Techno-Nationalism

Chapter 12Data, Biotech and Geopolitics

It is wrong to say that data is the ‘new oil’.

Data, in fact, is more valuable than oil because it is an essentially non-expendable commodity. In technical economic terms, it is a non-rival good: one person’s use does not limit anyone else’s. Data can be used again and again, sold and resold, analysed and re-analysed for different kinds of value extraction. Every new advancement in artificial intelligence (AI) and data science, in theory, can extend and increase the utility of the same data.

Thus, data has become an essential geopolitical asset, and finding ways to obtain it, steal it, analyse it and protect it are all techno-nationalist priorities.

The strategic value of data in the global digital commons, especially that of private citizens, has motivated government intelligence agencies to target social media and messaging platforms as well as e-commerce and other sources. Governments now show the same appetite that the for-profit surveillance capitalists have for data—indeed, they often buy it directly from the data capitalists.

As the Internet-of-Things (IoT) turns billions of devices into transmitters, content creators, and recipients of data, everything from electric vehicles to household appliances has been pulled into the geopolitical data vortex.

Consider that in March 2023, the U.S. House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to force ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of TikTok, the hugely popular streaming video app, ...