companies through backroom deals, political influence, and preferential treatment. In other words, the backlash is often less about the technology than the perception that powerful firms can use their political connections to bend public institutions to their will.
Just published my interview with @jasminewsun on the data center backlash.
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) August 17, 2026
She makes a key point here. It's much more about people not trusting the huge tech firms ("big corporation scary") than anything involving AI x-risk ("big model scary") or even necessarily job losses. pic.twitter.com/huR7DZO6vD
Is this primarily a problem with corporations, or with local governments that operate with near impunity, ignoring public opinion while cutting deals behind closed doors? Who deserves the sharper rebuke: the businesses pursuing an open advantage, or the politicians who have always granted it?
More troubling still, many who claim to fear corporate power seem perfectly comfortable handing even more power to government, the one institution capable of coercing citizens, picking winners and losers, and imposing decisions on entire communities. A corporation can be challenged by competitors, abandoned by customers, or allowed to fail. Government can wield its power through force, and when it joins with politically connected businesses, the public has far fewer ways to resist.
So again, I ask: who truly deserves our fear and our rebuke? The businesses seeking power, or the politicians who so willingly hand it to them?
