In 1961, Dwight Eisenhower warned that the United States risked falling under the sway of a ‘military–industrial complex’ – an alliance of defence contractors, politicians and generals who would profit from perpetual war. In that Cold War context, authoritarian measures were justified as politically necessary to protect capitalist interests. Repression was a cost –sometimes excessive, but tolerable – to ensure markets remained ‘free’ and safe.
But in the early 21st century, we’ve entered a fundamentally different era. Today, repression is no longer a necessary evil to secure profit. It is profit. It is commodified, financialised and scaled. What I call the Authoritarian–Financial Complex (AFC) is the system that now drives this transformation. In this new phase of capitalism, control itself has become a booming industry.
The AFC fuses finance, tech and state power into a single mechanism for extracting value by surveilling, disciplining and managing populations. The surveillance state, the prison-industrial complex, border enforcement, predictive policing, corporate intelligence – these are not fringe operations. They are among the most profitable and rapidly growing sectors of the global economy.
What used to be instruments for protecting markets have now become markets. Authoritarianism no longer hides behind national security threats or geopolitical rivalries. It is justified through financial risk, social volatility or public health management. The logic is always the same: control is good business. Insecurity is monetised, not resolved. The more unstable and unequal society becomes, the more lucrative it is to govern through data, detection and pre-emptive intervention. In this cycle, repression doesn’t curb crisis – it creates it in order to profit from it.
Trump and the business of control
To see this complex in action, we need look no further than the political rise – and persistence – of Donald Trump. Too often dismissed as a populist aberration, Trump is in fact the ideal political expression of the AFC. His political style and policy choices reflect the core dynamic of this system: turning public anxiety into private capital through aggressive control.
Trump’s first presidency was marked by a sharp expansion of the industries that define the AFC. His administration enriched private prison firms, defence tech contractors, surveillance providers and risk analysis companies. Immigration became a multibillion-dollar industry. Border walls, detention centres, biometric databases and armed enforcement were all publicly justified in the name of ‘security’ – but functioned primarily as business opportunities. Corporations profited from contracts; investors gained from instability.
This is the defining logic of the AFC: find new populations to repress and new crises to capitalise on. Immigrants, protestors, the unemployed, the uninsured, urban youth, renters, data subjects, the climate-displaced – each can be rendered a ‘threat’ requiring management, tracking or exclusion. And each threat generates a revenue stream.
Trumpism feeds this dynamic by turning politics into a spectacle of fear. The more enemies it invents, the more business it creates. Rhetoric about crime, looting and migrant ‘invasions’ is not merely ideological – it is financial. It activates markets in policing, surveillance, private security, border tech and AI risk modelling. Under this model, authoritarianism isn’t just popular – it’s profitable.
But it would be a mistake to view Trump as the mastermind. He is a vessel, a marketing vehicle, for an economic structure that has been long in the making. His success reveals how control has been transformed from a state function into a corporate opportunity. His resurgence – and the possibility of a return to power – signals not the failure of capitalism, but its successful mutation into a system where repression is a business model.
Repression as economic growth
This is the key shift the Authoritarian–Financial Complex represents: control is no longer a means to protect capital. It is capital. Financialisation has weaponised insecurity. Private equity firms invest in surveillance platforms. Hedge funds buy stakes in electronic ankle monitoring. Insurance companies use predictive analytics to assess threat levels and adjust premiums. And governments outsource their most sensitive tasks – like policing and punishment – to the private sector.
Even technologies once seen as empowering – like smart homes, fitness trackers or ‘citizen engagement’ apps – are repurposed as data collection tools, feeding an endless appetite for behavioural insights. What was once personal is now securitised. What was once intimate is now monetised.
This model doesn’t just repress dissent – it anticipates and incorporates it. Protests become moments for live facial recognition testing. Activists are flagged by social media algorithms trained to detect ‘threat signals’. Entire communities – especially those already marginalised – become speculative investments in the repression economy.
The AFC thrives in crisis. Economic downturn? Expand welfare fraud monitoring. A pandemic? Develop biosecurity infrastructure. Climate migration? Build border fortresses and drone surveillance. Repression becomes the solution to every problem – and the market expands accordingly. And as this economy grows, so does its grip on democracy. Policies are no longer debated – they are modelled, scored and sold. Accountability is reduced to performance dashboards. Elected officials answer not to voters, but to investors and risk analysts. In this world, repression is the product, and we are both the target and the consumer.
The high price of security
The rise of the Authoritarian–Financial Complex signals a dark inversion of liberal capitalism’s promises. Where the market once promised freedom, it now delivers control. Where governance once offered protection, it now delivers surveillance. And where repression was once politically costly, it is now fiscally necessary – a core driver of economic growth.
Trump is not the cause of this shift; he is its clearest political expression. His appeal is inseparable from a system that profits from repression, that turns fear into funding, and that treats populations as portfolios to be managed. If he rises again, it will not be because of mass delusion – but because our economic system increasingly demands the very kind of control he champions.
Resisting Trump – or any of his global counterparts – requires more than opposing their rhetoric. It means dismantling the complex that makes their rule profitable. That means breaking the feedback loop between repression and capital. And it means reimagining safety, not as something bought or enforced, but as something built collectively through justice, dignity and democracy.
Until then, the Authoritarian–Financial Complex will continue to thrive. Because in today’s capitalism, freedom isn’t fading quietly. It’s being sold off, one contract at a time.
Peter Bloom is a Professor of Management at the University of Essex.
Capitalism Reloaded by Peter Bloom is available to read open access on Bristol University Press Digital.
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