I agree. I went through a period where I seriously held the same insight as the grandparent and thought that it was profound insight into the nature of the universe -- "omfg, corporations are artificial intelligences! reality is an interlocking series of patterns! collective intelligence is the future!"

I cured myself of these beliefs when I looked at how reality actually works (and when I stopped smoking weed). When Louis Gerstner turned around IBM as the company's first outside CEO, that was a result of his decisions and vision, not the emergent decision-making power of IBM. More fundamentally: people can think about companies, companies can't think about people. There are no collective minds, only individual minds working together.

The actual article in interesting. It sounds like Russian/Chinese/non-Western multinationals are growing in power, and with significantly less scruples than their Western counterparts.