—-sell mag 7 stocks (not investing advice)

By Mathew Carr

—-The world’s people, not just Americans, funded the creation of these magnificent seven companies …and now it’s time the tax-paying folks should be compensated for their privacy and copyright theft and surveillance.

America has not done its fair share to protect the people from tech and the huge run up in valuations provides a perfect opportunity for wealth transfer back to the people.

This process can begin next month at the World Trade Organisation, where envoys can end the moratorium which largely protects these companies as “virtual” services that can’t be wedded to a physical location.

DARPA stands for the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

It is a research and development agency of the United States Department of War.

While its primary mission is to develop emerging technologies for the military, its work has famously “leaked” into the civilian world, changing life for everyone on the planet. (Google Gemini)

Why was it created?

DARPA was established in 1958 (originally just as ARPA) by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Its creation was a direct response to the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik, which caught the U.S. by surprise. DARPA’s goal ever since has been to prevent “technological surprise” by making sure the U.S. is always the one inventing the “next big thing.”

All seven members of the Magnificent Seven—Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Meta (Facebook), NVIDIA, and Tesla—have direct or indirect “roots” in DARPA.

While none of these companies were founded inside DARPA, they all exist because of DARPA-funded breakthroughs.

Here is how each giant traces its DNA back to that agency:

1. The Direct Descendants (Alphabet & Apple)

• Alphabet (Google): Larry Page’s original research at Stanford was funded by a joint grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and DARPA (the Digital Libraries Initiative). Without that early government funding, the PageRank algorithm might never have been commercialized.
• Apple: While Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak started in a garage, Apple’s most iconic modern feature—Siri—began as a DARPA project called CALO (Cognitive Assistant that Learns and Organizes). Apple also relies on GPS and Multi-touch screens, both of which were birthed from DARPA-funded research.

1. The Infrastructure Pioneers (Microsoft & Amazon)

• Microsoft: In its early days, Microsoft benefited from the ARPANET (the precursor to the Internet), which DARPA created. Today, Microsoft and DARPA collaborate on Quantum Computing (Project Majorana) to build the next generation of super-fast chips.
• Amazon: Amazon Web Services (AWS) is built on the backbone of “packet switching” and networking protocols (TCP/IP) developed by DARPA. Furthermore, Amazon’s delivery and logistics tech heavily uses GPS—a technology DARPA helped bring to life via the TRANSIT satellite system.

1. The New Guard (NVIDIA, Meta, & Tesla)

• NVIDIA: In 2010, DARPA awarded NVIDIA a $25 million grant to research “Ubiquitous High Performance Computing.” This funding helped NVIDIA pivot from just making “video game cards” to creating the powerful GPUs that now drive the global AI revolution.
• Meta (Facebook): Meta is built entirely on the Internet (DARPA’s ARPANET). More recently, Meta’s “Reality Labs” (VR/AR) has roots in decades of DARPA-funded research into head-mounted displays and virtual environments for military flight simulators.
• Tesla: Tesla’s “Autopilot” and Full Self-Driving (FSD) tech are the direct descendants of the DARPA Grand Challenge. In the mid-2000s, DARPA held races for autonomous vehicles that proved self-driving cars were possible, training the very engineers who now lead Tesla’s AI teams.

As these companies now threaten privacy, mental health and the global climate and nature with huge data centres that steal data and stoke heat-trapping gas, they should each face the imposition of giant taxes and tariffs.

If we take the specific, transactional language used by the Trump administration regarding defense spending and apply it to the Magnificent Seven (Big Tech), the conversation about data privacy and copyright would sound like a high-stakes debt collection.

Europe and other blocs can do this.

Eg in Britain the BBC can become the UK’s Facebook and Netflix equivalent.

Ultimately the not-so-magnificent seven are overpriced middle man companies.

Here is how that “NATO-style” defense rhetoric sounds when redirected at Silicon Valley:

1. The “Delinquency” Argument
   Just as certain nations were called “delinquent” for not hitting the 2% defense target, the world could frame Big Tech as being in “Privacy Arrears.”

“For decades, these companies have been delinquent. They’ve taken the intellectual property of every author, artist, and citizen on the planet to train their AI, and they haven’t paid the bill. They’re living off our data ‘freight’ while we carry the cost of the social fallout. It’s time they stop being deadbeats and start paying their fair share.”

