This is the first time Apple has been fined for competition violations. The American giant received a fine of 1.84 billion euros from the European Commission in Brussels. It was pointed out and condemned for "abuse of a dominant position" for ten years in the online music market. It was Spotify, the Swedish music streaming platform, that filed a complaint with Brussels against Apple's practices. The European investigation began in 2020. Apple is appealing this decision from Brussels! Beyond this anti-competitive position, the question of the GAFAM (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft) and their owners becomes a subject of democracy for the world. Journalist Christine Kerdellant has written a book on the subject titled "These Billionaires Stronger Than States" (*). In the book, she writes that "The more these billionaires take precedence over states, the less democracy will reign, the more arbitrariness will set in, and the more inequalities and distortions will increase...". Stock market capitalizations, the capture of all our personal data, the implementation of cryptocurrencies, sometimes adopted by states as national currency... All this contributes to a weakening of states and the democratic values they carry... What will be the point of continuing to vote if Apple, Microsoft, Meta (Facebook) become more powerful than the states in which we live and that govern our lives? And this is all the more so as the sovereignty of nations collapses in the face of Brussels federalism.

Apple's revenue, $387 billion, represents the annual GDP of South Africa or Egypt. It is almost twice that of Algeria and three times that of Morocco. A giant like Apple therefore creates more wealth than many countries in Africa and almost as much as Belgium in one year... Lebanon's GDP, in free fall, stabilized in 2023 at $12.5 billion, compared to $22 billion in 2022 and $52 billion in 2019.

It is therefore not a fantasy. The GAFAM are becoming global powers, richer than some states. Their CEOs are appointed by boards of directors and not elected by citizens. Didn't Twitter (X) on Friday, January 8, 2021, "permanently" suspend the personal account of the President of the United States, Donald Trump?

The power of all these mega digital companies must challenge us. What freedom are we talking about in the face of Apple, Microsoft, Meta, and the others? On artificial intelligence, the new absolute master of all things, "these giants have a real stranglehold," notes columnist Robert Laffont in Entreprendre magazine. The digital revolution is also a power shock that pits global companies against nations that have become regional. The former are inexorably gaining the upper hand over the latter.