Talofa reader,
To say 2025 was a 'challenging year' would be the understatement of understatements. No, it wasn't challenging—it was full-on "masks off": power consolidation and imperial impunity on full display.
Yes, it's going to be one of those newsletters.
It's that wonderful, magical time of year where we get to reflect on everything that happened for us this year. The highs, the lows, the lessons learned and friends we made along the way. But in my heart of hearts, or at least if I'm getting it one hundred, I don't feel that way. At all.
It's hard to put into words sometimes, the feeling I have when I look at everything around us. The economic position I've lived in for so many years has shielded me and my family from much of what I see in the news—the cost of living crisis, the housing shortage, the job market collapse.
But (believe it or not) I'm human. I don't want to see people struggle for the basics, I don't want to see some people have nothing, while others have way more than they would ever need. And having another individually optimistic piece from some tech bro at Amazon is a little too on the nose for me.
Fortunately, I've never been mistaken for an optimistic person, so you're going to get the complete opposite here. And I don't think being cynical or all "doom & gloom" is hot shit either. No-one's trying to be the cool contrarian guy here cause it's "edgy"—those types have always been lame, they just didn't know it.
I'm going to say some things because a) it's genuinely how I feel about it and b) it's actually real and happening right now, and my position is- we can keep brushing past it with our head in the sand while it doesn't affect us "that much", or we can actually talk about it so I know where you stand (note: not wanting to talk about it, or acknowledge it, is 100% a position).
What's this got to do with AI, CyberSecurity or Tech? In my opinion, everything.
You want examples? Look around aka get your head out of your ass:
A handful of companies now control the entire AI landscape—OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google are consolidating power while extracting human creativity and labour at scale. As TIME puts it:
"If lawmakers fail to act, the future of AI will be written not by open competition or bold new ideas, but by the same handful of firms that already dominate."
Meanwhile, 126,352 tech workers were laid off in 2025 while profits continued to soar. Does that feel like "survival of the company" actions, or pure extraction?
Here in Aotearoa, our anti-Māori coalition government has done a bang-up job of the economy (note: sarcasm). Bread is up 53%, milk up 16%, sirloin beef up 27%. Nearly 200 Kiwis leave the country every day. The neoliberal project is delivering exactly what it's designed to: transfer wealth upward while working class and Pasifika communities pay for the privilege.
Globally, democratic institutions are collapsing in real-time. Far-right parties lead polls in Germany, France, and the UK simultaneously—the first time in modern history. The Trump administration openly endorses European far-right movements. And probably the sickest reality check for the facade of "international law" and "Western values": The International Association of Genocide Scholars declared Israel is committing genocide in Gaza—over 66,000 Palestinians killed by October 2025, half of them women and children. And the climate? 546,000 people die annually from heat, a 23% increase since the 1990s. Another 2.5 million die yearly from fossil fuel air pollution. The bodies stack up while we're still debating individual carbon footprints.
We could talk about "seasons" or how this is just cyclical, but I would argue this isn't about things going through their natural progression, this is structural. The way the world has been built and rebuilt post-WW2—how the global north exploits and extracts from the global south—most people have no idea what I'm talking about right now. And that's the issue. The very structure and mechanisms by which our society operates and runs today isn't "flawed"—it's designed to deliver exactly what we see. It reminds me of W. Edwards Deming's famous quote "Every system is perfectly designed to get the result that it does."
We could talk about neoliberalism, white supremacy, fascism, and far-right ideology—and we'd essentially be talking about the same thing. Most of this is outside the scope of this essay, but I wanted to put those keywords in the frame so you start to think about how deep these things go- what you see and hear every day, to what has been built and forged in local and international systems for millennia.
Now, do you think individual optimism and adaptability is going to get the job done of systemic change (the thing that's needed)? Straight up, all of that shit is gaslighting. I know this shit's heavy. To even think about it, for a lot of us, is to remind ourselves how overwhelming and futile it feels to go against the grain. I'm right there with you, but that doesn't make these things any less true. And even that right there, that feeling (that it's futile)... is also gaslighting.
Why? Because people are powerful.
People working together, with other people, looking out for each other and being there for each other- is the most powerful thing in the world. Bar none. Powerful institutions and people in positions of power know this- which is why they must divide, disarm, and disempower people. Reminds me of the story of the Tower of Babel. I'm paraphrasing here, but a whole bunch of people got together, co-ordinated and collaborated and built a tower that stretched into the sky, almost reaching the heavens and God panicked and cast a spell on all the people where they all spoke different languages so couldn't understand each other. And thus, thwarted the Tower of Babel. See the theme there? A God, had to divide the people in order not to be overthrown (again, paraphrasing and oversimplifying).
What's the link to this AI, and Tech?
Other than the obvious—AI's many issues with extraction, intellectual property and copyright violations, bias, toxicity and harms to Indigenous communities, climate and water usage—other than those... of the many things to choose from, one quote from an ex-meta engineer hit home for me, in terms of this power, people, and the distracting or diversion tactic:
"The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. That sucks."
I get it. These private sector, for-profit jobs pay the best. They tend to have the better resources, perks, compensation—all-round things that make this life better. So of course they're going to get the lion's share of people, usually the most brilliant people at that.
So the most powerful companies, get the most talented people, using human societies best skills... to make people click ads.
That's the link.
So. What do we do with all this? Fuck knows- is my initial response. Not because I don't know, or don't have ideas or feelings about it. But honestly, I'm a little bit tired of thinking about it all the time. Sure, we're not all the same in how we approach, implement or philosophise life, so this is just a little insight in how I operate and how I see and analyse the world. It's how I've done it for as long as I can remember. Since intermediate, high school and every year after. Before I knew anything about anything, I knew something was off—at least from my vantage point. So everything I've learned since—via formal education, self-study, or lived experience—it's just tiring seeing the matrix this long and while the crumbs of improvement have been flicked off the table towards us to appease us, the exploitation and extraction machine soldiers on, gaining power, racking up the body count.
Bleak. Hahahaha. Yes, bleak.
But at least if we start there—not out of despair, but out of being tired of the facade and wanting to do something about it. I'm in tech, I'm a technologist, so my call to action isn't even that radical (depending on your definition or level of severity to achieve radical status)—it's to tech people to start being honest with themselves about their place in this system, because I'm done with us pretending we're not contributing to every calamity or disaster around us. I understand it maybe comes from a place of survival, of minding our business because it doesn't affect us and we're "lucky" to be shielded from it. I totally get that. But let's not bullshit ourselves and others that we don't know the impact of what we're a part of. I think I respect a position of knowing we're the stormtroopers of the Death Star, rather than convincing ourselves we have anything to do with the resistance because we helped an underrepresented group play with some big tech technology a couple of times a year.
2026 is going to be the year of not doing the corporate talking points anymore. It's about finding the people and causes that can build alternative power structures. We stop living in the corporate tech bro shared fantasy that we're helping make the world a better place, when really we're hiding away in our gated communities flying the "we are in this together" flags from the safety of our lived realities—realities that let us change the channel or switch the outside world off altogether when things get too uncomfortable.
In a reality where multiple things can be true at once- yes, things can be shit, we can 100% be complicit in the bullshit happening in the world, but I also genuinely wish you a happy holiday break and hope you and your families get the rest and recharge needed to head into the new year- because you're going to need it.
2026 actions speak louder than words.
Thanks for reading. I'll be taking a break in January—back in February with our regularly scheduled programming of Uncommon Engineer optimism and wisdom.
ia manuia,
Ron.