The Silicon Curtain: America’s Devious Attempts at Maintaining Tech Hegemony

In a startling incident, a high-level American diplomat pressured South Korea into choosing American tech companies over Chinese tech, highlighting how America is trying to colonize the world of data and undermine the informational sovereignty of the Global South.

These remarks, however, must not be seen in isolation. They are a part of a calculated and calibrated strategy on the part of the United States of America to try and expand the tentacles of American big tech companies with the aim of harnessing data from countries of the Global South in order to emerge as the de-facto leader in the global informational discourse.

Techno-feudalism at Its Worst

In his book How Silicon Valley Unleashed Techno-Feudalism: The Making of the Digital Economy, the French economist Cedric Durand called this phenomenon techno-feudalism. He argued that history never really goes away; it repeats itself. In this context, he labeled the Big Tech companies functioning in the Silicon Valley of America as medieval feudal entities. In this context, through these companies, the American government is trying to arm-twist South Korea by offering a take-it-or-leave-it deal—while America will not let South Korea make sovereign choices when it comes to matters as critical as digital architecture, on the other hand, South Korea will be forced to choose American tech companies.

Durand argued that these tech companies that develop and harness the data we exist on today are not neutral. They are politically driven. In the context of South Korea, America isn’t permitting South Korea to make a choice. It is acting like a lord, treating South Korea as a vassal and warning the latter to stay within the safety of the castle. In doing so, America is trying to ensure that the wealth and minds of the South Korean people remain in the hands of the American Big Tech companies. This clearly isn’t innovation; it is the naked display of illegally extracting rent.

Fortifying the Silicon Curtain

Apart from being the worst display of technofeudalism, this American threat to South Korea is an attempt at fortifying the Silicon Curtain. This idea was formulated by the historian and academic Yuval Noah Harari in his book Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI. In the book, Harari argued that today’s information architectures are like a double-edged sword. While it promotes connectivity, boosts economic growth, and enhances socio-economic inclusion, it also comes with a price—the price of losing privacy and fragmentation of the world order into technologically driven camps of “haves and have-nots.” Harari argued that the pace at which information is being weaponized would turn the human mind into the actual arena of contestation.

This warning has proven to be stark. In threatening South Korea, America is trying to create a Silicon Curtain with its Western allies, with the aim of undermining the informational autonomy of the Global South. South Korea is just the beginning; tomorrow, it could be Brazil, South Africa, and even India.

Therefore, South Korea is standing at the cusp of history; it can either bow down to the American pressure or can rebuff the United States and strengthen the narrative that the Global South stands united in its pursuit of strategic autonomy.

This choice will have far-reaching implications not only for South Korea itself but for the entire Global South, determining whether the future of the digital age will be characterized by open cooperation and mutual respect, or built on the foundation of unilateral dominance and exploitation.

Pranay Kumar Shome, a research analyst who is a PhD candidate at Mahatma Gandhi Central University, Bihar, India

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