[SquishyPanda23]

> Essentially the government has built a surveillance state by outsourcing it to private enterprise.

Well, yes, that's essentially the whole point of silicon valley. The government and military fund the creation of startups that have tactical value. Those businesses become self-funding and improve the US economy, which also has military value since a robust economy is harder to attack. This has been explored in a few places, e.g. [0], [1].

But it's not like any of this was secret. The off-loading of government operations to private industry, combined with the lobbying for reduced regulations on private industry effectively gives the government carte blanche with the added bonus of plausible deniability.

Whether or not these trends are good has been debated for half a century in the US.

[0] https://qz.com/1145669/googles-true-origin-partly-lies-in-ci...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo