New digital world order

No, the established world order is not crumbling down. Nor does it need to be under contemporary circumstances. What is changing is its functionality and dynamic posturing under the galloping speed of engineering innovation and technological advancements. For about 400 years, nation states have been the prime actors in world affairs. That is not the case today, as a handful of global technology giants contest them on the global stage for significant geopolitical sway. Regional politics and territorial sovereignty is being replaced with chip geopolitics and semiconductor sovereignty. Geopolitical poles in the post-war world have been significantly eclipsed by the virtual poles created by Big Tech.

Long dubbed as technology companies, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Facebook and Twitter, along with Chinese technology syndicates such as Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance and Huawei, have now taken command of almost every aspect of social, economic and national security that were long considered the exclusive domains of the state. Owing to significant influence over the technologies and services they provide, these companies, and like them from around the world, are leading the contemporary global digital revolution and, in future, will conclude how states proffer their economic and military prowess and reshape the social contract. On account of this, time is now to ponder over the novel idea of asserting digital non-state actors – big tech enterprises – as parallel to states; in evolving digital world order, they are not merely apparatus in the sole control of governments.

Beyond the outreach of government regulators, technology conglomerates govern the virtually created digital space with a sense of sovereignty. Though facing multiple curbs on their ability to perform, technology giants have become significant players in geopolitical competition. Besides responding to their domestic quarters, they have considerably developed foreign relations independently. Based on emerging competition, it seems forces of nationalism, globalism and idealism are shaping tech firms’ international postures as globalist, nationalist and techno-utopian corporations. So, correspondingly, three scenarios for the future are in making: technologies companies serving the interest of their states; or the Big Tech governing the digital space to the exclusivity of national governments, crossing national boundaries freely and unfolding itself as a real global power; or supremacy of statist architecture of governance coming to an end, with utopian techno-elite dispensing the responsibility of delivering goods and services once provided by the former only. Policymakers in power corridors of famous capitals are keenly observing the emerging global digital layout where interaction between these ultra-modern geopolitical actors is finally going to construct socio-economic dynamics of the 21st century.

Historically, East India Company and Big Oil were private organisations that played a significant role in geopolitics. But, their outstretch and influence, compared to that of modern tech enterprises, were very limited to some specific territories. Currently, the toolbox at the disposal of technology giants is unique and comprehensive. That is why the states find it very difficult to hold onto them. Reining in the thought patterns of billions of people and affecting their livelihood, relationship and security are very different competencies from just wielding political power in the capitals. Digital space, where people are swiftly living out their lives and which the state rulers cannot utterly manage, has given technology companies an advantage over those who rule the physical space. By suspending social media accounts and stopping financial transactions, technology companies, in their speedy response, stand in stark contrast to the dull and muted reaction from government institutions.

In addition, beyond government institutions, human relationships are being shaped and transformed by this evolving world of digital engineering. Algorithms have, to a great degree, contributed to the development of various channels of communications universally available for all and sundry. Through moulding people’s behaviours and mutual interactions by influencing their thought patterns, technology companies now maintain a form of full sovereignty over the human mind. Facebook’s red notifications directly guide the neurotransmitters of the human mind. Microsoft’s artificial intelligence (AI) code readily completes the sentences you have in mind, and your choice of shopping multiplied or diverged at once when, sensing your line of thinking, Amazon props up new products before you. Amazon’s marketplace and web-hosting services, Apple’s app store, and Google’s search engine have revolutionised business ventures. So forth these global actors educate people on how they utilise their time, what socio-economic activities they opt for, and, finally, what they should pay attention to. Their sovereignty in the digital world will continue to grow as social, political and economic institutions continue emigrating from physical to digital space.

Over and above that, in contrast to their predecessor private actors, these digital firms are providing both physical- and virtual-world products that are no less than oxygen for today’s modern societies. Delivering elementary goods and services by a government is one thing, providing cloud services and computing infrastructure by the herculean technology establishment is quite another. Hence, in the emerging digital world, it is mainly the digital space created by AI, 5G communication networks, and the Internet of Things (IoT) that would largely determine the economic future of nation states. Hitherto, telecommunication firms and financial institutions have, to a large number, emigrated to the digital space created by global cloud leaders; time is not far away when growing numbers of automobiles, production lines and, even, from county towns to metropolises, too. That is why Alphabet Inc, other than operating the world’s leading search engine – Google – and cellphone operating system – Android – is now venturing into telemedicine, robotics, autonomous automobiles, biotechnology and fibre optics, to name a few. In China, the same fields, together with social platforms, video-streaming networks and financial transaction systems, have been dominated by Alibaba and Tencent. By strengthening their partnership with the government-run Digital Silk Road project, the said companies are reaching out to emerging markets through maintaining undersea cables, projecting their applications, establishing telecommunication networks, and launching durable cloud facilities.

In the same vein, digital avenues have also transformed the domain of national security, which once was the sole area of governments and, to some extent, their arms and ammunition contractors. The historical role of arms suppliers has been to supply fighter jets and missiles to the armies, but, in the contemporary scenario, tech giants have assumed the responsibility of patrolling and policing the nation-states’ skies in digital space.

The change steered by digital technology is expeditious and inescapable. Over Asia, digital technology has been the foremost factor in revolutionising communities and propelling economic growth. Even so, escalating the speed of digital technology appropriation in Pakistan has never been well-timed. Be that as it may, with go-ahead strategies, our ambition for an advanced digital ecosystem is not something out of reach.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 5^th, 2022.

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