The Crimes of Digital Capitalism

Session Submission Type: Complete Thematic Panel

Abstract/Description

In July 2020, four of the world’s most powerful CEOs—Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg—testified before Congress during an antitrust investigation. This was just one of many inquiries into Big Tech’s involvement in a range of corporate crimes impacting billions. These included tax evasion, monopolistic practices, data breaches, surveillance, misinformation, algorithmic racism, anti-union measures, and environmental harm linked to digital infrastructure—from extractive mining to water-guzzling data centers. What seemed like the start of an era of accountability quickly faded. By 2025, many of those under investigation were pictured at President Donald Trump’s inauguration, openly expressing support. Meanwhile, Elon Musk spearheads a techno-authoritarian transformation in public governance, echoing extremist crypto ideologies of the digital far right. CEOs of military-tech firms now champion state terror, while a renewed push for fossil fuel extraction emerges to power the insatiable data demands of AI and digital capitalism. This panel brings together diverse contributions examining the evolving crimes of digital capitalism—highlighting its economic, environmental, and political dimensions, and the urgent need to confront the impunity that continues to shield its most powerful actors.

Sub Unit

• Area III. Types of Offending / 19. White Collar and Corporate Crime

Individual Presentations

• Theorizing the Crimes of Digital Capitalism - Aitor Jiménez, Basque Country University / International Institute for the Sociology of Law

• Gamblification, an Accumulation by Dispossession: Old Harms in a New Context - Jesús Aguerri, University of Zaragoza

• State Financial Crime and Cryptocurrencies - Jose Atiles, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

• Green Sacrifice Zones in Australia, Regimes of Permission, and a Double-Movement - Laura Bedford, University of Melbourne

Chair

• Marina Zaloznaya, Arizona State University

Discussant

• Steven Bittle, University of Ottawa