Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism

by Yanis Varoufakis

As Chinese cloud capital grows in relation to terrestrial capital, China’s rich and powerful find themselves less and less subject to the US authorities’ power to regulate Chinese goods passing through their ports. So it was only a matter of time before Washington would attempt to restore the Dark Deal’s waning benefits for US business and government. The Trump administration crossed the Rubicon with its almost total ban on technology companies Huawei and ZTE as well as a move effectively to Americanise TikTok by banning its availability for further download from US app stores.[8] Its motivation was only very thinly disguised with the usual invocation of ‘national security’ concerns. Scratch the surface and the real motivation emerges: a serious – and not illogical – concern for the threat to Wall Street and Silicon Valley posed by the rise of Chinese cloud finance, which tilts the comparative advantages of the Dark Deal away from America’s and towards China’s ruling class. Compared to the original Cold War, the New Cold War has little politics behind it. Just naked technofeudal class interests.