April 13, 2025 / Curated by Juan Ortiz-Freuler
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🇪🇺 [News – EU autonomy discourse accelerating]
““The discussion on strategic autonomy in Europe has accelerated a lot due to the events of the last weeks,” said Brando Benifei, chair of the European Parliament’s committee on US relations. “In Europe we lack certain infrastructure, like platforms and cloud.”“
https://sciencebusiness.net/news/sovereignty/eu-urgently-needs-technological-autonomy-us-meps-say
🎙️Tech Won’t Save US Podcast: Can Europe End Its Dependence on US Tech? Aline Blankertz
https://techwontsave.us/episode/271_can_europe_end_its_dependence_on_us_tech_w_aline_blankertz
🎙️China-Global South Podcast: The end of the West and the future of China “U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision this week to pause military funding for Ukraine and to align his government with Russia further widens the cleavage between the United States and Europe — effectively breaking what has long been known as “the West.”
https://chinaglobalsouth.com/podcasts/the-end-of-the-west-and-the-future-of-china
🇪🇺 [News -Amsterdam government seeking tech autonomy from US ]
“We need a Plan B to ensure that the US government and Big Tech can’t make all of our decisions for us.” “Municipalities unwilling to invest in their own technology, open standards, and strong cybersecurity run the risk of becoming vulnerable and overly dependent.”
[English: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/dutch-parliament-calls-end-reliance-us-software-2025-03-18/ ]
🇪🇺 [News – EU striving to reduce Ukrainian dependence on Starlink]
“Musk in March warned that the “entire front line would collapse if I turned it off.” To cope with that risk, the European Union is on the lookout for backup options for Ukraine”
https://www.politico.eu/article/ukraine-stuck-with-elon-musk-starlink-satellite-internet
🇮🇳🇧🇷[Opinion – DIgital Public Infrastructure – India & Brazil’s alternative visions]
“In a Europe threatened by US Big Tech and Trumpian foreign policy, digital public infrastructure refers to a new “EuroStack” that seeks to orient massive investments into infrastructure. Notably, a recognition of US Big Tech’s control over global hardware is central to the EuroStack project. Meanwhile, the Open Future Foundation sees “public digital infrastructure” as the basis for a new public sphere, responding to the whittling away of sites for democratic debate and deliberation by Big Tech. The opposition to US Big Tech is a factor in Brazil’s embrace of the term. In Brazil, as in India, digital public infrastructure is also imbued with developmental goals, with delivering government welfare more effectively, and the term is synonymous with digital ID and payments systems. The difference is that Brazil’s ID and payments systems are built by a state with robust public oversight and with civil society participation.”
🇧🇷 🇻🇳 [News – Brazil approaches Vietnam]
Excerpts from speech of President Lula in Vietnam (March 28, 2025): “As proponents of a multipolar order, Latin America and Southeast Asia must avoid a new division of the world into spheres of influence. Even if our experiences were different, Vietnam and Brazil both suffered the effects of the Cold War, so we both know that the best way forward is non-alignment. Therefore, it is only natural that our countries agreed, last November, to elevate our bilateral relationship to the status of Strategic Partnership” https://www.gov.br/planalto/en/follow-the-government/speeches-statements/2025/03/press-statement-on-occasion-of-president-lulas-state-visit-to-vietnam
🇺🇸🔨[Opinion – US tech CEOs access positions of power]
“Karp, having already crowned “wokeness” the “central risk to Palantir and America,” now demands geopolitical fealty from his payroll peasantry. They must support Israel and oppose China; those who disagree are free to look for employment elsewhere. As he told his Davos audience in 2023, “we want [employees] who want to be on the side of the West.”
🇺🇸🇨🇳 [Tariffs lay bare US dependence on rare earths imports]
https://www.newsweek.com/china-xi-trump-rare-earths-2057930
🇨🇳 [News -China’s re-branding opportunity]
“Beijing still intends to oppose Washington by presenting itself as a source of stability and a champion of the Global South. But it remains unclear how it will transform words into action.“ https://www.chathamhouse.org/2025/03/chinese-foreign-ministers-press-conference-showed-beijing-still-reticent-about-its-role
🇨🇳 [DATA -China’s AI companies catching up to the US]
“Chinese models have rapidly closed the quality gap: performance differences on major benchmarks such as MMLU and HumanEval shrank from double digits in 2023 to near parity in 2024. China also continues to lead in AI publications and patents”
https://hai.stanford.edu/news/ai-index-2025-state-of-ai-in-10-charts
🇨🇳[Opinion – China’s Digital Silk Road entering soft infrastructure phase in approach to soft power]
“China is quietly constructing a global development narrative that transcends traditional geopolitical competition through the “Digital Silk Road.” This approach, anchored in technological “soft infrastructure,” leverages the export of technical standards, the provision of digital public goods, and initiatives in AI ethics”
CONCEPTS
🇮🇳[BOOK REVIEW – Nehru and Non-Alignment]
“Non-alignment in popular parlance was understood as a foreign policy of rejecting a subordinate ally status in either the ideological and military bloc headed by the US or that led by the Soviet Union. This posture was rooted in the colonial experience of India and other states of Asia, Africa and Latin America, which having overthrown the colonial yoke were not prepared to exchange it for another form of subservience. In this elemental sense, there was a natural solidarity and political affinity among this category of newly emerging nations in the post Second World War period. Non-alignment manifested itself in different ways in the foreign policies of countries that became part of the Non-Aligned Movement, which came into existence in 1961. But the overarching sense of solidarity has remained alive under the current brand of the Global South.”
