Data Colonialism & Geopolitics
For centuries, colonialism has been about the exploitation of human labour and the extraction of resources for the colonising power. In various forms, it continues today, most often in the mining of resources. It is also happening when it comes to data and is playing a quiet, yet significant role in a world geopolitics are fundamentally shifting.
It becomes even more concerning when the current American president, Trump and his team, are abrogating their hegemonic status and authoritarianism in the USA and other countries is on the rise. The new currency, the new resource extraction isn't gold and minerals, it is the digital exhaust of our daily lives.
First, let's define how I see data colonialism. What it means. We might see it as the extraction and exploitation of the human experience as raw material. Transforming it into behavioural data that serves as a proprietary resource for both state actors and corporations.
Where historical colonialism extracted physical labour and resources from conquered territories, data colonialism extracts the digital representations of human lives. Nations that have advanced technological advantages such as America, China, Russia, Germany hold advantage over the Global South.
China is a significant data colonial power. It is building vast swathes of information infrastructure across the African continent. Installing not just cables and wireless systems, but data centres and surveillance tools. Whether an African nation likes it or not, China is extracting data from those nation's citizens for use by the State and state owned corporations.
American tech giants have built massive data centres and infrastructure in other countries, extracting consumer data. Some is intercepted and collected by American intelligence services. Let's not forget the CIAs venture capital arm, InQtel was an early investor in Facebook (Meta).
Data colonialism creates imbalances of power, shifts power dynamics and creates a new form of "smart power" that combines hard and soft power approaches. While we are experiencing the rearrangement of global power dynamics through the current trade wars, many of these renegotiated agreements at the surface focus on material goods and services, they often include technological components such as data sharing and rights. In other words, the extraction of data without tariffs.
It has been said that data is the new oil. I don't find this analogy works well. Oil is finite. it can only be used once and then it is gone. Burned up. Data is essentially infinite, it can be used multiple times and in multiple ways. Data is continually, as information, created.
Data Colonialism and Systems of Power
There is a historical continuity to data colonialism as it follows the pathways set y earlier systems of imperialism and economic dependency. This is demonstrated by China's use of data colonialism across African nations.
The EUs creation of the GDPR was a reaction to American data colonialism to protect EU citizens data and privacy rights. The American government has little to no regulation on foreign data extraction (or that of its own citizens). China has a very comprehensive set of privacy and data laws that are designed to counter other nations. So we are seeing regulatory systems being used to address data colonialism.
This has also created tensions in terms of sovereignty where governments are in a tug of war between extraction themselves and being extracted. It becomes very complex in a world of interconnected systems. It is in part why Russian, China and India are working to create an internet infrastructure than can operate independently of other nation's systems.
A Rising Multipolar Data Order
As we shift into a multipolar world and nations divide along the lines of values based systems, we are likely to shifts in data associated economic patterns as well. We will begin to see not a single data market, but rather "competing data globalisations" where different data spheres emerge with various data extraction models.
What could also happen is the creation of digital iron curtains that restrict, disrupt or entirely stop the flows of data between nations. Meta or Google could find it increasingly harder to even be multinational. This is a sort of technological decoupling.
This would of course, create challenges for the development of Artificial Intelligence tools, limiting their ability to scale and serve humanity. An upside perhaps, is that it would make it much harder for the weaponisation of AI tools in influence activities such as disinformation.
But we are not there yet, and that may not come to pass. Just as physical supply chains are highly globalised, so are the flows of data, many of which are necessary for physical systems to operate. Much of today's information systems are deterritorialised flows that transcend borders.
Data colonialism is an emergent property of networked digital capitalism. It is deeply embedded into our global economic systems.
Citizens and Data Colonialism
In a way, data colonialism creates a form of what anthropologist David Graeber would define as "structural violence." Essentially institutional frameworks (i.e. bureaucracies) that systematically extract value from populations that have a limited capacity to resist.
Most citizens in developed nations only understand data colonialism and manipulation through the extraction of the value in their data for advertising and marketing. Or through data breaches that result in identity theft or fraud. Some, however, realise it is much deeper.
Around the world, non-profit groups and organisations are taking action. They may not frame it as data colonialism, rather using terms like privacy and human rights, which is true. In Finland there is the MyData movement which has spread to over 20 countries. It is a program that advocates for personal data management.
In Latin America there is Derechos Digitales that creates data justice frameworks that explicitly connect data extraction with historical patterns of colonialism. There are many other various types of organisations, including those developing counter-technologies to help citizens protect their data.
How this will all play out is hard to say, but data colonialism is happening. The world's most powerful nations are fully aware of what they are doing and each are evolving their methodologies, policies and systems as much as they are bolstering their own national militaries.
