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An Essay by Medhya Gupta | Edited by Kiran
Research and Publications Division
The world has been in a revolutionary period since the start of globalization. With the coming of globalization and the opening up of economies by various countries, interconnectedness drastically increased in the international arena by bolstering economic trade deals and through that, building up vast infrastructures. This eventually led to the promulgation of digital progression as it developed with advancements in science and technology and migration of mind, which in terminological way be called “brain-drain” – as a cause of opening of borders and greater economic opportunities in advanced countries. Technology, in the recent era, has stood out as the most appealing factor to earn income, negotiate trade deals, keep vigilance, and balance out actions with humanitarian and easier access, while also enhancing the skill-set amongst individuals.
But has this technological advancement remained limited to only a few countries? The hard power politics has enabled only a few countries to be able to extract the ‘know-how’ of technological advancements while keeping others at the base of exploitation. It has been rightly phrased by the International Review of the Red Cross that, “Embracing digital technologies should not only be about adopting (them), but also about ensuring that such technologies reinforce the bonds of trust that we as humanitarians build with affected populations.” A new term has arrived to address issues related to technological domination in the geopolitical arena – ‘Techno-colonialism’. As a matter of fact, it should be known that this concept is nothing new and has been there since the late 1990s. However, this term gained prominence with Ola founder and CEO Bhavish Aggarwal’s usage to address “how data is bought by technologically advanced countries from those who lack it and in return how technology is sold at higher prices to these countries for profit motives”.
Deciphering Techno-colonialism: Is it prevalent only now?
The jargon might sound a bit new to any reader, but the concept behind this term has been an old framework-based mechanism by Tech Giants worldwide. However, instead of associating it with recent developments in the field of science and technology, it can efficiently be attached to the emergence of globalization. As the superpowers provided security, development, monetary aid, and trade deals to the ‘least-developed countries’ (LDCs) mostly in Africa and Asia in the post-colonial era in order to become part of major world alliances, the transfer of data and biometrics started taking place. This earmarked a significant change in the world order and post-colonial dependency of weaker nation-states on the developed world.
This does not change the fact that the terminological definition of the jargon itself entails, “how the convergence of digital innovation, humanitarian structures, market forces, and the state power can reinforce colonial legacies”. Techno-colonialism has been printed as a leading concept of technology-based exploitation by leading African authors and journalists. It alone cannot suffice the working, but asks the countries to induce jargon like ‘techno-fixes’ within them, which allow the monopoly state to replace one technology with another as a cause to finding solutions to the problems of existing technology in the fields like – agriculture, infrastructure; alone being able to compromise on the local needs of the people, cultural nuances and long-term sustainability in the receiving country.
Continuing this thread, with changes in the global order, the Sino-American duopoly in the field of technology has raised unnoticed concerns for the countries at the receiving end. According to John Mearsheimer, the power in International Relations lies in the hands of the “economy” (latent) and “military” (actual) factions of states, and currently, Artificial Intelligence is influencing both with serious geopolitical implications. China and the US have become the leading power hubs and undisputed leaders of technological trade and AI. These countries extract data from less-technologically developed countries; process the data; prepare AI tools; and sell the AI Technology at a higher price in the rest of the world. In return, the receiving countries, due to over-reliance and lack of technological ‘know-how’, are forced to purchase expensive foreign technologies to monitor infrastructures made out of globalization implications, with a constant drainage of wealth and resources as these technologies are burdened with heavy license fees and reliance on foreign experts for maintenance and support.
A centralized system of control and ownership of technology in a dominion format has stipulated a “techno-colonial” relationship. These are carried by big tech MNCs in a headquarter-franchise forum base between the states, leading to immense data breaches. Techno-colonialism holds every potential to impact the diplomatic relations between the countries. The ‘carrot and stick policy’, wherein any kind of defect and disagreement to implement infrastructures, the political ideology of the host country, systems of data functions, and regulatory system of technological control can lead to stoppage of technological flow and overall development of the country. This will impact and disrupt the national security, economic balance, political, and ideological framework, and autonomy of weaker nations. It also stunts the growth of the countries as they are always stuck in the vicious cycle of technological dependence due to less revenue being left to build their domestic technological infrastructures.
China and the US as unrivalled winners of AI and technological advancements have left the rest of the world unmatched. They have been reported to sell technologies to countries in Africa, the Indo-Pacific, the Middle East, Central Asia, South America, and West Asia. However, this has led to complete surveillance and censorship in most of the country. Leading tech countries like Japan, South Korea, Germany, Singapore, and Sweden have managed to keep their data intact due to better domestic technological infrastructure. However, the same has not been recorded for countries like India, and Indonesia which still sell their data to AI Superpowers due to no or less technological ‘know-how’. India shares at least 20% of its data globally and imports AI tools, even though if domestic technological infrastructure is made efficient, India can be one of the leading AI Superpowers worldwide.
“Are we back into the era of import and export substitution in the world of AI?”
Exploitation of Biometrics in Wars as Humanitarian Response
Apart from the aspect of AI, techno-colonialism has been in practice in an unknown realm via humanitarian responses during times of crises and refugee wars. This happens as a consequence of ‘humanitarian aid’ – “food aid”, “medical aid”, and “refugee asylums”, wherein the host company under the control of a certain country records personal data of the refugees and non-combatants affected by wars to provide facilities of help and support. In February 2019, the ‘United Nations World Food Programme’ significantly signed a US$45 million partnership with Palantir Technologies, a software company that was known to hold affinity with the CIA in the US. This raised a concern about whether the company will hold data of 91.4 million people receiving aid every year.
