3: Profit from the wars and crises that these late-stage imperialist operations produce
The increasing success of neo-colonialists like Musk shows that finance imperialism has no mother country. And the ongoing profit increases for the high-tech sector, military and security contractors, and the prison-industrial complex show that the same is true for these facets of the corporatocracy.
The current refugee crisis, which was itself created by U.S. wars and destabilization efforts in Latin America and the Middle East, is one of the catastrophes that these corporations are exploiting. Companies like Microsoft are making hundreds of millions by supplying ICE with technology and resources, making up part of the effort to profit from human rights abuses against desperate Third Worlders. Private prison companies are also benefiting from the Trump administration's campaign to put migrants and undocumented people into inhumane detention centers, or to deport them back to the areas that have been devastated by imperialism and neo-colonialism.
The decline of the U.S. empire is producing an enormous amount of violence and instability as Washington reacts with belligerence; the U.S. has been at war since 9/11 because it's struggling to salvage its waning global military influence, and the intensified neo-colonialism in places like Honduras and Bolivia has produced poverty and violence. Neoliberalism, which itself is a symptom of U.S. imperialism's decline, is producing widespread poverty within the imperial core as well. So the byproduct of these engineered crises, such as refugee influxes and risks of civil unrest, are being profited off of in various ways-with the war on immigrants being just one avenue for corporations to take advantage.
Surveillance capitalism is another facet. Israeli security contractors like Elbit have been making money off of building surveillance towers along the U.S.-Mexico border, a project that senior director of Customs and Border Protection at Elbit Systems of America Bobby Brown says will ultimately be expanded "not only to the northern border, but to the ports and harbors across the country." The Intercept's Will Parrish writes about how the CBP's business partners have been profiting from filling the various needs of the U.S. national security state:
The agency has received considerable criticism for its often-brutal treatment of migrants. But a large percentage of its operations involve routine police work. Between 2013 and 2016, for example, roughly 40 percent of Border Patrol seizures at immigration enforcement checkpoints involved 1 ounce or less of marijuana confiscated from U.S. citizens. Yet not as much attention has been paid to how the agency uses its sprawling surveillance apparatus for purposes other than border enforcement.
In 2017, as companies built prototypes for Trump's border wall in San Diego, CBP stationed one of its RVSS towers nearby to monitor political opposition, citing the "emerging threat of demonstrations," records show. The tower deployment lasted for eight months beginning in September 2017, according to a federal contract tender posted online. The only significant demonstration to occur was a peaceful rally that greeted Trump in March 2018 as he conducted a photo-op tour of the wall prototypes.
The national security state, as well as its partnered tech companies Google and Amazon, aim to expand this intensive surveillance from the border to all facets of American society. The National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, an organization created by big tech players and the military-intelligence complex, has said it aims to create a ubiquitous AI-driven mass surveillance system and make typical American streets "blanketed with cameras." All of this will be useful in the efforts to stop a lower class revolt within the imperial core.
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