From Stories to Silicon: What Harari Teaches Us About Information and Power

Yuval Noah Harari has become one of the most influential voices of our time.

Starting out as a historian, he didn’t stay in the past for long. With books like Homo Deus, he stepped into the future: asking what technology, data, and artificial intelligence might mean for humanity.

His latest work, Nexus, takes this even further.

Photo by Laura Ockel on Unsplash

It looks at how information networks have shaped our societies and how they might redefine power in the years ahead. Harari doesn’t just talk about machines. He talks about what they do to us, to our culture, to our choices and to our freedom.

Last week, I shared a deep dive into Nexus. This week, I want to go beyond the summary and explore what we can learn from it: especially about the link between information and power.

What does Nexus mean, again?

If you didn’t read my last week’s post, here’s a quick recap: a nexus is essentially a point of connection or a link where two systems meet.

In legal terms, it’s the point where a state and a taxpayer intersect before jurisdiction kicks in. Harari uses this idea as a metaphor for the way information networks connect power structures and individuals.

And that’s where things get really interesting.

Why Nexus matters in the digital age

If you didn’t read my last week’s post, just let me briefly repeat what a Nexus actually is: it is the point of contact between a state and a taxpayer before jurisdiction applies.

For centuries, Nexus was simple: if you lived in a country, earned income there, or owned property, you paid taxes. Physical presence equaled responsibility. But this is different today.

• Tech giants operate everywhere, but pay almost nowhere. They provide infrastructure for global communication, harvest data from billions of users, and generate massive profits. However, they seldom pay taxes in the countries where that data originates.
• Jurisdiction is blurred. Where does a transaction happen when a server in Ireland processes a payment from Austria for a service hosted in California?
• AI accelerates the disconnect. Algorithms create, curate, and monetize content without human intervention. Who owns the responsibility? Is it the developer, the platform, or the state?

This is the Nexus crisis: states struggle to enforce rules in such a borderless digital economy, while corporations exploit the gaps.

Harari’s perspective

Harari uses Nexus to illustrate a broader theme: information systems shape power structures.

In the past, control over stories and documents defined empires: the intersection of information is the center of power.

Today this also stays true: control over data and algorithms defines global influence.

• Democracies rely on decentralized information and mutual accountability. In a “perfect” democracy citizens, the state and corporations contribute to a system they all benefit from.
• Totalitarian regimes dream of centralizing all information with the motto “total surveillance, total control”. With AI and facial recognition, that dream is closer than ever. However, if a dictator in a totalitarian regime becomes too depended on an AI they might just become a proxy for its decision.
• Global tech empires create a new kind of Nexus: one based on data ownership rather than geography. Whoever controls the data controls the future.

The entrepreneur’s angle

If you’re building a business in this environment, Nexus isn’t just a legal term. It becomes a strategic consideration.

• Tax planning: Understand where your digital presence creates obligations. Many countries now enforce “digital Nexus” rules for online businesses.
• Data compliance: GDPR, CCPA, and similar regulations are attempts to redefine all this for the data economy. Non-compliance has the potential to kill your business.
• Ethical positioning: Consumers care about fairness. Companies that exploit loopholes risk reputational damage.

There are three rules that can be distilled from Harari’s book for businesses:

1. Audit your digital footprint. Where do you collect data? Where do you process it? Where do you sell?
2. Stay ahead of regulation. Digital laws are evolving fast. Ignorance isn’t an excuse.
3. Design for transparency. Build systems that make accountability clear, because regulators will demand it.

The bigger picture: Nexus and AI

When algorithms make decisions autonomously, who is accountable?

If a recommendation engine violates privacy laws in Germany but runs on servers in Singapore, where does jurisdiction apply?

This isn’t just theory. It’s happening now:

• Social credit systems in China leverage AI to monitor citizens, creating a hyper-centralized information intersection.
• Global platforms like Meta and Google argue they’re “just infrastructure,” distancing themselves from responsibility while monetizing user data.

The future

Harari warns that if we fail to redefine Nexus for the AI era, we risk two extremes:

• Global empire: A handful of corporations and superpowers control all data and hence all power.
• Global split: Fragmented digital economies with competing rules, creating inefficiencies and inequality.