BlackRock

BlackRock isn’t a company so much as a silent infrastructure: a colossal, patient engine that buys slices of the world, installs its governance checklist on boards, and quietly engineers which technologies and vendors scale into the arteries of public life. Behind the bland investor-speak sits a market-making machine that turns stewardship memos and platform design into de-facto public policy; nudging boards, normalising vendor lock-in, and making a single, auditable tech stack look inevitable and “safe.” They don’t need to pass laws; they bend markets, procurement and corporate incentives until the only practical way to operate is the platform their money and vote has primed. The result is a hand that never legislates but nonetheless builds the gates: a few corporate platforms become the compulsory checkpoints for work, benefits, finance and health, and the public ends up transacting through systems chosen by the quiet owners of capital rather than by democratic debate. Treat that tidy efficiency as what it is - power disguised as convenience.