The Geopolitics of Data
Data flows through the worlds digital pipes at astonishing speeds, for decades it hasn’t been affected that much by geopolitics. Often, data has been called the new oil, but that doesn’t really work as a metaphor, since oil is a finite resource and data is infinite. But just like oil, data is becoming highly political on the global stage. How and why?
Governments around the world are starting to realize the value of data as a trade barrier, a part of sovereign rights, a taxable commodity, a means of excerpting control on multi-national corporations and more. What’s happening and what does this mean for the near future?
How Data Became a Geopolitical Tool
To understand where we are today, we have to understand how we got here. How data became a geopolitical tool.
From the early 90’s through the early 2000’s, or the early stages of the internet becoming a global technology, data wasn’t really considered in economic terms beyond growing mass adoption and building infrastructure. To most governments it was a tool of economic development.
By the early 2000’s, the internet, now interchangeable with the World Wide Web, had reached a scale of global adoption that governments began to see the value of collecting and analysing data for espionage and commerce in global trade. The events…
