When it comes to phenomena like search engines and AI; we are being *strategically* manipulated - and this has major life-implications

What I find extremely important about things like search engines from the 1990s onward, social media from the mid 2000s, and AI currently; is that, from a high level, we are being manipulated strategically. 
By strategically; I mean over a timescale of many years. 
For this to be possible, the manipulation must be done by persons that have access to very large amounts of money. 
Money and other resources - including the ability to manipulate laws to permit - whatever they want to do, to reshape national/ multi-national policies, and to prevent competition.

For instance, the development of the best search engine/s was colossally funded and subsidized, for many years, by invisible (presumably military and intelligence) sources... Many years in which the technology cost a great deal of money, and made - no money at all. 
This is simply not possible without very long-term backing from very wealthy patrons. 
Then the unique status and power of this search engine was protected by laws and (presumably) other means - so that no superior competitor could emerge or was allowed. 
Regulations were shaped to allow exemption from all kinds of restrictions that applied to written material; and immunity to laws that had regulated publishers. 
Income without visible sources. Power without responsibility. 

And there is a closely analogous situation with respect to social media platforms; and with post-November 2022 "AI" systems. 
There was again colossal financial backing and investment for many years, from unknown sources, without visible or remotely commensurate sources of income adequate income. This transcends any "market". The consumers are not customers.  
With AI; laws have been changed (or tacitly side-lined) to allow industrial scale plagiarism with immunity from prosecution. The entire electricity generation system of the USA, and energy policy generally, has been re-shaped to accommodate AI. 
And all this must have been known and guaranteed up-front, in advance of implementation.  

So - someone, somewhere, with vast money resources that are not derived from customers; and having the power to make and break laws; is working across a timescale of more than a decade to provide these "tools" such as search engines, social media platforms and now AI. 
We don't know who these people are, we don't explicitly know what is their real motivation. 
But the motivation does not seem to be money; at least not primarily; because these technologies take unimaginably vast amounts of money to develop across long periods before there is any possibility of beginning to recoup expenses (and by then, there will be another, similarly vast project afoot).

At the very least, such giga-investors must be sure - i.e. totally confident - that they can reshape the laws, national strategies, and media coverage so as to ensure the success of whatever technologies may (or may not) eventually emerge. 
And this means that the investors in search engines/ social media/ AI; essentially Rule The World, already.   
My inference is that they indeed already rule the world, substantially - insofar as it can be ruled; and these technologies are (or were) therefore strategically intended to monitor and control the world...

But maybe now the investors are being hoodwinked, and there is a higher level of strategy than this - and that strategy is to destroy the world. 
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H/T to a comment by NLR for triggering this post.