Daily Archives: October 19, 2021

Big Tech: It's like a whole other country. Last month, The Atlantic's Adrienne LaFrance made the case that Facebook is "the largest autocracy on Earth." Now, in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, Ian Bremmer argues we're living in a "technipolar moment" in which companies like Amazon, Google, and Facebook have become so powerful and ubiquitous they function much like independent countries albeit without the borders that usually mark the limits of nation-states.

"These companies exercise a form of sovereignty over a rapidly expanding realm that extends beyond the reach of regulators: digital space," Bremmer writes. "They bring resources to geopolitical competition but face constraints on their power to act. They maintain foreign relations and answer to constituencies, including shareholders, employees, users, and advertisers."

Bremmer offers several scenarios for how Big Tech's powers might develop next. The most disconcerting is his vision of the ambitions of "techno-utopians" think Elon Musk interested in circumventing states to displace the existing world order altogether. Under their sway, Bremmer imagines with displeasure a planet where patriotism becomes "moot," cryptocurrencies create a monetary system largely outside government control, and "Facebook substitutes for the public square, civil society, and the social safety net." The irony of the techno-utopian ideal, of course, is that to many people it will sound dystopian. (And Bremmer's actual expectation is far more mundane: that tech companies will end up as power players in the burgeoning rivalry between the U.S. and China.)

It's true these companies have enormous power, and Bremmer's scenarios are evocative, but the "sovereign states" metaphor strains under scrutiny. Yes, Big Tech can undermine governments and powerful politicians witness how former President Donald Trump was deplatformed after Jan. 6. But it also augments them: Amazon and Microsoft provide critical national security services for the United States, as Bremmer acknowledges. More importantly, governments can choose to put limits on tech companies, or even break them up. So far, at least, the reverse is not true.

Indeed, corporations like Apple, which just pulled a Koran app at the request of the Chinese government, are still fairly deferential to state institutions. What's more, techno-utopians probably can't or won't offer many of the real-world services a government provides. Mark Zuckerberg is trying to create a Matrix-like "metaverse" where we can interact inside Facebook's servers. He probably isn't going to build roads, pay Social Security, or muster an army to defend the citizens of his realm. His company is like a state ... except in all the core functions of the state.

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Facebook can be its own country when it gets an army - The Week Magazine

After rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, some of the United States most powerful institutions sprang into action to punish the leaders of the failed insurrection. But they werent the ones you might expect. Facebook and Twitter suspended the accounts of President Donald Trump for posts praising the rioters. Amazon, Apple, and Google effectively banished Parler, an alternative to Twitter that Trumps supporters had used to encourage and coordinate the attack, by blocking its access to Web-hosting services and app stores. Major financial service apps, such as PayPal and Stripe, stopped processing payments for the Trump campaign and for accounts that had funded travel expenses to Washington, D.C., for Trumps supporters.

The speed of these technology companies reactions stands in stark contrast to the feeble response from the United States governing institutions. Congress still has not censured Trump for his role in the storming of the Capitol. Its efforts to establish a bipartisan, 9/11-style commission failed amid Republican opposition. Law enforcement agencies have been able to arrest some individual riotersbut in many cases only by tracking clues they left on social media about their participation in the fiasco.

States have been the primary actors in global affairs for nearly 400 years. That is starting to change, as a handful of large technology companies rival them for geopolitical influence. The aftermath of the January 6 riot serves as the latest proof that Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Twitter are no longer merely large companies; they have taken control of aspects of society, the economy, and national security that were long the exclusive preserve of the state. The same goes for Chinese technology companies, such as Alibaba, ByteDance, and Tencent. Nonstate actors are increasingly shaping geopolitics, with technology companies in the lead. And although Europe wants to play, its companies do not have the size or geopolitical influence to compete with their American and Chinese counterparts.

Most of the analysis of U.S.-Chinese technological competition, however, is stuck in a statist paradigm. It depicts technology companies as foot soldiers in a conflict between hostile countries. But technology companies are not mere tools in the hands of governments. None of their actions in the immediate aftermath of the Capitol insurrection, for instance, came at the behest of the government or law enforcement. These were private decisions made by for-profit companies exercising power over code, servers, and regulations under their control. These companies are increasingly shaping the global environment in which governments operate. They have huge influence over the technologies and services that will drive the next industrial revolution, determine how countries project economic and military power, shape the future of work, and redefine social contracts.

It is time to start thinking of the biggest technology companies as similar to states. These companies exercise a form of sovereignty over a rapidly expanding realm that extends beyond the reach of regulators: digital space. They bring resources to geopolitical competition but face constraints on their power to act. They maintain foreign relations and answer to constituencies, including shareholders, employees, users, and advertisers.

Political scientists rely on a wide array of terms to classify governments: there are democracies, autocracies, and hybrid regimes, which combine elements of both. But they have no such tools for understanding Big Tech. Its time they started developing them, for not all technology companies operate in the same way. Even though technology companies, like countries, resist neat classifications, there are three broad forces that are driving their geopolitical postures and worldviews: globalism, nationalism, and techno-utopianism.

These categories illuminate the choices facing the biggest technology firms as they work to shape global affairs. Will we live in a world where the Internet is increasingly fragmented and technology companies serve the interests and goals of the states in which they reside, or will Big Tech decisively wrest control of digital space from governments, freeing itself from national boundaries and emerging as a truly global force? Or could the era of state dominance finally come to an end, supplanted by a techno-elite that assumes responsibility for offering the public goods once provided by governments? Analysts, policymakers, and the public would do well to understand the competing outlooks that determine how these new geopolitical actors wield their power, because the interplay among them will define the economic, social, and political life of the twenty-first century.

To understand how the struggle for geopolitical influence between technology firms and governments will play out, it is important to grasp the nature of these companies power. The tools at their disposal are unique in global affairs, which is why governments are finding it so hard to rein them in. Although this isnt the first time that private corporations have played a major role in geopoliticsconsider the East India Company and Big Oil, for exampleearlier giants could never match the pervasive global presence of todays technology firms. It is one thing to wield power in the smoke-filled rooms of political power brokers; it is another to directly affect the livelihoods, relationships, security, and even thought patterns of billions of people across the globe.

Todays biggest technology firms have two critical advantages that have allowed them to carve out independent geopolitical influence. First, they do not operate or wield power exclusively in physical space. They have created a new dimension in geopoliticsdigital spaceover which they exercise primary influence. People are increasingly living out their lives in this vast territory, which governments do not and cannot fully control.

The implications of this fact bear on virtually all aspects of civic, economic, and private life. In many democracies today, politicians ability to gain followers on Facebook and Twitter unlocks the money and political support needed to win office. That is why the technology companies actions to deplatform Trump after the Capitol Hill riot were so powerful. For a new generation of entrepreneurs, Amazons marketplace and Web-hosting services, Apples app store, Facebooks ad-targeting tools, and Googles search engine have become indispensable for launching a successful business. Big Tech is even transforming human relationships. In their private lives, people increasingly connect with one another through algorithms.