2. The “Pay Your Bills” Policy
   In this scenario, the “bill” isn’t a military budget—it’s a Copyright & Privacy Royalty.
   “You want to use our personal lives to build your trillion-dollar models? You gotta pay. You want to scrape the internet for your ‘Large Language Models’ without a license? No. You’re not protected anymore. You have to pay your bills to the people whose lives you’ve monetized. If you don’t pay, you don’t get to operate in our ‘security’ zone (our markets).”
3. The “Whatever the Hell They Want” Threat
   This takes the most controversial part of the defense rhetoric—withdrawing protection—and applies it to Legal Immunity (like Section 230).
   “I told one of the Big Tech CEOs: ‘You didn’t pay the privacy royalty? You’re not meeting the 5% Data Sovereignty target? Then I’m not going to protect your Section 230 immunity. In fact, I would encourage the trial lawyers and the copyright holders to do whatever the hell they want to you.’ You gotta pay. You can’t just take the world’s data for free and expect the government to shield you from lawsuits.”

The “New Hague” Agreement for Tech (2026 Style)
If we followed the recent 5% defense milestone logic, the world might demand a “5% Gross Data Tax”:

Defense Rhetoric

Big Tech Privacy

Translation

“Carrying the Burden”

The public carries the burden of identity theft and lost creative wages.

“Technological Surprise

“We were “surprised” by how fast AI took our data; now we must “arm” the creators.

“Fair Share”

A mandatory 5% of annual revenue paid into a Global Creator & Privacy Fund.

“Trade Sanctions”

“Digital Tariffs” on any company that scrapes data without a verified “Privacy-Paid” certificate.

The Ultimate FlipThe irony, of course, is that DARPA (as we discussed) essentially “gifted” these companies the foundations of their empires for free.

Using this language suggests that the “gift” period is over, and the “Defense of Privacy” is now a paid subscription service.

 

The WTO vote next month is the “high-noon” moment for the digital economy.

In March 2026, the WTO’s 14th Ministerial Conference (MC14) in Cameroon will decide the fate of the E-commerce Moratorium, which has prevented countries from taxing “electronic transmissions” (your Netflix stream, your software downloads, and your data) since 1998.
If we apply the “Trumpian Defense” logic to this specific WTO battle, here is how the global “demand for payment” would look.

THE DIGITAL “NON-AGGRESSION” PACT: TERMINATION NOTICE
SUBJECT: The Expiration of the 1998 Moratorium on Electronic Transmissions.

STATUS: DELINQUENT.

1. The “Free Ride” is Over
   For 28 years, the world has allowed a “moratorium” that essentially let the Magnificent Seven ship their products across borders for zero dollars in customs duties. We’ve been “carrying the freight” for Silicon Valley while our local bookstores, movie theaters, and software shops pay rent and taxes. That’s not a “free market”—that’s a shakedown. ###
2.  The “March 31 Deadline” (Pay Your Bills)
   The agreement at Abu Dhabi was clear: the moratorium expires on March 31, 2026. Some people want to extend it. They want another “free pass.” I say: No. If you aren’t paying a “Data Duty” on every gigabyte of profit you extract from our citizens, you are delinquent. You’re using our digital “highways” for free, and our bridges are crumbling. It’s time to pay the bill.
3. Encouraging “Whatever the Hell They Want” (The WTO Flip)
   The WTO rules have been used as a “shield” to protect these trillion-dollar companies from being taxed like normal businesses.

• The New Policy: If a company doesn’t agree to a 5% Global Digital Royalty, we are “appealing into the void.” We are letting the moratorium expire.
• The Consequence: Once that shield is gone, every country on earth—from India to Indonesia to Brazil—is encouraged to do whatever the hell they want with their own digital borders. You want to tax every AI query? Go ahead. You want to tariff every cloud-storage byte? Be my guest.

The “Reciprocal Data Tariff”

If Big Tech companies continue to harvest the “Copyright of Privacy” from our people, we will impose a 15% Reciprocal Digital Tariff (The 2026 Baseline).

You tax our people’s privacy; we tax your data transmissions. It’s fair, it’s simple, and it’s reciprocal.

The Final Word
The “Magnificent Seven” have had a great run on the taxpayer’s dime.

But as we head into WTO Cameroon next month, the message is clear:

The world is closed for “free” business.

You want the data? You pay the bill.