A look at the playbook tech giants like Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI use to shape American schools to their benefit, and the pushback against unproven AI tools (Natasha Singer/New York Times)

Tech giants—including Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and OpenAI—have deployed coordinated strategies that embed their AI products, data-driven curricula, and vendor contracts into U.S. K-12 classrooms, leveraging teacher training sessions, grant programs, and proprietary platforms to lock schools into their ecosystems. Educators and advocacy groups are increasingly resisting these efforts, citing insufficient evidence of educational benefit, privacy concerns, and the risk of cementing untested AI tools in curricula.