As Techno-Nationalism Rises, Digital World At Crossroads

What is techno-nationalism? It is the idea of using these emerging digital technologies to advance nationalist agendas. The philosophy directly links technological innovations and capabilities to a nation’s interests, such as security, economic prosperity, social advancement, etc.

The concept is not new. Ever since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, nations have sought to control technology and its distribution as an economic and political leverage. Concepts such as ‘infant industry’, the history of technology transfer to developing economies, comparative advantage and global trade, etc. all stem from the core understanding that access and control over technology define the progress of a nation.

While the permeation of digital services has been borderless so far, the control over its core technologies has remained a battleground for techno-nationalism. The future of the development of digital technologies such as AI is now poised to fracture the digital world.

Some key areas of contention giving rise to the discourse of techno-nationalism in the digital space are as follows.

Control Of Digital Technology 

Much of the digital sector is driven by private entrepreneurship. This has led to a situation where some of the biggest digital service providers such as Google and Meta are now deemed more powerful than most nation states. Countries are struggling to regulate digital entities over serious concerns like competition, data privacy and security. 

What is perhaps of a greater concern is that as government services go digital, nation states find themselves more and more dependent on actors over whom they have little or no control. For instance, the bulk of cloud services globally are provided by five major hyperscalers: Amazon, IBM, Microsoft, Google and Oracle.

As countries adopt cloud technologies, they find their sovereignty at risk, as they are dependent on the service providers over which they have little control. This concern was especially heightened by the passing of the Clarifying Overseas Use of Data (CLOUD) Act by the US in 2018. Under the Act, US governmental agencies can ask any US-based technology firm to provide data stored on their servers, regardless of whether it is stored on US soil or abroad.

Thus, effectively, given most cloud hyperscalers are US-based, the US government can access the data of any country stored on the servers of these cloud hyperscalers.

It is no wonder that countries are seeking alternatives in the form of self-reliance for new technologies like cloud computing that lies at the core of all future digitalisation.

Battle Over Core Technologies

The digital sector is built on core technologies around telecommunication service equipment, semi-conductors and chip designs. Not only are these sectors worth billions in global trade, but also of strategic importance for most nations. The US, for instance, has been waging a war with China on this front for some years now.

The ban by the US on Chinese companies like Huwaei was as much driven by economic interests as by security concerns. The US was worried that (a) Huwaei had massive Chinese state funding that allowed it to capture global markets at the expense of US private businesses; and (b) given the Chinese state’s involvement, there was no guarantee on how these technologies would be leveraged by China to compromise US security.

The US-China battle continues to this day, with China banning Apple phones for government agencies, while Huwaei made a breakthrough in the manufacture of 7nm chips, which was till then a technology closely guarded by the US. 

The US-China battle on digital tech is also forcing every country to choose sides, in turn fuelling a global discourse on countries attaining self-sufficiency in semi-conductor and chip manufacturing, to gain some leverage in this battle. 

A New Cold War 

The concerns over ‘national security’ are not just notional. The recent Ukraine-Russia conflict was fought not only on the ground with tanks and bombs but also in cyberspace. Even before a missile was launched, the first offensive by Russia was a cyber-attack via FoxBlade to knock out Ukraine’s internet connectivity to paralyse their command-and-control centre.

Ukraine’s global plea for support to restore their internet connectivity was answered by Elon Musk, when 25,000 Starlink satellites were deployed for the beleaguered country. Even though Musk showed reservations over Kiev using his satellites for launching drone attacks, as he was not comfortable with his technology being used to launch weapons, this was an example of a private technology provider taking clear sides on a war, albeit aligned with his nation’s political worldview.

The recent pager bomb attack in Syria is another example. All these devices were imported from the global market, as Syria does not produce such devices. It is now evident that the global supply chain of pager devices was infiltrated by Israel to plant explosives in them. 

The Internet was originally the product of US military communications technology development. NATO recognises Emerging and Disruptive Technologies (EDT) such as AI, space-based capabilities and cyber drones as critical weapons of modern warfare. Drones or Unmanned Arial Vehicles (UAVs) are just the first of many new weapons that leverage digital technologies. One of the biggest applications of AI is in the field of Autonomous Weapons Systems (AWS) such as slaughter bots, swarm drones, and similar defence equipment, which go hand in hand with the evolution of AI. This makes every nation wary of the technology and its development.

Even as the world looks to adopt IoT, the Internet of Military Things (IoMT) may be built into them by vendors. This makes the adoption of such technologies from foreign suppliers a major security risk. No wonder, many countries would seek autonomy in these technologies.

Global Digital Divide, The New Tool Of Domination

Inevitably, such techno-nationalism risks creating a global digital divide. Technologies such as semiconductors and chips are not only expensive but also require a lot of investment. All countries can't develop autonomy over the entire technological stack. 

This then risks a future where the world is sharply divided between digital technology haves and have-nots, with this being the biggest differentiating factor of development and growth. The other dystopian alternative is a form of digital colonialism, with digital imperialist states at war with each other, while the rest of the world remains dependent (and thereby subservient) to either of these global digital leaders.

Under any such possible scenario, the rise of techno-nationalism in the digital sector threatens to overturn the grand vision of a digitally equitable world that captured our collective imagination only a decade ago, with the dawn of the new digital age. 

(The author is a New Delhi-based economist with over a decade's experience in studying the digital sector. Views expressed are personal)