Apple raises prices by $200 and AOC has controversial suggestion for what should happen next

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has waded into one of Silicon Valley's biggest controversies of the year, declaring that America's tech giants have become so powerful they're starting to act like governments.

The New York Democrat didn't hold back when she sat down with Fox News this week, using the interview to call for a major shake-up of the industry that millions of Americans rely on every single day.

"We need to break up a lot of these companies that are far, far too big, and we need to be instituting consumer protections for people," she told the outlet, setting the tone for a wider rant about corporate power in the US.

It comes after Apple hiked prices on a string of its most popular products, with some MacBooks and iPads jumping by $200 or more. The increases, which ranged from roughly 15 percent to 25 percent depending on the device, sparked fury among customers who said they felt blindsided by the sudden cost.

Tim Cook recently announced his departure from Apple (Photo by Fabrice COFFRINI / AFP via Getty Images)

Why did Apple raise its prices in 2026?

Apple has pointed the finger at a global memory chip shortage, with outgoing CEO Tim Cook telling the Wall Street Journal that "unfortunately, price increases are unavoidable."

But Ocasio-Cortez isn't buying that the shortage tells the full story. She argued the real driver is the explosion of AI data centres, which she claims are hoovering up the world's supply of memory chips and leaving ordinary consumers to pick up the tab.

"Now the price to buy laptops, computers, iPads, electronics in general will go up, because the data centers are sucking up all of our own industrial supply, and so we're paying in a lot of ways, we are subsidizing the development of a lot of data centers," she said.

She didn't stop there, taking aim at the wider behaviour of Big Tech firms, accusing them of overstepping their lane entirely.

"The problem that we have is that these big companies, they think they are governments, they want to be governments, they want to have totally unchecked power," she added.

"I believe that we need to pursue antitrust, and we also need to give some more protections for consumers."

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is taking the fight to big tech (Chet Strange/Getty Images)

What is AOC's plan to break up big tech?

Ocasio-Cortez also criticised tech firms for carrying out mass layoffs in recent months while simultaneously driving up energy costs for everyday consumers, all while AI continues to threaten people's job security.

When asked whether lawmakers should revisit the CHIPS Act, the 2022 legislation designed to boost domestic semiconductor manufacturing, she said the bill simply wasn't built for the world we're living in now.

The CHIPS (Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors) Act is a law designed to boost the domestic production of computer microchips. It provides billions of dollars in government subsidies and tax breaks to companies that build microchip factories on home soil, aiming to lower costs, create high-tech jobs, and protect national security.

"The CHIPS Act was passed before we saw this huge development in AI, so the CHIPS Act was really passed before data centers were a thing, so it wasn't designed to anticipate the huge amount of supply that these centers are sucking up," she explained.

The congresswoman has previously teamed up with Sen. Bernie Sanders to push for a moratorium on new AI data centre construction, a sign that her latest comments are part of a much longer campaign against the industry's rapid expansion.