On December 10, the Jackson School’s Blue Center for Global Strategic Assessment hosted a wide-ranging discussion on how the Internet interfaces with civic life and impacts geopolitics.
Jed Sundwall, Jackson School lecturer and the executive director of Radiant Earth—a nonprofit that supports community-led initiatives that make data easier to access and use—kicked off the conversation by describing the concept of “Internet Power” and how it may be wielded to enable or thwart states’ capacity to govern.
While we may think of Amazon or Google as tech companies, they’re actually planetary-scale data organizations that are harvesting data for their own purposes, according to Sundwall.
“They are a new kind of actor in geopolitics,” said Sundwall, who previously worked at Amazon creating data-sharing and sustainability initiatives. “Big tech companies are a force of governance whether they intend to be or not,” he said.
As an example, he pointed to the 2022 Ukraine Peace Prize, which was awarded to Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Oracle for providing cloud and digital services during Russia’s invasion.
Sundwall also discussed a recent blog post, “Unicorns, Show Ponies, and Gazelles,” in which he outlines how big data is currently produced and underscores the need for global data-sharing infrastructure to tackle global challenges. The big tech companies (the “Unicorns”) use data to maximize profitability. Public sector institutions – including governments, research institutions, and civil society organizations – have limited capacity to produce data and often create data platforms with limited utility or funding (the “Show Ponies”).
In contrast, he describes the concept of “Gazelles,” which are narrowly focused, Internet-enabled data service providers that are funded by philanthropy, but accountable to customers. “We can produce institutions that have different motivations,” he said.
Following Sundwall’s formal remarks, he was joined in conversation by Lynn Overmann, executive director at the Beeck Center at Georgetown University and former senior advisor for delivery within the US Digital Service, and Macon Phillips, founder of Starling Strategies and former director of digital strategy for the White House.
The government is behind the curve in understanding new technology and could benefit from more effective use of data in its role as a service provider, according to Overmann. But unlike big tech, the government needs to move slowly.
“ ‘Move fast and break things’ does not work well when you’re talking about veterans’ health care or nuclear armaments,” she explained, referring to Facebook’s internal motto.
Relying too heavily on private sector companies to solve tech problems also creates issues, Overmann said, citing examples of high-dollar government-funded websites that didn’t work.
“There’s an incentives problem,” she said, when the U.S. government is the client with deep pockets.
Governments have also become reliant on big tech companies to address global crises, Phillips explained, but haven’t figured out how to effectively regulate them. And many big tech executives have transitioned into government roles.
“The foxes are guarding the henhouse now,” Phillips said.
Following the discussion, panelists took questions from the audience. The event was co-sponsored by the Deitz Family Initiative on Environment and Global Affairs, and the Yale Environmental Data Science Initiative.