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Gaining Power

The Omegas had launched a media company not only to finance their early tech ventures, but also for the next step of their audacious plan: taking over the world. Within a year of the first launch, they had added remarkably good news channels to their lineup all over the globe. As opposed to their other channels, these were deliberately designed to lose money, and were pitched as a public service. In fact, their news channels generated no income whatsoever: they carried no ads and were viewable free of charge by anyone with an internet connection. The rest of their media empire was such a cash-generating machine that they could spend far more resources on their news service than any other journalistic effort had done in world history—and it showed. Through aggressive recruitment with highly competitive salaries of journalists and investigative reporters, they brought remarkable talent and findings to the screen. Through a global web service that paid anybody who revealed something newsworthy, from local corruption to a heartwarming event, they were usually the first to break a story. At least that’s what people believed: in fact, they were often first because stories attributed to citizen journalists had been discovered by Prometheus via real-time monitoring of the internet. All these video news sites featured podcasts and print articles as well.

Phase 1 of their news strategy was gaining people’s trust, which they did with great success. Their unprecedented willingness to lose money enabled remarkably diligent regional and local news coverage, where investigative journalists often exposed scandals that truly engaged their viewers. Whenever a country was strongly divided politically and accustomed to partisan news, they would launch one news channel catering to each faction, ostensibly owned by different companies, and gradually gain the trust of that faction. Where possible, they accomplished this using proxies to buy the most influential existing channels, gradually improving them by removing ads and introducing their own content. In countries where censorship and political interference threatened these efforts, they would initially acquiesce in whatever the government required of them to stay in business, with the secret internal slogan “The truth, nothing but the truth, but maybe not the whole truth.” Prometheus usually provided excellent advice in such situations, clarifying which politicians needed to be presented in a good light and which (usually corrupt local ones) could be exposed. Prometheus also provided invaluable recommendations for what strings to pull, whom to bribe and how best to do so.

This strategy was a smashing success around the world, with the Omega-controlled channels emerging as the most trusted news sources. Even in countries where governments had thus far thwarted their mass adoption, they built a reputation for trustworthiness, and many of their news stories percolated through the grapevine. Competing news executives felt that they were fighting a hopeless battle: how can you possibly make a profit competing with someone with better funding who gives their products away for free? With their viewership dropping, ever more networks decided to sell their news channels—usually to some consortium that later turned out to be controlled by the Omegas.

About two years after Prometheus’ launch, when the trust-gaining phase was largely completed, the Omegas launched phase 2 of their news strategy: persuasion. Even before this, astute observers had noticed hints of a political agenda behind the new media: there seemed to be a gentle push toward the center, away from extremism of all sorts. Their plethora of channels catering to different groups still reflected animosity between the United States and Russia, India and Pakistan, different religions, political factions and so on, but the criticism was slightly toned down, usually focusing on concrete issues involving money and power rather than on ad hominem attacks, scaremongering and poorly substantiated rumors. Once phase 2 started in earnest, this push to defuse old conflicts became more apparent, with frequent touching stories about the plight of traditional adversaries mixed with investigative reporting about how many vocal conflict-mongers were driven by personal profit motives.

Political commentators noted that, in parallel with damping regional conflicts, there seemed to be a concerted push toward reducing global threats. For example, the risks of nuclear war were suddenly being discussed all over the place. Several blockbuster movies featured scenarios where global nuclear war started by accident or on purpose and dramatized the dystopian aftermath with nuclear winter, infrastructure collapse and mass starvation. Slick new documentaries detailed how nuclear winter could impact every country. Scientists and politicians advocating nuclear de-escalation were given ample airtime, not least to discuss the results of several new studies on what helpful measures could be taken—studies funded by scientific organizations that had received large donations from new tech companies. As a result, political momentum started building for taking missiles off hair-trigger alert and shrinking nuclear arsenals. Renewed media attention was also paid to global climate change, often highlighting the recent Prometheus-enabled technological breakthroughs that were slashing the cost of renewable energy and encouraging governments to invest in such new energy infrastructure.