Technology companies are not just exercising a form of sovereignty over how citizens behave on digital platforms; they are also shaping behaviors and interactions. The little red Facebook notifications deliver dopamine hits to your brain, Googles artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms complete sentences while you type, and Amazons methods of selecting which products pop up at the top of your search screen affect what you buy. In these ways, technology firms are guiding how people spend their time, what professional and social opportunities they pursue, and, ultimately, what they think. This power will grow as social, economic, and political institutions continue to shift from the physical world to digital space.

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg testifying on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., October 2019

The second way these technology companies differ from their formidable predecessors is that they are increasingly providing a full spectrum of both the digital and the real-world products that are required to run a modern society. Although private companies have long played a role in delivering basic needs, from medicine to energy, todays rapidly digitizing economy depends on a more complex array of goods, services, and information flows. Currently, just four companiesAlibaba, Amazon, Google, and Microsoftmeet the bulk of the worlds demand for cloud services, the essential computing infrastructure that has kept people working and children learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. The future competitiveness of traditional industries will depend on how effectively they seize new opportunities created by 5G networks, AI, and massive Internet-of-Things deployments. Internet companies and financial service providers already depend heavily on the infrastructure provided by these cloud leaders. Soon, growing numbers of cars, assembly lines, and cities will, too.

Along with owning the worlds leading search engine and its most popular smartphone operating system, Googles parent company, Alphabet, dabbles in health care, drug development, and autonomous vehicles. Amazons sprawling e-commerce and logistics network furnishes millions of people with basic consumer goods. In China, Alibaba and Tencent dominate payment systems, social media, video streaming, e-commerce, and logistics. They also invest in projects important to the Chinese government, such as the Digital Silk Road, which aims to bring to emerging markets the undersea cables, telecommunications networks, cloud capabilities, and apps needed to run a digital society.

Private-sector technology firms are also providing national security, a role that has traditionally been reserved for governments and the defense contractors they hire. When Russian hackers breached U.S. government agencies and private companies last year, it was Microsoft, not the National Security Agency or U.S. Cyber Command, that first discovered and cut off the intruders. Of course, private companies have long supported national security objectives. Before the biggest banks became too big to fail, that phrase was applied to the U.S. defense company Lockheed Corporation (now Lockheed Martin) during the Cold War. But Lockheed just made the fighter jets and missiles for the U.S. government. It didnt operate the air force or police the skies. The biggest technology companies are building the backbone of the digital world and policing that world at the same time.

Big Techs eclipse of the nation-state is not inevitable. Governments are taking steps to tame an unruly digital sphere: whether it is Chinas recent moves targeting Alibaba and Ant Group, which derailed what would have been one of the worlds biggest-ever initial public offerings; the EUs attempts to regulate personal data, AI, and the large technology companies that it defines as digital gatekeepers; the numerous antitrust bills introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives; or Indias ongoing pressure on foreign social media companiesthe technology industry is facing a political and regulatory backlash on multiple fronts.

Moreover, technology firms cannot decouple themselves from physical space, where they remain at the mercy of states. The code for the virtual worlds that these companies have created sits in data centers that are located on territory controlled by governments. Companies are subject to national laws. They can be fined or subjected to other sanctions, their websites can be blocked, and their executives can be arrested if they break the rules.

But as technology grows more sophisticated, states and regulators are increasingly constrained by outdated laws and limited capacity. Digital space is ever growing. Facebook now counts nearly three billion monthly active users. Google reports that over one billion hours of video are consumed on YouTube, its video-streaming platform, each day. Over 64 billion terabytes of digital information was created and stored in 2020, enough to fill some 500 billion smartphones. In its next phase, this datasphere will see cars, factories, and entire cities wired with Internet-connected sensors trading data. As this realm grows, the ability to control it will slip further beyond the reach of states. And because technology companies provide important digital and real-world goods and services, states that cannot provide those things risk shooting themselves in the foot if their draconian measures lead companies to stop their operations.

Governments have long deployed sophisticated systems to monitor digital space: China created the so-called Great Firewall to control the information its citizens see, and the United States spy agencies established the echelon surveillance system to monitor global communications. But such systems cant keep tabs on everything. Fines for failing to take down illegal content are a nuisance for businesses, not an existential threat. And governments realize that they could sabotage their own legitimacy if they go too far. The potential for a popular backlash is one reason why even Russian President Vladimir Putin is unlikely to ever go as far as Beijing has in restricting citizens access to the global Internet.

That is not to say that Big Tech is massively well liked. Even before the pandemic, public opinion polls in the United States showed that what once was the most admired sector in the country was losing popularity among Americans. A majority of Americans are in favor of stricter regulations for big technology companies, according to a February 2021 Gallup survey. Global trust in those companiesespecially social media firmshas also been hit hard during the pandemic, according to the annual Trust Barometer published by Edelman, a public relations consultancy.

But even if getting tough on Big Tech is one of the few things on which both Democrats and Republicans agree, the fact that there hasnt been a major crackdown yet is telling. In the United States, a combination of congressional dysfunction and Silicon Valleys potent lobbying power will likely continue to preclude expansive new regulations that could pose a serious threat to the digital giants. It is different in Europe, where the lack of homegrown cloud, search, and social media conglomerates makes passing ambitious legislation easier. And it is certainly different in China, where a recent round of regulatory crackdowns has sent shares of the countrys own technology heavyweights reeling.

In both Brussels and Beijing, politicians are trying to channel the power of the biggest technology companies in pursuit of national priorities. But with the cloud, AI, and other emerging technologies set to become even more important to peoples livelihoodsand to the ability of states to meet their peoples basic needsit is far from certain that the politicians will succeed.

The most important question in geopolitics today might be, Will countries that break up or clamp down on their biggest technology firms also be able to seize the opportunities of the digital revolutions next phase, or will their efforts backfire? The EU, alarmed that it has not given rise to digital giants the way the United States and China have, appears intent on finding out. It is at the forefront of democratic societies pushing for greater sovereignty over digital space. In 2018, the EU passed a sweeping data protection law that restricts transfers of personal data outside the 27-member bloc and threatens steep fines on companies that fail to protect EU citizens sensitive information.

A new regulatory package advancing in Brussels would give the European Commission new powers to fine Internet platforms over illegal content, control high-risk AI applications, and potentially break up technology companies that EU bureaucrats deem too powerful. The EU and influential member states, such as France, are also calling for technology-focused industrial policiesincluding billions of euros of government fundingto encourage new approaches to pooling data and computing resources. The goal is to develop alternatives to the biggest cloud platforms that, unlike the current options, are grounded in European values.

This is a massive gamble. Europe, acting from a position of weakness, is betting that it can corral the technology giants and unleash a new wave of European innovation. If it turns out instead that only the biggest technology platforms can muster the capital, talent, and infrastructure needed to develop and run the digital systems that companies rely on, Europe will have only accelerated its geopolitical decline. The outcome hinges on whether a handful of large-scale cloud platforms, with all the attendant economic opportunities and challenges, can continue to drive innovation or whether a group of companies operating under greater government supervision can still produce cutting-edge digital infrastructure that is globally competitive.

