America has jumped the shark.

Every news headline reads even more sensationalist and nebulous than the next. A national TV journalist’s mother vanished off the face of the earth. President Donald Trump and Israel launched an attack on Iran, killing their leader, while the United States still holds another sovereign leader hostage. OpenAI lent its software to the war machine after siphoning our data through seemingly innocuous artificial intelligence and Studio Ghibli trends. And another deadly shooting we’ve become numb to.

Amid all … that, the media most of us look for is more a means of escapism than to address the terrors of modern life. HBO's "Industry," however, takes an unflinching look at the horrors of late-stage capitalism and its insatiable desire to consume everything in its path, even after there’s nothing left.

'Industry' Season 4 mirrors real-life descent into technofascism

"Industry," a love child of "Succession" and "Skins," once followed a group of graduates working at a fictional bank based in London, Pierpoint & Co. We saw the group find their footing in the world of finance to varying degrees of success while wrestling with canon experiences of post-grad life and the hollow trappings that accompany the endless pursuit of power.

At the center of Season 4 of "Industry" is Tender, a financial investing and banking app targeted at Gen Z. But an investigation from protagonist Harper Stern's (a stellar Myha’la) new investment fund, which plans to profit off the company’s failure, reveals its smarmy underbelly.

Despite all of Tender’s grandstanding about being the future of banking, none of it is real. The revenue, the cash, the profits – it’s all fake. It doesn’t just end there. It’s later revealed that the company’s cofounder, Whitney Halberstram (Max Minghella), is a Russian puppet helping the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation access more data through a potential merger with Pierpoint – because why not?

The smoke and mirrors of Tender reflect the real-life happenings of Wirecard, a German payment processor and financial services provider that found itself at the center of an international investigation after accounting malpractices came to light.

Like Wirecard and the fictional Tender, so many silos of technofascism are impactful yet barren. Companies keep funneling hundreds of millions of dollars into ineffective AI ventures, further inflating a bubble that’s bound to pop.

In 2025, Apple announced $500 billion in U.S. investments that will include a giant AI server factory in Texas and add about 20,000 research and development jobs across the country in the next four years. But how sustainable are these jobs if AI advancements reduce the need for human labor?

This investment will hire people to build the tools to their own demise while overwhelming Texas’ power grid and water resources, and giving huge tax breaks to the wealthy. And, of course, more data. Because that’s what this is all about. And when the work is done, Apple will pack up shop, leaving the Texas plain even more inhospitable than it found it.

In the show, Whitney’s malfeasances don’t just end with his Russia dealings. His assistant, Hayley Clay (Kiernan Shipka), reveals that she and many other young women were hired as escorts to gather blackmail material on potential business partners and adversaries for Whitney to exploit.

This makes her threesome with Tender's CEO, Sir Henry Muck (Kit Harington), and his wife and Pierpoint alum, Yasmin Kara-Hanani (Marisa Abela), less of a spur-of-the-moment hookup and more of a calculated move to extort the couple, if need be.

Whitney’s exploitation of these girls reads as disgusting, immoral and almost as unreal as the alleged happenings on Jeffrey Epstein’s island. Whitney and later Yasmin present this obvious exploitation as an opportunity. “Both, and,” Yasmin offers. But in truth, it’s proof that power knows no bounds and will twist itself to view clear evils as morally gray necessities.

'Industry' finale plays up how identity shapes, and shifts, outcomes

From the beginning of the series, we see characters wrestle to attain and maintain power in Britain’s ossified class system. One that spares no opportunity to remind you of your station in life.

Harper is a scrappy, young, Black American woman determined to succeed based on her merit rather than her identity. She’s insanely audacious despite never actually earning her college degree.

Her tenacity gets her quite far, even after her degree farce gets her fired from Pierpoint. The latest installment sees her managing the Mostyn Asset Management owned by British financier Otto Mostyn (Roger Barclay). The first shots of Harper this season depict her strutting from a chauffeured Range Rover to the office of the fund she manages, power-dressed in layers of expensive, grey tailoring. She’s at her very best when she’s self-assured, but sometimes her rashness can lead to self-destruction.

When Harper gets bad news about the fund, she makes a poor, hasty decision that gets Otto’s attention. When the two meet in Parliament, where he now has a seat in the House of Lords, he reminds Harper of the very thing she’s been running from, that she was not given the position based solely on merit. Otto reveals he hired her based on her identity, a “puppet in blackface,” Harper calls it, during a time when it was advantageous to do so.

“That woke s--t no longer moves the needle in this new world,” he tells her. “I accidentally called a subordinate a 'r----d' yesterday. Nobody flinched. And you know what, Harper? Tomorrow I might do it again.”

It’s a harrowing look at a post-2020 world where conservatism has wiped away the progressive sheen of COVID-19 America, where attempts, performative or otherwise, to rectify centuries of systemic inequalities have morphed into our country’s leaders proudly decimating progressive institutions. It’s a known evil that lords over the lives of the marginalized: that your identity is either a bargaining chip or a scarlet letter – it just depends on the weather.

Even after Tender’s illegal practices are exposed, we see how identity shapes outcomes. When offered the chance to flee the country with Whitney, Henry, an English baronet, sees the escape plan as utterly beneath him: “I’d rather die as me than run as you.”

Henry reminds Whitney that he will never reach Henry's position in life no matter how much he aspires to: "You were born a disgusting f-----g mooch and you will die a disgusting f-----g mooch."

One of the final scenes of this season shows Henry fishing with an ankle monitor after pinning the entire Tender scheme on Whitney, which is true for the most part. He’s accompanied by his aristocratic family members, who help him reel in a presumably big catch. All his “successes” are buoyed by his family name.

One thing remains real and true: The institution never suffers. The house always wins.

Kofi Mframa is a columnist and digital producer at USA TODAY and the USA TODAY Network. He is currently mourning the death of YasHarper (2020-2026).

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