In 2021, a new ‘Pegasus Spyware’ tool developed by Israeli cyber-intelligence firm NSO Group created havoc in countries like India, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic. It was an auto-install spyware mechanism tool to keep surveillance on the activities of journalists, human rights activists, lawyers, opposition leaders, and heads of state. However, due to diplomatic relations between these countries, the allegations were wiped off from Israel as it had been providing defense support in many of these countries. The spyware was capable of breaching the national security of any country within its reach as it was operational on both “Android” and “iOS” phones, having the capacity to infiltrate spies within a country and pose a serious cyber and defense attack.
Shouldn’t governments urgently halt the trade of surveillance technologies? However, it was either extremely unlikely that weaker countries would possess the technological "know-how" to oppose such foreign technological forces within their systems, or that by the time it did, the cybersecurity and territorial integrity domains would already be under attack. Due to economic dependency, many attacks like these are surpassed. The governments must ideally suspend or stop the sale, export, transfer, and use of surveillance technology until human rights safeguarding mechanisms are in a superior place.
In March 2018, the Vatican with sponsorship from Google and Microsoft organized a “hackathon” that brought several engineers and scientists among the refugees on board to bring out relief measures for social problems like migration and refugee crisis, therefore, asking the winners to download an app for refugees. There became a seeming threat to exploit the biometrics of refugees as most of the sensitive data is stored in the phones of people. As a result of this, there have been at least 1500 apps on the phones of the refugees. These apps had been downloaded as winning awards of numerous hackathons done during the crisis, giving promises of immediate relief and rehabilitation center measures for refugees by the aiding countries, however, neither the aid has been given, nor the sensitivity data of people have been kept safe due to infringements by third parties.
Is there a scope for changing the world order with alliances of tech-giant countries?
The technological duopoly and domination by the US and China in the current is expected to see a change towards domination by only one of them. By 2050, it is expected that China will strongly be holding up to 27.8% of global online data against the US’s 17.8% share worldwide. To counter this domination, it becomes important for countries at stake to develop their domestic technological infrastructures in order to prepare AI tools and secure the sensitive data of the individuals of the countries. A shift in the global order becomes the most viable way to tackle the current duopoly and future monopoly which will also pave the way for further technological advancements worldwide for emerging countries.
The regionality and demography of continents and their people are varied in nature and domination by any one or two countries can efficiently fail the progress of technologies of one region in another region. The emerging tech-giants countries like South Korea, Germany, Singapore, Sweden, and Japan can be eminent sources of technological advancements in their regions. These countries can form trade alliances with countries like India, Indonesia, Hong Kong, and Australia to combat the Chinese forces. "Data is not a fungible resource like oil," says Paul Scharre, exclaiming that "Data can be used to train algorithms for tasks specific to that data, but not other tasks. For example, facial recognition algorithms trained on Chinese citizens may do very well at recognizing Chinese faces but may fare poorly in Africa or Europe.”
One of the most significant groupings in the era of ‘Multilateralism’ has turned out to be the Indo-Pacific region wherein countries that are tackling the Chinese forces can also work on the aspects of the development of ‘Critically Emerging Technologies’. This will provide a work base for extracting the technological ‘know-how' in order to deal with the emergent maritime security issues in the region. A global or at least a regional network of data transfers is more viable than a centralized mechanism as countries in the same region share ethnicity, demography, geography, connected belongingness, and shared responsibility over crises. This will also revive the dying out of minilaterals, trilaterals, and plurilaterals in the geo-political arena, giving every country a scope of technological advancements.
It should be taken into account that Bengaluru in India ranks 7th globally in terms of its AI share globally which can make India a favorable market for buying and selling of AI technologies. AI contributes approximately $9 billion and its market is expected to reach $11.38 billion by 2025, and $1 trillion by 2035. India condones a significant potential in creating AI tools that could enhance India's influence to carry forward the Global Digital Compact worldwide, while also providing multiple stakeholders multiple grounds for investments. India is one of the pioneers in the Indo-Pacific region, with significant influence in regions like Africa as well. There should be possible technological trade between the three regions which could amplify the growth of South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Africa as these regions consist of some greater emerging economies.
The technology must not harm others in order to make good out of it. The countries that are selling data to “AI Superpowers”, must restrain themselves and effectively chalk out systems of extracting technological 'know-how' as there is no remaining limit to the minds and manpower. “Techno-colonialism must not shift the attention to the constitutive role of data and digital innovation.”
References
Radu, S., “Which Country Owns Data? Increasingly, It's China”, US News, 14 February 2019
Madianou, M., “Technocolonialism: Digital Innovation and Data Practices in the Humanitarian Response to Refugee Crises”, 26 July 2019
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305119863146
“Human Rights Watch Among Pegasus Spyware Targets”, Human Rights Watch, 26 January, 2022
https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/01/26/human-rights-watch-among-pegasus-spyware-targets
Verdi, G., “The Road to Technocolonialism” Institute for Internet & the Just Society, 22 November, 2020
https://www.internetjustsociety.org/the-road-to-techno-colonialism
Nyandeje G., “Techno-colonialism: Why Africa must develop Home-Grown Technological Solutions”, 16 July 2023
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/techno-colonialism-why-africa-must-develop-home-grown-nyandeje
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