It is expensive to create and maintain digital space on a massive scale. Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft plowed a combined $109 billion into research and development in 2019. That is roughly equal to Germanys total public and private R & D spending in the same period and more than double the amount spent that year by the United Kingdoms government and private sector put together. If European states want greater control of the technology sector, theyre going to have to invest much more money. But even if governments were willing to finance these digital capabilities themselves, money is only part of the picture. They would likely struggle to bring together the engineering and other talent required to design, maintain, operate, and grow the complex cloud infrastructure, AI applications, and other systems that make these technologies work at scale.

Achieving and maintaining global leadership in fields such as cloud computing or semiconductors requires huge and sustained investments of financial and human capital. It also requires close relationships with customers and other partners across complex global supply chains. Todays modern semiconductor plants can cost in excess of $15 billion apiece and require legions of highly trained engineers to set them up and run them. The worlds leading cloud service providers can invest billions of dollars in R & D each year because they are continually refining their products in response to customers needs and funneling their profits back into research. Governmentsand even groups of small firms working togetherwould struggle to muster the resources needed to deliver these technologies at the scale required to power the global economy. Even in China, where the government is not afraid to throw its weight around, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is counting on the countrys biggest private-sector technology companies to do the heavy lifting as it aims to build a wealthy and digitally advanced society.

The next decade will test what happens as the politics of digital space and physical space converge. Governments and technology companies are poised to compete for influence over both worldshence the need for a better framework for understanding what the companies goals are and how their power interacts with that of governments in both domains.

Technology companies orientations are no less diverse than the states with which they compete. Strands of globalism, nationalism, and techno-utopianism often coexist within the same company. Which outlook predominates will have important consequences for global politics and society.

First are the globalistsfirms that built their empires by operating on a truly international scale. These companies, including Apple, Facebook, and Google, create and populate digital space, allowing their business presence and revenue streams to become untethered from physical territory. Each grew powerful by hitting on an idea that allowed it to dominate an economically valuable niche and then taking its business worldwide.

The likes of Alibaba, ByteDance, and Tencent emerged at the top of Chinas massive domestic market before setting their sights on global growth. But the idea was the same: set up shop in as many countries as possible, respect local rules and regulations as necessary, and compete fiercely. Sure, they have also benefited from policy and financial support from Beijing, but it is still a cutthroat, profit-driven approach to global expansion that is driving innovation at these firms.

Alibaba's Jack Ma and Tesla's Elon Musk in Shanghai, August 2019

Then there are the national champions, which are more willing to align themselves explicitly with the priorities of their home governments. These firms are partnering with governments in various important domains, including the cloud, AI, and cybersecurity. They secure massive revenues by selling their products to governments, and they use their expertise to help guide these same governments actions. The companies hewing closest to the national-champion model are in China, where firms have long faced pressure to further national goals. Huawei and SMIC are Chinas core national champions in 5G and semiconductors. And in 2017, Chinese President Xi Jinping named Alibaba and Tencent, along with the search engine Baidu and the voice recognition company iFlytek, to Chinas national AI team, giving each of them a leading role in building out parts of Chinas AI-powered future.

More than perhaps any other country, China has enlisted its technology giants during the pandemic, leaning heavily on digital servicesincluding videoconferencing and telemedicineand even using them to enforce lockdowns and other travel restrictions as the pandemic took hold. It has also tapped Chinese technology firms to manage reopenings by providing digital health passports and to engage in mask diplomacy by shipping badly needed medical supplies to needy countries to enhance Chinas soft power.

Today, even historically globalist U.S. companies are feeling the pull of the national-champion model. Microsofts growing role in policing digital space on behalf of the United States and allied democracies and targeting misinformation spread by state actors (particularly China and Russia) and international crime syndicates is leading it in that direction. Amazon and Microsoft are also competing to provide cloud-computing infrastructure to the U.S. government. Amazons new CEO, Andy Jassy, who previously headed its cloud business, was a member of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, a blue-ribbon advisory panel that published a major report earlier this year that is having a strong influence on the evolution of the United States national AI strategy.

The forces of globalism and nationalism sometimes clash with a third camp: the techno-utopians. Some of the worlds most powerful technology firms are headed by charismatic visionaries who see technology not just as a global business opportunity but also as a potentially revolutionary force in human affairs. In contrast to the other two groups, this camp centers more on the personalities and ambitions of technology CEOs rather than the operations of the companies themselves. Whereas globalists want the state to leave them alone and maintain favorable conditions for global commerce, and national champions see an opportunity to get rich off the state, techno-utopians look to a future in which the nation-state paradigm that has dominated geopolitics since the seventeenth century has been replaced by something different altogether.

Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, is the most recognizable example, with his open ambition to reinvent transportation, link computers to human brains, and make humanity a multiplanetary species by colonizing Mars. Yes, he is also providing space lift capacity to the U.S. government, but he is chiefly focused on dominating near-space orbit and creating a future in which technology companies help societies evolve beyond the concept of nation-states. Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, has similar tendencies, even if he has become more open to government regulation of online content. Diem, a Facebook-backed digital currency, had to be scaled back dramatically after financial regulators almost universally raised concerns. Thanks to the dominance of the U.S. dollar, governments retain a far stronger grip on finance than on other domains in digital space.

That may not be true for long if Vitalik Buterin and the entrepreneurs building on top of his Ethereum ecosystem get their way. Ethereum, the worlds second most popular blockchain after Bitcoin, is rapidly emerging as the underlying infrastructure powering a new generation of decentralized Internet applications. It may pose an even greater challenge to government power than Diem. Ethereums design includes smart contracts, which enable the parties to a transaction to embed the terms of doing business into hard-to-alter computer code. Entrepreneurs have seized on the technology and the surrounding hype to cook up new businesses, including betting markets, financial derivatives, and payment systems that are almost impossible to alter or abolish once they have been launched. Although much of this innovation to date has been in the financial realm, some proponents believe that blockchain technology and decentralized apps will be the keys to unlocking the next big leap forward for the Web: the metaverse, a place where augmented and virtual reality, next-generation data networks, and decentralized financing and payment systems contribute to a more realistic and immersive digital world where people can socialize, work, and trade digital goods.

China still has its globalists and national champions, albeit with a more statist tilt than those in the United States. But it no longer has its own techno-utopians. The CCP once exalted Jack Ma, a co-founder of Alibaba and the countrys most prominent entrepreneur, who revolutionized how people buy and sell goods and tried to create a new version of the World Trade Organization to facilitate e-commerce and promote direct global trade. But the party reined him in after he gave a speech in October 2020 criticizing its financial regulators for stifling innovation. Beijing now has Ma and Alibaba on a much tighter leash, a cautionary tale for any would-be techno-utopians in China who might consider challenging the state.

Even so, China depends on the digital infrastructure provided by the likes of Ma to boost productivity and living standardsand thus ensure the CCPs long-term survival. Chinas authoritarianism enables it to be more forceful in its regulation of digital space and the companies that build and maintain it, but Beijing ultimately faces the same tradeoffs as Washington and Brussels. If it tightens its grip too much, it risks harming the country itself by smothering innovation.

As technology companies and governments negotiate for control over digital space, U.S. and Chinese technology giants will operate in one of three geopolitical environments: one in which the state reigns supreme, rewarding the national champions; one in which corporations wrest control from the state over digital space, empowering the globalists; or one in which the state fades away, elevating the techno-utopians.