LONG READS
🌎Manual on achieving digital sovereignty
Structured under three big pillars, the piece discusses the definition of digital sovereignty, its relation to democratic sovereignty, and strategies to improve digital sovereignty.
https://berjon.com/digital-sovereignty/
🔭Related: Eurostack
https://euro-stack.eu/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/EuroStack_Pitch_10-January-2025.pdf
🌎[Essay – Digital colonialism or Non-Alignment]
“As this digital colonialism intensifies, so does the drive to resist it. Much like the Non-Aligned Movement during the Cold War, a constellation of state and non-state actors – civil society groups, decentralised technology initiatives, digital commons movements – is attempting to forge alternatives. These movements seek to carve out spaces of autonomy and develop structures of self-governance to counteract the dominance of these digital empires.”
[Student Paper – How Global South is navigating US-China trade war]
“Through the US-China trade and technology war, developing nations have been pushed to come up with some strategies to protect interests that touch on economics and technology. Some countries diversify trade and investment partners, while some localize, strengthen their digital sovereignty, and engage in strategic diplomacy to balance between the two superpowers. These shifts will also have further implications for global governance since emerging economies are wrangling to reshape the internationalrules of trade, investment norms, and digital policies”
https://www.ijcrt.org/papers/IJCRT2504025.pdf
[Essay – Bandung Spirit]
“In 1955, the leaders of former Global South colonies met in Bandung, Indonesia, brought together by a common spirit for national liberation and cooperation. Seventy years later, is there any trace of it left?”
https://thetricontinental.org/dossier-the-bandung-spirit
🎙️ [Interview – Jorge Heine on Latin America and Active Non-Alignment]
“JH: We argue that ANA [Active-Non Alignment] is suited to countries from the Global South, as they contend with the dilemmas posed by great-power competition in today’s world. But China and Russia – leading members of the BRICS – are themselves great powers, not part of the Global South. While the BRICS grouping cannot be said to represent only the Global South, however, there is little doubt that it considers and advances developing economies’ interests to a far greater extent than, say, the G7. Simply put, while the BRICS are not of the Global South, they are for it.Informal groups like the BRICS cannot replace broad-based multilateralism or the entities, like the UN, that embody it. Instead, they are part of what the political scientist Andrew F. Cooper has referred to as “the concertation impulse in world politics,” in which less-structured entities (the G20 is another example) facilitate collective action where more rigid ones (like the UN) cannot. Whether these groups will be able to channel that energy into the fight against climate change – especially now that the US has once again abandoned the Paris climate agreement – remains to be seen.”
👷[Paper -Responses to US power in a fracturing world]
“it explores how rising or middle powers, from Brazil to Saudi Arabia to India, are pursuing visions of international order that include elements of non-alignment, strategic autonomy, and selective or transactional cooperation with the current order.”
🇮🇩🧱[Opinion – Indonesia joined BRICS. Will Trump’s policies push Turkey & Saudi Arabia in?]
“Indonesia’s BRICS accession enhances the bloc’s legitimacy, reinforcing the idea that membership can be valuable even for countries that do not support overtly anti-Western narratives. Indonesia’s presence is likely to strengthen Brazil and India’s nonaligned wing of BRICS, while another recent entrant, Iran, boosts Russia and China’s anti-Western stance.”
“If Turkey and Saudi Arabia eventually follow Indonesia’s path and join BRICS, it would lend the group more geopolitical heft. Ankara’s and Riyadh’s accession could also signal a growing perception among U.S. allies that strategic diversification is necessary to respond to Trump’s unpredictable foreign policy. Both countries have historically balanced their relationships between Washington and other global powers; a move toward BRICS would suggest that Trump’s transactionalism is pushing key partners away.”
-> Open version: https://dnyuz.com/2025/03/24/will-trumps-unpredictable-foreign-policy-boost-brics/
A perspective from the Carnegie Endowment: https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2025/03/brics-expansion-and-the-future-of-world-order-perspectives-from-member-states-partners-and-aspirants?lang=en
📣[ANNOUNCEMENTS]
📚Reading group: Guilherme Cavalcante Silva and Juan Ortiz Freuler are setting up a very informal reading group to understand the value of dependency theory for analyzing north-south tech dynamics. If you’re interested, send an email to juanof@protonmail.com , gcsilva@yorku.ca . The idea is to meet virtually every 3 weeks.
Send your announcements to juanof @ protonmail.com
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