Parallel to their media takeover, the Omegas harnessed Prometheus to revolutionize education. Given any person’s knowledge and abilities, Prometheus could determine the fastest way for them to learn any new subject in a manner that kept them highly engaged and motivated to continue, and produce the corresponding optimized videos, reading materials, exercises and other learning tools. Omega-controlled companies therefore marketed online courses about virtually everything, highly customized not only by language and cultural background but also by starting level. Whether you were an illiterate forty-year-old wanting to learn to read or a biology PhD seeking the latest about cancer immunotherapy, Prometheus had the perfect course for you. These offerings bore little resemblance to most present-day online courses: by leveraging Prometheus’ movie-making talents, the video segments would truly engage, providing powerful metaphors that you would relate to, leaving you craving to learn more. Some courses were sold for profit, but many were made available for free, much to the delight of teachers around the world who could use them in their classrooms—and to most anybody eager to learn anything.

These educational superpowers proved potent tools for political purposes, creating online “persuasion sequences” of videos where insights from each one would both update someone’s views and motivate them to watch another video about a related topic where they were likely to be further convinced. When the goal was to defuse a conflict between two nations, for example, historical documentaries would be independently released in both countries that cast the origins and conduct of the conflict in more nuanced light. Pedagogical news stories would explain who on their own side stood to benefit from continued conflict and their techniques for stoking it. At the same time, likable characters from the other nation would start appearing in popular shows on the entertainment channels, just as sympathetically portrayed minority characters had bolstered the civil and gay rights movements in the past.

Before long, political commentators couldn’t help but notice growing support for a political agenda centered around seven slogans:

1.Democracy

2.Tax cuts

3.Government social service cuts

4.Military spending cuts

5.Free trade

6.Open borders

7.Socially responsible companies

What was less obvious was the underlying goal: to erode all previous power structures in the world. Items 2–6 eroded state power, and democratizing the world gave the Omegas’ business empire more influence over the selection of political leaders. Socially responsible companies further weakened state power by taking over more and more of the services that governments had (or should have) provided. The traditional business elite was weakened simply because it couldn’t compete with Prometheus-backed companies on the free market and therefore owned an ever-shrinking share of the world economy. Traditional opinion leaders, from political parties to faith groups, lacked the persuasion machinery to compete with the Omegas’ media empire.

As with any sweeping change, there were winners and losers. Although there was a palpable new sense of optimism in most countries as education, social services and infrastructure improved, conflicts subsided and local companies released breakthrough technologies that swept the world, not everybody was happy. While many displaced workers got rehired for community projects, those who’d held great power and wealth generally saw both shrink. This began in the media and technology sectors, but it spread virtually everywhere. The reduction in world conflicts led to defense budget cuts that hurt military contractors. Burgeoning upstart companies typically weren’t publicly traded, with the justification that profit-maximizing shareholders would block their massive spending on community projects. Thus the global stock market kept losing value, threatening both finance tycoons and regular citizens who’d counted on their pension funds. As if the shrinking profits of publicly traded companies weren’t bad enough, investment firms around the world had noticed a disturbing trend: all their previously successful trading algorithms seemed to have stopped working, underperforming even simple index funds. Someone else out there always seemed to outsmart them and beat them at their own game.

Although masses of powerful people resisted the wave of change, their response was strikingly ineffective, almost as if they had fallen into a well-planned trap. Huge changes were happening at such a bewildering pace that it was hard to keep track and develop a coordinated response. Moreover, it was highly unclear what they should push for. The traditional political right had seen most of their slogans co-opted, yet the tax cuts and improved business climate were mostly helping their higher-tech competitors. Virtually every traditional industry was now clamoring for a bailout, but limited government funds pitted them in a hopeless battle against one another while the media portrayed them as dinosaurs seeking state subsidies simply because they couldn’t compete. The traditional political left opposed the free trade and the cuts in government social services, but delighted in the military cutbacks and the reduction of poverty. Indeed, much of their thunder was stolen by the undeniable fact that social services had improved now that they were provided by idealistic companies rather than the state. Poll after poll showed that most voters around the world felt their quality of life improving, and that things were generally moving in a good direction. This had a simple mathematical explanation: before Prometheus, the poorest 50% of Earth’s population had earned only about 4% of the global income, enabling the Omega-controlled companies to win their hearts (and votes) by sharing only a modest fraction of their profits with them.