In the first scenario, the national champions win, and the state remains the dominant provider of security, regulation, and public goods. Systemic shocks, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, and long-term threats, such as climate change, coupled with a public backlash against the power of technology firms, entrench government authority as the only force that can resolve global challenges. A bipartisan push for regulation in the United States rewards patriotic companies that deploy their resources in support of national goals. The government hopes that a new generation of technology-enabled services for education, health care, and other components of the social contract will boost its legitimacy in the eyes of middle-class voters. Beijing and other authoritarian governments double down on cultivating their own national champions, pushing hard for self-sufficiency while competing for influence in important global swing markets, such as Brazil, India, and Southeast Asia. Chinas private technology sector becomes less independent, and its technology companies no longer go public on international stock exchanges.

U.S. allies and partners find it much harder to balance their ties with Washington and Beijing. Europe is the big loser here, as it lacks technology companies with the financial capacity or technological wherewithal to hold their own against those of the two major powers. As the EUs push for digital sovereignty sputters and the U.S.-Chinese cold war makes national security in the technology space a dominant priority, Europes technology sector has little choice but to follow Washingtons agenda.

As the United States and China decouple, companies that can recast themselves as national champions are rewarded. Washington and Beijing both funnel resources to technology firms to align them with their national goals. The increasingly fragmented nature of the Internet, meanwhile, makes operating on a truly global scale increasingly difficult: when data, software, or advanced semiconductor technology cant move across borders because of legal and policy barriers or when computers or phones made by U.S. and Chinese companies cant talk to one another, it raises costs and regulatory risks for companies.

Apple's Tim Cook at the EU's privacy conference in Brussels, October 2018

Amazon and Microsoft might not find it hard to adapt to this new order, as they are already responding to growing pressure to support national security imperatives. Both companies already compete to provide cloud services to the U.S. government and intelligence agencies. But Apple and Google could find working with the U.S. government more uncomfortable; the former has balked at government requests to crack encrypted smartphones, and the latter pulled out of a project with the Pentagon on image recognition. Facebook might have the hardest time navigating a landscape that favored national champions if it is seen as providing a platform for foreign disinformation without also offering useful assets for the government, such as cloud computing or military AI applications.

This would be a more geopolitically volatile world, with a greater risk of strategic and technological bifurcation. Taiwan would be a major concern, as U.S. and Chinese companies continue to rely on the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company as a major supplier of cutting-edge chips. Washington is already moving to cut off leading Chinese technology firms from Taiwan and TSMC, fueling impressions in Beijing that Taiwan is being dragged further into the U.S. orbit. Although it remains unlikely that China would choose to invade Taiwan over semiconductors alonethe potential for a military conflict with the United States that escalates beyond Taiwan would be too great, and the damage to Chinas international standing and business environment would be too severeit remains a potentially potent tail risk.

A world of national champions would also impede the international cooperation needed to address global criseswhether a pandemic disease more lethal than COVID-19 or a surge of global migration induced by climate change. It would be ironic if technology nationalism made it harder for governments to address these problems, given the role of such crises in shoring up the states position as the provider of last resort in the first place.

In the second scenario, the state holds on but in a weakened conditionpaving the way for the ascendancy of the globalists. Unable to keep pace with technological innovation, regulators accept that governments will share sovereignty over digital space with technology companies. Big Tech beats back restrictions that could curtail its overseas operations, arguing that the loss of market opportunities will harm innovation and, ultimately, governments ability to create jobs and meet global challenges. Rather than accept a technological cold war, companies pressure governments to agree on a set of common rules that preserve a global market for hardware, software, and data.

Apple and Google would arguably have the most to gain from this outcome. Instead of being forced to choose between a U.S.- and a Chinese-dominated Internet, Apple could continue to offer its own unique technology ecosystem catering to elites in both San Francisco and Shanghai. Googles advertising-heavy revenue model would thrive as people in democracies and authoritarian countries alike consumed products and services that commodified every piece of personal data.

The triumph of globalism would also help Alibaba, which hosts the worlds largest e-commerce websites. ByteDance, whose video-sharing app TikTok has helped it achieve a valuation north of $140 billion, would be free to serve up viral videos to a global audience, supercharging its AI algorithms and its global revenues. Tencent is also a globalist but cooperates far more deeply with Chinas internal security apparatus than Alibaba. It would find it easier to trend in the direction of a national champion as ideological competition between Washington and Beijing intensified.

The globalists need stability to succeed over the coming decade. Their worst fear is that the United States and China will continue to decouple, forcing them to choose sides in an economic war that will raise barriers to their attempts to globalize their businesses. Their fortunes would improve if Washington and Beijing decided that overregulation risks undercutting the innovation that drives their economies. In the case of Washington, that means pulling back from an industrial policy designed to convince companies that they can thrive as national champions; for Beijing, it means preserving the independence and autonomy of the private sector.

A world in which the globalists reign supreme would give Europe a chance to reassert itself as a savvy bureaucratic player capable of designing the rules that allow technology companies and governments to share sovereignty in digital space. Washington and Beijing would still be the two dominant global powers, but the failure of the formers industrial policy push and the latters quest to elevate national champions would loosen the two powers grip on geopolitics, increase the demand for global governance, and create more opportunities for global rule setting. This is a world with somewhat weaker American and Chinese governments but one that offers both countries their best chance to cooperate on urgent global challenges.

In the final scenario, the oft-predicted erosion of the state finally comes to pass. The techno-utopians capitalize on widespread disillusionment with governments that have failed to create prosperity and stability, drawing citizens into a digital economy that disintermediates the state. Confidence in the dollar as a global reserve currency erodesor collapses. Cryptocurrencies prove too much for regulators to control, and they gain wide acceptance, undermining governments sway over the financial world. The disintegration of centralized authority renders the world substantially less capable of addressing transnational challenges. For technological visionaries with vaulting ambitions and commensurate resources, the question of patriotism becomes moot. Musk plays an ever-greater role in deciding how space is explored. Facebook substitutes for the public square, civil society, and the social safety net, creating a blockchain-based currency that gains widespread usage.

The implications of a world in which techno-utopians call the shots are the hardest to tease out, in part because people are so accustomed to thinking of the state as the principal problem-solving actor. Governments would not go down without a fight. And the erosion of the U.S. governments authority would not give techno-utopians free rein; the Chinese state would also need to suffer a collapse in domestic credibility. The less that governments stand in their way, the more techno-utopians will be able to shape the evolution of a new world order, for good and for ill.

A generation ago, the foundational premise of the Internet was that it would accelerate the globalization that transformed economics and politics in the 1990s. Many hoped that the digital age could foster the unfettered flow of information, challenging the grip of authoritarian holdouts who thought they could escape the so-called end of history. The picture is different today: a concentration of power in the hands of a few very large technology firms and the competing interventions of U.S.-, Chinese-, and EU-centered power blocs have led to a much more fragmented digital landscape.

