The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google

by Scott Galloway

In 1939, the U.S. government launched the Manhattan Project. Within six years, some 130,000 people were mobilized. That’s about a third of Amazon’s workforce.

Each of the horsemen dwarfs both the Manhattan and Apollo projects in intelligence and technological capacity. Their computing power is near limitless, and ridiculously cheap. They inherit three generations of research on statistical analysis, optimization, and artificial intelligence. Each horseman swims in data we hemorrhage 24/7, analyzed by some of the most intelligent, creative, and determined people who have ever lived.

What is the endgame for this, the greatest concentration of human and financial capital ever assembled? What is their mission? Cure cancer? Eliminate poverty? Explore the universe? No, their goal: to sell another fucking Nissan.

In 2018, we are in the midst of a dramatic market failure, one in which the government has been lulled by the public’s fascination with big tech. Robust markets are efficient and powerful. Yet just as football games would be a disaster without referees who regularly step in, throw flags, and move one team backward or forward, so too unfettered capitalism gave us climate change, the mortgage crisis, and U.S. healthcare.