‘Every Data Centre Is a U.S. Military Base’ ⇥ policyalternatives.ca

Paris Marx, writing for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives:

It can be easy to believe that all this pressure [on governments by the United States] is a product of the way Trump’s return to office emboldened U.S. tech companies, but it’s simply brought a longstanding process out into the open. The U.S. government has long recognized how much it benefits from ensuring other countries are dependent on products and services made by companies in its jurisdiction. For years, it used trade negotiations to insert clauses in agreements that limit foreign governments’ ability to regulate its tech companies and has used its diplomats to apply pressure in other ways.

A common complaint, mostly from U.S. politicians and think tanks, about competition policies designed to address the influence and control of massive technology companies is that they are anti-American. This is a tacit acknowledgement that the current state of affairs advantages U.S. companies, and an expectation that the rest of the world should be completely fine with that.