When the outgoing US President Joe Biden warned against the domination of the USA by a tech-industrial complex, many people wondered if he in the course of his own Presidency and earlier had not been contributing to the same domination that he was now warning about.
However, this warning also prompted India’s leading newspaper The Times of India to bring out an interesting and useful primer titled ‘Who really runs the world—Answer will surprise you’ (published in the Delhi edition on January 22).
This primer has identified 8 industrial complexes which ‘run the world’—“a web of entrenched industrial forces that dwarf traditional government authority, in US and the rest of the world”. This is how the TOI’s listing of these industrial complexes goes–
- Global Tech Industrial Complex
- Global Military Industrial Complex
- Global Arts and Entertainment IndustrialComplex
- Global Animal Agriculture Industrial Complex
- Global Pharmaceutical Industrial Complex
- Global Fast Food Industrial Complex
- Global News Industrial Complex
- Global Influencer Industrial Complex
In this list, the fossil fuel complex is not included although clearly in view of the enormous impact and influence of the fossil fuel industry this should have been included.
While discussing all of these complexes, The Times of India primer speaks only very briefly and, it appears, reluctantly about their adverse impacts. Although a few important facts and figures are revealed, such as the mass slaughter of as many as around 100 billion animals annually in the Global Animal Agriculture Industrial Complex, by and large this analysis falls far short of revealing the enormous, intolerably high social and environmental costs of these various industrial complexes.
This failure to bring out the enormous costs of these various industrial complexes is particularly glaring in the context of the Global Military-Industrial Complex. The Times of India primer speaks of this most horribly destructive complex in a way that at the most is only very mildly critical. It fails to point out that the race to sell, supply and to profit from the ever-increasing manufacturing of weapons of ever-increasing destructiveness is responsible for the most painful killing, injuring and disabling of millions of people in recent years. What is more, this complex does not merely respond to the demand for weapons; it actually increases the possibility of more wars being caused or the existing wars getting more prolonged and extended. This horrible possibility is increasing because of very high levels of corruption, sometimes routine and ‘legalized’ corruption as seen in those connected to the manufacturers of the most destructive weapons being very close to the seats of power in countries like the USA, and often former officials in charge of decision making relating to wars later finding highly lucrative positions with the leading arms corporations and military contractors.
Some of the industrial complexes are responsible for inflicting very serious harm on health, nutrition and on healthy social discourse and relationships. In significant ways some of the industrial complexes are accentuating the environmental crisis. It is deeply worrying that at a time when the many-sided environmental crisis is threatening the basic-life nurturing conditions of the planet, many industrial complexes are functioning in ways that lead to accentuating this crisis further. In this context one must emphasize again the need for including the fossil fuel complex in the category of various industrial complexes.
Clearly there is need for a much deeper and complete appraisal of the role of various industrial complexes, the full extent of the harm inflicted by them and what can be done to reduce this harm. We cannot accept a world dominated by various industrial complexes and we must be able to imagine and then create alternative systems which are free from such domination.
Bharat Dogra is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include Protecting Earth for Children, Planet in Peril, Man over Machine and A Day in 2071.
