I tend to think the surveillance/spying distinction is a little fragile and this more a continuation of what Bruce has previously written insightfully about, i.e. the blurring of lines between private/public surveillance and, as the Snowden leaks have revealed, it's hard to keep what has been collected by private industry out of the hands of the state.

However, a more recent trend is companies that sell technologies to the state directly. For every reputable one like Palantir or Anduril or even NSO Group, there are probably many more funded in the shadows by In-Q-Tel, not to mention the Chinese companies doing the same in a parallel geopolitcal orbit. Insofar as AI is a sustaining innovation that benefits incumbents, the state is surely the biggest incumbent of all.

Finally, an under-appreciated point is Apple's App Tracking Transparency policy, which forbids third-party data sharing, naturally makes first-party data collection more valuable. So even if Meta or Google might suffer in the short-term, their positions are ultimately entrenched on a relative basis.