The consequences for the future world order will be no less profound. Right now, the worlds largest technology firms are assessing how best to position themselves as Washington and Beijing steel themselves for protracted competition. The United States believes that its foremost geopolitical imperative is to prevent its displacement by its techno-authoritarian rival. Chinas top priority is to ensure that it can stand on its own two feet economically and technologically before a coalition of advanced industrial democracies stifles its further expansion. Big Tech will tread cautiously for now to make sure it does not further compound government insecurity about losing authority.

But as U.S.-Chinese competition grows more entrenched, these firms will wield their leverage more proactively. If they manage to establish themselves as the indispensable companiesmuch like the United States considers itself the indispensable nationthe national champions will push for greater government subsidies and preferential treatment over their rivals. They will also press for greater decoupling, arguing that their vital work needs maximum protection from adversarial hacking.

The globalists will argue that governments will be unable to sustain economic and technological competitiveness over the long haul if they turn inward and adopt a bunker mentality. American globalists will note that big Asian and European companies, far from exiting China, are boosting their presence thereand that Washington will hurt only itself by forcing American companies out of the worlds largest consumer market. To preempt the government charge that they are putting their bottom lines above national security, they will argue that deeper levels of decoupling will inhibit U.S.-Chinese cooperation on urgent transnational challenges, such as deadly pandemics and climate change. The Chinese globalists will argue that the CCPs ability to sustain robust growthand therefore domestic legitimacywill ride on whether China can establish itself as a hub of global innovation.

And the techno-utopians? They will be happy to work quietly, biding their time. While the national champions and the globalists duke it out over who will shape government policy, the techno-utopians will use traditional companies and decentralized projects, such as Ethereum, to explore new frontiers in digital space, such as the metaverse, or new approaches to providing essential services. They will strike an understanding tone when the U.S. government hauls them in before Congress every now and then, per usual, to denounce their egos and power, taking minimal steps to appease policymakers but deploying aggressive lobbying efforts to undermine any efforts by Washington to bring them to heel.

This does not mean that societies are heading toward a future that witnesses the demise of the nation-state, the end of governments, and the dissolution of borders. There is no reason to think these predictions are any more likely to come true today than they were in the 1990s. But it is simply no longer tenable to talk about big technology companies as pawns their government masters can move around on a geopolitical chessboard. They are increasingly geopolitical actors in and of themselves. And as U.S.-Chinese competition plays an increasingly dominant role in global affairs, they will hold growing leverage to shape how Washington and Beijing behave. Only by updating our understanding of their geopolitical power can we make better sense of this brave new digital world.

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The Technopolar Moment: How Digital Powers Will Reshape the Global Order - Foreign Affairs Magazine

Jane Chung. Courtesy of Jane Chung

Jane Chung worked at Facebook for two years between 2015 and 2017, primarily on the controversial Free Basics program.

Under the program, users in developing markets were offered limited access to other websites those offering services such as the news, weather forecasts, and job ads without having to pay for data.

The scheme was criticized as a form of "digital colonialism" and, in Chung's words, was above all a way to "get communities in the Global South addicted to Facebook."

"I realized that Facebook was fundamentally uninterested in behaving ethically in its pursuit of world dominance ... that its single-minded prioritization of growth was hurting communities and democracies around the world," she said.

"And nothing I could say or do within the company as a new-graduate hire would be able to change that."

Since then, Chung has moved to The Worker Agency, a California-based strategic advocacy firm that coordinates campaigns against the tech giants on behalf of workers.

Chung describes her goals as threefold: "I want to make a world where technology companies and the economy at large are seized for public ownership and control, stripped of profit motive, and operated to the benefit not the exploitation of working people."

Facebook has previously defended its Free Basics program in an article published by The Guardian, saying it had helped "people around the world access impactful local services, including health resources, education and business tools, refugee assistance sites, and more."

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The Big Tech Activists Turning the Tables on Silicon Valley - Business Insider

Ian Bremmer's Quick Take:

Read Ian Bremmer's wide-ranging essay in Foreign Affairs that puts in perspective both the challenge, and the opportunity, that comes from the unprecedented power of Big Tech.

Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here on the road, something we haven't done very much recently, but will increasingly as we try to move through COVID. And I want to talk to you about a new article that I just put out in Foreign Affairs that I'm calling "The Technopolar Moment." Not unipolar, not bipolar, not multipolar, technopolar. What the hell does technopolar mean?

It means that increasingly big technology companies are themselves geopolitical actors. So to understand the future of the world, you can't just look at the United States, Europe and China. You need to look at the big tech companies, too.

Now I'm saying that. I never felt that way about big oil or about the banks or any other major multinationals. And the reason for that is because they all exist in real physical space. And as a consequence, they are regulated in physical space or sometimes not effectively regulated. But nonetheless it is inside sovereign government entities, and their territories that they exist.

Technology companies actually have sovereignty over their digital space. They not only determine what the rules are going to be. But they actually create it from the ground up. They're the architects. They drive the algorithms. They own the data. They decide what to do with it. I mean, everything about that space is the mandate of the tech companies themselves. And that is the kind of power in digital space that increasingly feels like a parallel world to physical space where governments are in charge.

And so we see a couple of interesting things that come from this. First of all, I first became aware of this after January 6th. By far the biggest event that had transpired in terms of domestic political stability, instability of my lifetime by a domestic actor. And the response did not come from Congress, did not come from the executive, did not come from the judiciary. They all failed to act.

The responses came from the tech companies deciding to de-platform Parler, Amazon and Apple, de-platforming the sitting President of the United States by Facebook and by Twitter. And to the extent that people were eventually arrested and then tried, that came because of information they had posted on social media platforms. Now those companies, I mean, no one's voted for their rules. They decide in a kind of capricious way, what they do or don't want to do to respond.

I'm not saying that they didn't take responsible decisions. That's an entirely different point. But the fact was, they exerted sovereignty. It wasn't just true about January 6th. Was true, the most important attacks on the United States and on its allies, last year was the SolarWinds attack. And the US government and the Europeans weren't even aware of the attacks when they occurred. It was Microsoft that found out about them. And they were the ones that, with other private sector companies, figured out how to attack back.

In other words, whether you're talking about the economy or politics or national security, as all of those areas increasingly moved to a mixture of the virtual world and physical space, and as tech companies dominate the virtual space, they increasingly exert sovereignty. And so if we want to understand what the world is going to look like in 10 to 20 years and the balance of global power, we need to understand what drives these tech companies. What kind of actors are they? What do they want? What are they orienting towards? And then see which of those models are likely to play out what the balance of power looks like, including them as geopolitical actors.

Now, two other things I want to say aside from "read the piece "so you can see what I have to say about all this. The first is, to the extent that we need to think about how these firms operate. Well with governments, we think about whether or not they're democracies or authoritarian regimes. And of course, no one is the perfect democracy. No one's really a perfect authoritarian regime. But you exist on a spectrum. Some countries are vastly more authoritarian, North Korea on one end, China and Russia towards that end. Some countries are much more democratic, Germany, Canada on one side, the United States towards that side, but slipping down, countries like Hungary and Turkey, not so much.

