MOSCOW, September 15. /TASS/. American tech giants make no qualms about the fact that they are collecting personal data and attempting to establish control over the global population, since big business steers public policy in the West, Secretary of the Russian Security Council Nikolay Patrushev said in an article for the Razvedchik magazine.

"Politics in Western countries is shaped not by the authorities elected by citizens, but by big business as always. American arms manufacturers have long felt themselves masters of the Pentagon, while their colleagues from tech giants like Google, Meta (recognized as extremist in Russia, its activities are banned in Russia - TASS), Apple, Microsoft and Amazon do not even try to hide that they use their technologies for collecting personal data and social control around the world for their own purposes," he noted.

Patrushev stressed that the colonial and imperialist campaigns in the West had been planned and implemented primarily by special interests: merchants, entrepreneurs, joint-stock companies and corporations, which were more powerful than many states. Today, the East India Company and colonial administrations have been replaced by transnational corporations, the official said.

"The conglomerate of private banks known as the US Federal Reserve is the lender of the US government, which in turn has put the rest of the world on the "dollar needle." Washington continues to deliberately, albeit forcibly, raise the national debt ceiling, which has already exceeded $32.5 trillion. One after another, Federal Reserve chairmen boastfully declare that the United States is able to repay any loan it takes out, because it can print unlimited money," the Secretary of the Russian Security Council said.