Surveillance Capitalism: Who Really Owns Your Data?

Your smartphone is listening to you. Generative AI reads your messages. Your commutes, your purchases, your likes — all extracted, analyzed, resold. Welcome to the most profitable economy humanity has ever known.

Key takeaways:

• Surveillance capitalism (Shoshana Zuboff) is not an accident — it is a business model
• Generative AI does not invent a new paradigm: it accelerates and amplifies existing surveillance capitalism
• The raw material is no longer oil or steel: it is human experience
• In July 2026, even institutional investors are beginning to factor this risk into their models

2. The Concept: Human Experience as Raw Material

2.1. Shoshana Zuboff's Definition

Shoshana Zuboff, social psychologist and professor at Harvard Business School, published in 2019 The Age of Surveillance Capitalism — a book that would become a foundational reference. Her thesis is radical:

Surveillance capitalism is a new economic regime that claims human experience as free raw material to be transformed into behavioral data. This data is used to predict and modify individual behavior — and these predictions are sold on markets for future behaviors.

Economic Regime	Raw Material	Product	Purpose
Industrial capitalism	Ore, oil	Manufactured goods	Selling products
Information capitalism	Knowledge	Services	Selling services
Surveillance capitalism	Human experience	Behavioral predictions	Modifying behavior

2.2. This Is Not an Accident — It Is an Architecture

Shoshana Zuboff insists on a crucial point: surveillance capitalism is not a "side effect" of digital technologies. It is a deliberate architecture, built on:

1. Extraction — users produce data for free (clicks, likes, movements, conversations)

2. Analysis — AI and machine learning transform this raw data into predictive profiles

3. Modification — profiles are used to steer behaviors (purchases, votes, moods)

4. Sale — access to these predictions is sold to the highest bidder

"Big Tech has become the owner of civilizational infrastructure: data, information, military capacity, and even the intimate."
— Asma Mhalla, Cyberpunk conference
Video source

2.3. Cognitive Capitalism

Asma Mhalla enriches this analysis by drawing on Yann Moulier-Boutang's concept of cognitive capitalism:

"From the knowledge economy, we moved to cognitive capitalism, to use the term established by Yann Moulier-Boutang. Steve Jobs expressed it in a few words: 'Software is the oil of tomorrow.'"
— Technopolitique, page 64

Where Shoshana Zuboff analyzes the business model, Yann Moulier-Boutang and Asma Mhalla analyze the regime of power: cognition, attention, and affect become the primary resources. The economy no longer sells goods or services — it captures and monetizes the mental activity of its users.

---

3. In Practice: The Three Ages of Surveillance Capitalism

3.1. The Artisanal Age (1995–2005)

The first advertising models of the internet: basic data is collected (pages visited, searches) to display targeted advertisements. Google AdWords (2000) is the prototype. Users vaguely sense that they are the product, but awareness remains dim.

3.2. The Industrial Age (2006–2019)

The explosion of social networks changes the scale entirely. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube become vast extractive machines. Cambridge Analytica (2016) reveals to the general public what insiders already knew:

"Cambridge Analytica (2016) was the first mass cognitive war: the capture of psychographic data to steer and suppress votes."
— Asma Mhalla, Technopolitique conference
Video source

87 million Facebook profiles harvested to influence the 2016 American presidential election and the Brexit referendum. Data extraction was not an end in itself — it was a political weapon.

Timothy Snyder, historian at Yale, analyzes in On Tyranny (2017) how these techniques fit within an authoritarian tradition: "Defend institutions. Do not rush toward the extremes. Be skeptical of prophets." Source

3.3. The Generative AI Age (2022–…)

Generative AI (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Grok) does not create a new surveillance capitalism. It accelerates the previous one. Why?

• More data: AI models require astronomical quantities of data to train on

• Better predictions: generative AI can infer psychological profiles from free-form text

• New extraction vectors: voice assistants, connected glasses, autonomous agents

Asma Mhalla warns of the convergence:

"Hyperspeed technologies, both civilian and military, are transforming the nature of war and politics. They are making each of us, whether we like it or not, into soldiers."
— Technopolitique, central thesis

Carissa Véliz, professor at Oxford, adds in Privacy is Power (2020) that data protection is not a matter of comfort but of power: every piece of data surrendered is one more lever of control.

---

4. And Tomorrow? — The Future of a Contested Model

4.1. The Market Signal

The Responsible Investor article mentioned above is a weak but significant signal. When asset managers begin to assess "surveillance capitalism" risk, it means:

1. The concept has left the academic sphere

2. It is becoming a factor in company valuations

3. Big Tech could see their cost of capital rise

4.2. European Regulation

Europe is attempting to respond with:

• GDPR (2018): personal data protection

• Digital Markets Act (2022): regulation of digital markets

• AI Act (2024): risk classification of AI systems

But as Asma Mhalla notes:

"Vertical regulatory responses — DSA, DMA, 'switch off the screens' bans — these are twentieth-century answers to a twenty-first-century phenomenon."
— Technopolitique conference
Video source

4.3. Do Alternatives Exist?

Several avenues are emerging:

• Common carrier status for platforms, proposed by Asma Mhalla and others

• Decentralized models (Mastodon, Bluesky) that separate infrastructure from the business model

• Digital sovereignty: localized data, European clouds, algorithmic regulation

Bruce Schneier, in A Hacker's Mind (2023), analyzes how systems are designed to favor certain behaviors — and how they can be subverted:

"Understanding how the system is designed is the first step toward taking back control."
*— Bruce Schneier, A Hacker's Mind
Source

---

📚 Sources

🎬 Videos

Source	Link	Subject
Asma Mhalla — Technopolitique	YouTube	Cognitive capitalism, civil-military duality, Cambridge Analytica
Asma Mhalla — Cyberpunk	YouTube	Big Tech, civilizational infrastructure, resistance
Asma Mhalla — The Age of AI	YouTube	Generative AI and governance, European lag

📕 Books

Work	Author	Year	Relevance
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism	Shoshana Zuboff	2019	Founding concept of surveillance capitalism
Technopolitique	Asma Mhalla	2022	Cognitive capitalism, the Sciency effect, civil-military duality
Le capitalisme cognitif	Yann Moulier-Boutang	2007	Transition from knowledge economy to cognitive capitalism
Privacy is Power	Carissa Véliz	2020	Personal data as a question of power
A Hacker's Mind	Bruce Schneier	2023	Subverting systems, reclaiming control
On Tyranny	Timothy Snyder	2017	Authoritarian mechanisms and democratic paralysis
The Chaos Machine	Max Fisher	2022	Algorithmic amplification of polarization

📄 News Articles

Source	Link	Subject
Irish Examiner (22/07/2026)	Read	AI and the acceleration of surveillance capitalism
Responsible Investor (24/07/2026)	Read	Surveillance capitalism as investment risk

---