Okay. In the technology space, there is no tech typology. We don't have one. All we think is, "Well, they want to make money." But actually, if you think about the relationship of these companies to the state, they do have very different models. In fact, I'd argue they have three. One is the globalist model, kind of an outgrowth of their historic libertarianism, which is don't get involved. Don't regulate me. We want to have strong lobbying that allows us to capture regulations of the public sector. We want to be dominant in the space, be able to write the rules that the government will use to regulate us and achieve, maintain monopoly status in spaces that we exist in. I would argue that Apple is much closer to that kind of a model, Tencent, for example, in China.

And there's also national champions. And national champions are the technology equivalents of Lockheed in the 20th century, but for the 21st century. And these are companies that actually want to align with governments, think of the governments as very important partners. And they're not trying to invest as much in a global world, but instead understand there's going to be a much more fragmented world. I would argue that Microsoft is more in that direction, Amazon to a degree, Google a little bit. And they're balancing more between the two. And in the case of China, a company like Huawei would certainly be in that environment.

And then finally you have techno utopians, people that believe driving their corporations, that the government is literally going to go away. They're not going to be relevant in their space. I think Vitalik Buterin from Ethereum would definitely be in that space where he thinks that the future of currency will be crypto and not sovereign currencies, not fiat currencies anymore. So the government just won't matter in the digital space. It will be crypto. And some of what Elon Musk is trying to do with space is in that orbit. Some of what Mark Zuckerberg talks about in the metaverse would look like that. China used to have someone like that in terms of Jack Ma, but they don't anymore because they certainly don't want that model to exist in China.

The big remaining question then is where do we go from here? Who's going to win? And it's too early to say. But it's really interesting to play out three quick thoughts. One to the extent the globalists win, which means that the governments don't continue to do a lousy job of regulating the space. They don't align with the corporates. The corporates would rather continue to capture the regulatory space, that implies, we don't have a technology cold war between the US and China. Global models for technology continue to work more effectively over time. And it means Europe is actually much more important because they probably to the extent that anyone is developing effective rules of the road. They're going to be better at that, more thoughtful at that than the Americans or Chinese would be.

If the national champion model wins, then it is the Chinese continue to focus on squeezing the private sector. Everyone has to align with the government. The Americans increasingly do that too. It becomes a technology cold war. And there's very little space for Europe. In fact, everybody else needs to align to one or the other.

And then finally, you have the techno utopians. And it's hard for this to play out what happens to the world if the techno utopians win. Because in part it depends on if they win at what? Do they win at currency? In which case, central banks start mattering a lot less. And the US looks like it's in decline. Why? Because you no longer have the global reserve currency as the US dollar.

What happens if the metaverse ends up being a space that's completely ungoverned by the United States and other governments? Well, it means the governments will be expected to do a lot less. Federal power will erode. And the social contract will be driven either by those corporations in those spaces or not at all, a lot more inequality in that kind of an environment. Anyway, a lot to think about here, a piece that I've been considering pieces of for a long time now. I hope you find it worthwhile and we'll be talking more soon. Be good.

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Big Tech's big challenge to the global order - GZERO Media

As sovereign states work overtime to tame the tech giants, should platforms be punished for succeeding beyond anyones wildest imaginations?

It rose from the deep, at first small, and fumbling for a way to sustain itself. The world didnt really know what to make of it at firstit was a shapeless virtual thing piggybacking on the Internet.

A mere 30 years ago, people werent too interested in the internet or anything that existed on it. In fact, a 1998 quote from American economist and a 2008 Nobel prize winner Paul Krugman resurfaced by tech analyst Ben Thompson, dreadfully underestimates the Internet, By 2005or so, it will become clear that the Internets impact on the economy has been no greater than [that of] the fax machines.

And so, the world largely left the sector to its own devices to grow unfettered, because no one really thought that, in two decades, the formless internet will grow into a full-fledged giant consequential enough to rule our minds and predict our behaviour.

The legend of the Leviathan adapted for the 21stcentury might as well be a five headed giant known as Big Tech (Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft) with other smaller personal-data guzzling platforms operating as its arms, legs, eyes, and ears to form an ever-evolving nimble giant zipping around the world on the internet as if it was a magic carpet to keep gaining more and more access and control over our lives. After using your credit card to order pizza online, dont be surprised if you start seeing pizza ads on Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube, tempting you to order more because now Big Tech knows you can afford it. When you write a Facebook post about being sad, dont be surprised if you start seeing ads for mental health on Google Search.

At a larger scale, Russians were targetting American social media and PayPal users with propaganda during the 2016 US elections few thought Trump would win. In 2018, two men were killed in Assam because of rumours spread on WhatsApp. Sri Lanka shut down Facebook services and Viber messaging app in 2018 to stem the spread of inflammatory content following an altercation between Muslims and Sinhalese.

Russians were targetting American social media and PayPal users with propaganda during the 2016 US elections few thought Trump would win.

No country is left untouched by the undesired ripples of the Leviathans impact and no government can afford to stand by and watch its citizens get hurt or democratic processes get tampered. As US President Joe Bidensaidof social media platforms, Theyre killing people.

After years of very little action to regulate tech companies, governments are showing their might. India swiftly banned over 59 Chinese apps including the mega successful TikTok to show it will not compromise national security even if it angers China, an important trade partner.

Then, after at least two years of mulling revisions to the intermediary guidelines, the newly gazetted rules were published in 2021 only a few hours after a government statement firmlysaid,Social media platforms welcome to do business in India but they need to follow the Constitution and laws of India.

Australia laid down a new law so that Google and Facebook will have to pay news publishers because its core products like Google Search, and Facebook News Feed used content from news media to grow but never paid the news organisations for that privilege.

In the US, after its initial case was dismissed in June 2021, the US Federal Trade Commission again in August 2021 filed an antitrust case against Facebook accusing it of illegal practices to maintain its monopolistic position.

China too is cracking its whip against tech companies with a strict data protection law.

Governments turning on the pressure doesnt mean the digital Leviathan will quietly submit. Each of the big tech companies are as powerful and affluent as a sovereign nation with market caps in the trillions. If anyone can take on governments, its Leviathan.

Washington Postshowsthat in 2020, tech companies including Amazon, Facebook, and Google spent over US $65 million on lobbying for its own agendas as US officials intensified the heat on tech.

Each of the big tech companies are as powerful and affluent as a sovereign nation with market caps in the trillions. If anyone can take on governments, its Leviathan.

These are companies that can also afford the most talented and well-networked people to work on their public policy and government relations in key markets. These are individuals who can influence government officials in power to nudge decisions in their favour by promising investments and job creation in key constituencies.

At the end of the day, what needs to happen is not for the Leviathan to be punished for succeeding beyond anyones wildest imagination, but to prevent harm to people stemming from a tech platform.

No tech company envisioned their product could become harmful but only saw ways technology can be used to create more services and increase its bottom line. That might make them thoughtless but certainly not evil monsters.

Going forward, for any meaningful change to happen in the tech sector, governments must first commit to understanding the technicalities of how IT platforms operate so that lawmakers better understand how to regulate the sector without killing innovation.

