Carole Cadwalladr, journalist, warns us about the broligarchy: “It’s a type of power that the world has never seen before”

Carole Cadwalladr doesn’t have a reputation for delivering soft warnings, but her latest intervention lands with unusual force. Addressing an audience that once watched her unpick the mechanics of Cambridge Analytica, she now argues that a far larger system has taken shape: a fusion of political strongmen and technology magnates that she labels the broligarchy (tech bros + oligarchy). And as she puts it, “It’s a type of power that the world has never seen before.”

Her message builds on years of reporting and on personal cost. The last time she stepped onto a major stage, her claims about data harvesting and election manipulation triggered a prolonged legal battle that left her professional life and personal finances in jeopardy. What unsettles her today, she suggests, is how little of that early alarm was heeded. Many of the dynamics she feared have since intensified, and the tools available to those who wield them have grown more potent.

A rising power we struggle to name

Cadwalladr argues that the shift is structural, not symbolic. The vast data extraction pipelines built by technology companies now intersect with the instincts of leaders who thrive on control, secrecy, and narrative manipulation. She describes this alignment as a coup in slow motion, where democratic guardrails erode while platforms consolidate unprecedented influence over information flows. At the centre of this system sits a new class of actors, the tech power-brokers whose reach crosses borders and whose incentives no longer align with public interest.

Her criticism is sharpest when she speaks about surveillance-based business models. Users may treat online privacy as a notion belonging to another era, but she insists the stakes are far higher, where data profiles now shape decisions made by algorithms that can affect livelihoods, public debate, and even electoral dynamics. “It’s always the data,” she tells the audience.

Ordinary people can still win, but it’s a fight

Despite the grim prognosis, Cadwalladr resists fatalism. She emotionally credits the grassroots support that helped her defend herself legally as evidence that civic resistance still matters.

“They saw a bully trying to crush me and they would not let it stand.”

She urges audiences to take practical steps: scrutinise what platforms demand, question how information is shaped, and protect privacy in everyday digital habits (like not accepting all those cookies you’re asked about). In her view, these small acts build a cultural counterweight to systems designed to induce resignation.

Her closing challenge is pointed at the industry’s most visible leaders. Their achievements, she notes, have not insulated them from geopolitical forces, and their choices now define not only the future of technology but the wider democratic landscape.

“Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk: you are not gods. You are men, and you are careless. You think that by allying yourself with an autocrat you will be protected... that’s not how history works”

As governments, courts, and companies negotiate the boundaries of data and speech, she argues that ordinary citizens remain the decisive factor in defending factual integrity.

Cadwalladr leaves her audience – one that regularly applauded – with a persistent question: if individuals know what they stand for, can the companies shaping global information flows say the same?

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