Rash Report: Big Tech is a growing geopolitical force

Pope Francis doesn't just preach in St. Peter's Square. He uses Twitter's marketplace and other modern media methods, including video appeals like last Saturday's call for peaceful action in geopolitics and economic fairness.

"We have to adapt our socio-economic models so that they have a human face because many models have lost it," tweeted the Pope, calling for a reform of "large" pharmaceutical and food manufacturers, agricultural, mining and financial companies in separate messages . as well as the defense industry.

In particular, he tripled tweets related to media and technology, including appeals for online educational access, "post-truth, disinformation, defamation, slander and that sick attraction to scandal and that they seek to contribute to human fraternity" and for "technology giants". to stop exploiting human weaknesses and vulnerabilities for profit. "

It is uncertain whether the tech giants will hear and heed papal prayer. And it's not even sure how quickly they will react to governments. According to a compelling comment by Eurasia Group President Ian Bremmer in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, “States have been the most important actors in global affairs for nearly 400 years. That is starting to change as a handful of big tech companies compete with them for geopolitical influence.

“The aftermath of the riots of the 6th exclusive domain of the state. The same goes for Chinese tech companies like Alibaba, ByteDance, and Tencent. Non-state actors are increasingly shaping geopolitics, with technology companies at the forefront. And while Europe wants to play its part, its companies don't have the size or geopolitical clout to compete with their American and Chinese counterparts. "

In a related conference call with reporters this week, Bremmer brought up some of the same multinational corporations the Pope relied on and said they “exist and wield power in physical spaces” where they are effectively or ineffectively regulated or the regulatory process capture.

But for technology companies, says Bremmer, "the digital space in which they operate is a space over which they actually have sovereignty. Because they have created the architecture from scratch, they create the rules and norms, they control them Algorithms. "

Bremmer cited the January 6th attack by a MAGA mob on the US Capitol as an example of technical independence. The response, he said, "has been largely the abdication and fragmented failure of the US government, be it the judiciary, the executive, or the Congress, but there has been significant reaction from tech companies in many ways," he told Apple and Amazon's deplattforming from Parler, a social media site that hosted a growing online extremist community, and then-President Donald Trump's Facebook and Twitter deplattforming. And the arrests, Bremmer attested, were largely a result of people posting their involvement in the attack on social media.

In another example, Bremmer said that the most momentous computer hack last year was the Solar Winds attack on government and non-governmental organizations that was discovered by Microsoft rather than by US or allied governments.

“The impact of digital space on the balance of global power increases dramatically over time, when it comes to how we get information, how the world economy works, and where most of our trade goes, and even that physical realities of national security that we receive, we all live in us, "said Bremmer." The ability to defend borders, to defend one's wealth, to defend one's person is increasingly in the hands of technology companies and not just in them in the hands of governments. This is unique, this is completely new. "

Bremmer believes that technology companies as well as states are on an autocratic to democratic scale on the philosophical lines of globalism (z and even Microsoft in the US) and techno-utopianism (e.g. SpaceX), often led by charismatic champions, technology consider "a potentially revolutionary force in human affairs". Bremmer believes that the degree to which each model is created will have a significant impact on how the world works in the decades to come.

How it works now is that nation states are not static in their response, especially in Russia, China, and other authoritarian nations. In just one of its recent retreats, the Yahoo! The finance app disappeared from the Apple Store in China under government pressure (Beijing bans most other foreign news sources and social media sites). Russia has had a tough hand with online information as well, as the country plunges into Soviet-style repression.

"Being a transnational corporation does not release them from obligations to governments, it means they are obligated to multiple governments," said Craig Kafura, associate director of public opinion and foreign policy for the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, in an to email Exchange.

The US approach to technology, said Rose Jackson, director of the Democracy and Tech Initiative at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, "was a laissez-faire, pointing to the early days of the internet when the assumption more that people online was automatic better and will inevitably lead to more democratic and open societies wherever people are online - which has not been proven to be the truth. "

Jackson believes that "we are in an era where open societies as a whole fail to articulate a point of view, have norms and rules and their own governance structures that must include regulation in their own countries, essentially ceding them." to bring the conversation about geopolitical power to the lowest common denominator. And in a way, you leave it to those with a strong point of view, which is a pretty well implemented version in China right now. "

Bremmer titled his comment "The Technopolar Moment: How Digital Powers Will Reshape the Global Order". There doesn't seem to be any doubt that they already are. The reverse question will be one of the key dynamics of future geopolitics: How will the global order reshape the digital powers?

As for Pope Francis, who is himself a transnational entity, in his address he broadened the conversation beyond digital powers and the global order by noting the nature of technology - and more deeply human nature - than he said : “It is clear that technology can be a tool for good, a tool for good that enables dialogues like this and much more, but can never replace contact between us, never replace a community in which we can be rooted and ensures that our life can become fruitful. "

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