Tech companies need to stop being so insular in their approach (is that wishful thinking?) and come clean about how their platforms work, without resorting to jargon nobody understands. That way, users and lawmakers know more about each tech platform and understand better how to navigate them. Tech platforms also need to stop manipulating user behaviour. Setting the algorithm so a user spends more time looking at provocative content might be good for the platform, but is not good for the users health, and collectively for society.

As for us, the people, understand that you shouldnt believe everything you see online, and that you dont need to post all your personal details on Facebook. Above all, understand that it is now your moral obligation to stop abusing tech platforms for your own political agendas. The social fabric is a little too overwrought right now to continue suffering stabs levelled by communally divisive posts.

Continued here:

21st Century mythologies: The rise (and fall?) of Big Tech - Observer Research Foundation

Published: Sun 17 Oct 2021, 4:15 PM

Last updated: Wed 20 Oct 2021, 3:36 AM

Since their founding in the last two decades, social media companies like Facebook and Twitter, and even search engines like Google, have come under increasing pressure from governments, lobbyists and vested interests for purveying content that is seen as persuasive, politically incorrect, morally wrong or just downright fake.

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg finds himself more often than others in the eye of the storm, though the billionaire repeatedly argues that he and his ilk are 'neutral carriers' not responsible for the content published through their networks.

Last weekend, Zuckerberg said a Facebook whistleblower testimony to US authorities painted a "false picture". Former employee Frances Haugen said the site and its apps "harm children, stoke division, and weaken democracy".

What is the social responsibility of social media?

What we have here is freedom of speech up against a contemporary culture that permits even rewards extreme, inflammatory commentary amplified to an unprecedentedly large audience through the internet. Donald Trump comes to mind, as do Irans President and Grand Ayatollah. Social media may have played a role in the Arab Spring, and the Twitter Revolution was crucial in the 2009 civil unrest in Moldova, and in the 2011 Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions but the power of the now 280 characters is well understood by most regimes.

Social media rely heavily on AI algorithms to rank and recommend content. These algorithms take on board what we engage with, thus maximising engagement. The bad guys, people aiming to manipulate information, create fake accounts, flooding the network to create the appearance that a conspiracy theory is popular. In short, tricking both the algorithms and peoples preferences at once, creating illusions of majority opinions.

For example, a recent internal Facebook report found that the platforms algorithms enabled disinformation campaigns based in Eastern Europe to reach nearly half of all Americans in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, according to a report in Technology Review. The campaigns reached 140 million users a month. People saw the content because Facebooks content-recommendation system put it into their news feeds.

In fairness, there has been some moves to adjudicate content such as Facebook's recent taking down of posts promoting Covid conspiracy theories. YouTube, Facebook, Apple and Spotify, too, have invoked their 'community standards' as reason for deleting content, while Amazon deleted products on its site that featured Nazi and white supremacist symbols.

For many European countries, with the experience of fascism and genocide in their modern histories, speech is regulated to prevent subsequent social unrest. For example, Google operates in Europe under different codes of privacy than in the US.

Here, since 2019, the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI), which regulates commercial radio and television as well as RTE and TG4, also regulates video content on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube in Ireland and across Europe. As the world's largest social media platforms are based here, the BAI now expands its reach across the continent, with its 'rules' that require age verification, parental controls and a 'robust' complaints mechanism.

Against this backdrop of content and freedom of speech is a social media landscape currently in flux. For example, while Facebooks properties are reaching more Irish people than before, its main platform is no longer attractive to teens as is its Instagram or rival TikTok. The fast-growing video sharing platform has gone from zero to a million Irish users virtually overnight.

Whats also at stake here is the 'brand reputations' of these iconic 'avatars'. Questions about data privacy, the commercialisation of such data, revenge porn, blatant disinformation, and outright threats have, in many countries, spurred a variety of rules and laws to curb unlimited freedom of expression and have created a cloud of concern over the once haloed firms.

From where I'm standing, with 'freedom' comes responsibility responsibility to our young, to the marginalised, to political opposites, to truth and a just moral code.

Meanwhile, Covid-19 has shown the positive side of social media and the way it has become increasingly central to the public dissemination and discussion of vital information about the pandemic. It has also seen a huge increase in our use of such in our day-to-day dealings with one another, at work and at play.

One of the more positive responses has been the fast reaction of so many people with skills who, across Ireland and the world, have come together with initiatives to help frontline workers and scientists and the rest of us seeking ways to cope at a time of need.

Published: Sun 17 Oct 2021, 4:15 PM

Last updated: Wed 20 Oct 2021, 3:36 AM

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Paul Hopkins: Big Tech, and advent of the whistleblower - Meath Chronicle

Around the world, governments are challenging the immense power of Big Tech, causing politically motivated showdowns between their officials and tech companies to become increasingly commonplace.

In mid-September, just as voting began in Russias parliamentary elections, Apple and Google capitulated to ongoing government demands to remove from their online stores a smartphone app created by allies of opposition leader Alexei Navalny. To channel support away from the Kremlins preferred candidate, the app improved strategic coordination among voters and advised them about which candidates were most likely to defeat those backed by the ruling party.

The companies alarming decision fits a larger, global pattern. Governments around the world are increasingly wielding their regulatory power to subdue free expression online and gain greater access to private information. To respond to the immense power of the tech industry without emboldening digital repression by the state, regulations must make human rights and democratic values a priority.

The use of regulation for political ends was on full display in Russia, as state authorities coerced the two California-based tech titans into censorship amid tightly controlled elections, limiting the ability of opponents of Vladimir Putins government to organize.

Set against the backdrop of an 11-year decline in global internet freedom and a 15-year decline in overall democratic rights worldwide as identified in Freedom Houses research the question of how much and what kind of regulatory power governments should have over technology companies is both urgent and delicate.

In a recently released Freedom House report on internet freedom, we found that 48 of 70 countries surveyed pursued at least one form of regulatory action on online content, personal data or competition against technology firms over the last year. More than a dozen new laws threaten the future of free expression online. More governments are pressuring companies to remove broad swaths of content, often under the pretext of protecting users from misinformation, incitement to hatred or material that is harmful to minors. Their true aim is to suppress anti-government speech, investigative reporting and expressions of LGBTQ+ identity and other posts that may be politically disfavored.

Some government leaders have taken the opposite tack and attempted to ban platforms from moderating content, which could allow for the proliferation of false or hateful propaganda and threats of violence to drown out authentic discussion and debate. Only in a few cases do laws require companies to be more transparent over their content moderation, advertising practices and use of algorithms, and provide content producers with an avenue for appeal when their content is restricted.

Dozens of laws introduced to regulate corporate data management are also ripe for government exploitation. Many require companies to undermine end-to-end encryption a security method that prevents data from being accessed by anyone other than sender and recipient in their products, or mandate that user data be stored on servers located within the country. In practice, weakened encryption and domestic data storage expand government ability to access peoples most intimate information. Even laws that ostensibly enshrine the rights of users to control their data often contain vague surveillance exemptions for national security.

More positively, industry regulators around the globe have also displayed a zeal for cracking down on anti-competitive and abusive commercial practices, and for fining major tech firms for failing to protect data and exploiting their market power. A few countries, such as Germany, have introduced measures that would prohibit companies from denying interoperability and data portability.

