REVIEW OF BIG TECH AND TOTAL WAR: THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL-DATAFICED COMPLEX

Abstract

This review aims to scrutinize the work As Big Techs and the Total War (2025), by Sérgio Amadeu da Silveira, which proposes a reinterpretation of digital capitalism based on the category of war as infrastructure. In it, the author develops the concept of the military-industrial-datafied complex to analyze the fusion between large technology corporations and the state apparatus, particularly the American one. The review examines the central thesis that contemporary sovereignty has become infrastructural, shifting towards the control of data centers, semiconductors, and algorithms, with geopolitical implications evidenced in the US-China dispute and conflicts such as that in Gaza. The analytical tension between interpreting this dynamic as an expression of the neoliberal logic of commodification or as a structural reorganization of power oriented by war is discussed. It concludes that the work offers an original contribution by shifting the debate from market regulation to strategic dispute, qualifying the understanding of informational vulnerabilities as a constitutive dimension of contemporary state sovereignty.