Please point out the irony. If this op-ed were published in the Rupert Murdoch's NY Post or read on Fox News, it might be ironic, but in the NY Times by Shoshana Zuboff, it is serious analysis. If you find it interesting, read her book.
For those who do not remember 11th grade English:
If something is ironic it's unexpected, often in an amusing way. If you're the world chess champion, it would be pretty ironic if you lost a match to someone who just learned to play yesterday. Ironic is the adjective for the noun irony. In contemporary speech, when we call something ironic, we often mean sarcastic. [From www.vocabulary.com]