But competition policy also can be crafted and used for political gain. For instance, Chinese regulators have been among the most aggressive in addressing monopolistic practices by the countrys tech giants. However, their interventions such as forced company restructurings and politicized pressure on business leaders have raised concerns that the government is more interested in reining in these companies autonomy and influence than in fair competition and consumer protection.

The global drive to control Big Tech is occurring in tandem with a historic crackdown on internet freedom. In 56 of the countries covered by our report, officials arrested or convicted people for their online speech over the last year.

Governments suspended internet access in at least 20 countries, and 21 others blocked access to social media platforms, most often during times of political turmoil such as protests and elections. Authorities in at least 45 countries are suspected of obtaining spyware or data-extraction technology from private vendors, giving themselves unprecedented, extrajudicial access to private communications.

Some of the most illustrative cases of digital repression in the last year occurred in Myanmar, Belarus and Uganda, where electoral disputes led officials to shut off internet service, censor social media platforms and independent digital news outlets, and physically assault internet users.

With so many aspects of our lives moving online, new internet regulations are likely to have a lasting impact on our ability to express ourselves freely, share information across borders and hold the powerful to account.

We need to ensure that regulation does not become a tool for governments around the world to exert greater control over the digital sphere. Advocates for a free and open internet including those from governments, civil society and the private sector should push for new laws that prevent power from accumulating in the hands of a few dominant players, whether in the private sector or the state. That means making free expression a priority in content moderation and requiring platforms to be far more transparent and accountable when they do remove speech.

Data privacy laws should provide users with control over their information, institute safeguards against government surveillance and protect encryption. And policies that govern competition should foster innovation to allow people to make informed decisions about their online experiences.

Regulation is not a panacea, but well-designed rules and incentives can ensure the internet retains its emancipatory power, with all its potential to drive personal and societal progress.

Adrian Shahbaz is director for technology and democracy at Freedom House. Allie Funk is senior research analyst for technology and democracy at Freedom House. They are co-authors of Freedom on the Net 2021: The Global Drive to Control Big Tech.

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Adrian Shahbaz and Allie Funk: Governments are coming for Big Tech. Here's what it could mean for your rights online - TribLIVE

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In theory, philanthropic fund Luminate's decision to focus its financial might on taking on the likes of Facebook and Google should cheer up digital activists.

With Facebook facing a global backlash over claims that it prioritizes profits over user safety, and Brussels in the midst of drafting sprawling digital rulebooks, it's trendy to go after Silicon Valley luminaries.

But critics of the move, including five senior figures at digital nonprofits who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to their dealings with Luminate, say that while harm at the hands of Facebook and Google matters, other issues like government surveillance, algorithmic management and discrimination matter too and crucially, could end up being shortchanged.

Further, they argue the fund's move to focus on "international" issues fails to properly assess the global effects that ostensibly national issues could have.

Nonprofits already rely heavily on funds like Luminate, and generally have to adapt their work pitch to meet the conditions the funders attach to the money they put up.

With the George Soros-backed Open Society Foundation announcing in September that it would focus on fewer key priorities, NGOs fear a funding shortfall across the ecosystem, which could mean fights over a shrinking pot of money. That could mean nonprofits will focus on the work they can get paid for, rather than the work which they may think is most needed.

As a result of Luminate's decision, Western European NGOs could lose $6 million of annual financial backing (of which over $2 million goes towards digital issues) over the next three years. That means campaigns against British school grading fiasco and the one that got an invasive Dutch fraud detection system banned will find it harder to secure financing.

If you combine it with changes at OSF, the Luminate announcement puts European civil society and especially civil society working on digital rights on unsure footing," said one digital rights activist.

In a statement, Luminate rejected the notion that it is "prioritizing one set of work on digital rights over the other," saying that it is taking different approaches to tackle issues globally and in the different regions where it operates.

Luminates Big Tech plan coincides with cuts for digital rights campaigners across Europe and the United States, leading to accusations that the funder, which is backed by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, is prioritizing a headline-grabbing project over scores of other digital rights issues.

Its an understandable strategy, but it may also mean Luminate misses opportunities to meet its goals because some of the direct examples of harm may be abuse of data in the insurance industry, for example, said a senior NGO official on a condition on anonymity because Luminate is a backer.

Campaigners told POLITICO that Luminate has been receptive to hearing NGOs' concerns, but that it has so far been noncommittal and vague in its responses.

While details on its plans are still being finalized, Luminate plans to significantly step up its fight against the major tech platforms, earmarking tens of millions of dollars annually for the fight, according to its managing director Martin Tisn.

I think the house is on fire when it comes to Big Tech accountability, Tisn said in an interview. In order for us to have impact as a philanthropic organization, we need to focus.

Alluding to the rush of tech legislation coming from Brussels, including rules on content moderation, digital competition and a ramp-up of privacy enforcement, Tisn said there is a window of opportunity to fight the tech platforms.

Luminates five-year strategy to tackle the biggest tech companies revolves around taking them to court, publicly campaigning against their practices and lobbying governments to strictly regulate them. Our focus will be around the impact of digital media platforms on democracy, Tisn said, such as how platforms use data in order to amplify harmful or illegal content online.

But one digital rights activist argued that platform power is only a tiny tip of the iceberg.

Luminate plans to cut money for campaigns which it deems purely national, while maintaining funding for projects that it believes have global effects. Though the fund is still working through what that would mean in practice, critics have slammed the move, arguing that many national projects indirectly have global ramifications.

"Luminate's decision to exit domestic work in Europe appears out of touch with the realities of regulatory developments and civil society needs in the region where key digital policies with global impact are decided," said Claire Fernandez, the executive director of EU digital rights group EDRi.

Take Britains plans to reform its data protection rulebook, which campaigners have dubbed a bonfire of information rights. Though the reform is strictly a national issue, many believe it could have a ripple effect elsewhere.

The U.K. could influence lawmakers across Asia, Africa and Latin America, who are crafting their own data protection rulebooks. There are even fears that the U.K.'s reform could lead to a watering down of privacy standards in Europe, which is currently the global standard setter in privacy, one activist said.

Luminate said that it was well aware that national work can have global ramifications.

"We seek to identify and support actions the impact of which are of a scale and significance to tackle these pressing, complex, global issues. This means we will work globally as well as in support of partners in specific regions or countries that can deliver the global actions and impacts necessary to tackle the rising ride of hate, disinformation, and division," the funder said in a statement.

Campaigners also question Luminates strategy to play a bigger operational role in the nonprofit sector, rather than maintaining its traditional role as behind-the-scenes funder.That's a problem for NGOs that operate in the same space as Luminate.

The funder said it would continue to work with "the many civil society groups and others working to address the harms to public health, child safety, election integrity and democracy perpetrated by the big tech companies and social media platforms."

Luminate added that it has long played the dual roles of behind-the-scenes funder and on-the-ground operational organization.

But campaigners question whether the funder will back outfits that have viewpoints on key issues like hate speech, microtargeted advertising and content moderation that dont match its own.

Its dangerous to build another big initiative without knowing what you're doing because it can backfire, like massively, said one campaigner.

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This fund wants to fight Big Tech. NGOs fear the worst. - POLITICO.eu