Data Wars Introduction
I’ve been procrastinating starting this blog for over a year. But it can’t wait any long. The first shots have been fired. Sides are forming. Shots have been fired. And the Data Wars have begun.
The India AI Impact Summit marked the official beginning of the war. We’ve been dancing around this for years. You could even trace it back to the enacting of the EU’s GDPR in 2016. But in India leaders pushed forward three very different viewpoints of how AI will shape the geopolitical climate of the 21st Century. The United States, France, and India all showed their own different views on the issue. And while China didn’t make major waves, their own unique stance looks behind everything.
Then just days after in the U.S. two major things happened almost simultaneously. Then President Trump ordered US diplomats to push against any foreign attempts to regulate US AI companies use of those countries data. Lastly the U.S. DoW listed Anthropic as a supply chain risk and President Trump declared it “woke AI”. All three of these events offer us a preview of what is to come and each will have their own analysis here.
First, national governments recognize the power and influence AI will have and will move to control that influence. Trump’s inclusion of “woke” in his critique of Anthropic signals that it’s more than a business dispute, it’s part of his culture war.
Second, nations will attempt to export their AI systems and values. Not just for the profit that they bring, but as a tool for soft power and a way to spread their version of the truth.
Third, this international struggle for AI sovereignty may lead to data segregation with each regions AI being formed with entirely different sets of data, eventually forming different conclusions and different realities.
This will redefine the world order as we know it. The first, second, and third world descriptors will be supplemented by sects of AI. Those influence by the US, those influence by China, those influenced by Europe, and potentially some that maintain some level of independence. We could see supply chains for physical components break. Access to data and sharing of algorithms broken. Policy on censorship and the cultural values spread by AI will vary greatly. The outputs of these systems could very well be entirely different due to the different making. As AI continues to grow in prominence and use throughout society this divide may have deep consequences. It is entirely believable that how people see objective facts will be entirely different in each society. And how the benefits, and harm from AI affects populations will likely be spread similarly.
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I believe how these data wars play out over the next decade or so will be a defining moment of the 21st Century. Similar to how World War One and World War Two completely reshaped empires and established new orders that largely still remain in place today, this will be the battle that sets the stage for the next 60 years.
This blog will exist to track this battle. To follow each development and the affects that it has on individual countries and the world. I aim for it to eventually be a defining source of information for how this fight is carried out, and how it changes the world. So strap in, it is going to be a ride.
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