Curated by Juan Ortiz Freuler – Sign up to receive as email
🇺🇿[NEWS – UZBEKISTAN TO CHAIR NAM 2027-2029]
“Uzbekistan will assume the chairmanship of the Non-Aligned Movement for the 2027–2029 period. The announcement was made on January 15 during a video conference meeting chaired by President Shavkat Mirziyoyev on the activities of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Uzbekistan’s diplomatic missions abroad.”
🇺🇸 [NEWS – US LEAVES AND DEFUNDS 66 INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS]
“This week, in accordance with the findings of Executive Order 14199, President Trump announced our withdrawal from 66 international organizations identified as part of the Trump Administration’s ongoing review of wasteful, ineffective, and harmful international organizations. The Presidential Memorandum targets institutions that are redundant in their scope, mismanaged, unnecessary, wasteful, poorly run, captured by the interests of actors advancing their own agendas contrary to our own, or a threat to our nation’s sovereignty, freedoms, and general prosperity.”
https://statedept.substack.com/p/ending-the-charade-of-wasteful-international?r=50rdvi
- See also: Section 1 of Brief on Trump Effects on Digital Resilience (2025)
🇺🇸🇻🇪[OPINION-DID THE US CYBERATTACKS TAKE DOWN VENEZUELA ENERGY GRID DURING MADURO ABDUCTION?]
We might never know: “Operation Absolute Resolve offers a deceptively clear case study of overwhelming force, precise intelligence, multi-domain coordination and a degraded target that could not effectively resist. Yet the role that cyber capabilities might have played in this success remains opaque by design. The deeper lesson here is not about cyber capabilities themselves, but about how they function within specific contexts. Venezuela’s precarious grid made any disruption strategically consequential. Its degraded air defences meant that cyber support to electronic warfare became difficult to distinguish from electronic warfare alone.”
🇻🇪[OPINION: “After Venezuela, strategic autonomy can’t be just words”]
“The choice before humanity is stark. Either the world reclaims the principles of sovereignty, self-determination, and collective security, or it submits to a lawless order where power and might decide what is right and wrong. For nations that once led the struggle against colonialism, breaking that silence is not optional — it is a moral responsibility.” – The writer is General Secretary, Communist Party of India
🇺🇸🇮🇷🇷🇺[NEWS – Iran jammed Starlink?]
“Iran’s digital blackout has now deployed military jammers, reportedly supplied by Russia, to shut down access to Starlink Internet. This is a game-changer for the Plan-B connectivity frequently used by protesters and anti-regime activists when ordinary access to the internet is stopped..“Despite reports that tens of thousands of Starlink units are operating inside Iran,” says Iran Wire, “the blackout has also reached satellite connections.” It is reported that about 30 per cent of Starlink’s uplink and downlink traffic was (initially) disrupted,” quickly rising “to more than 80 per cent” within hours”
🇨🇳📡[NEWS – China files ITU paperwork for megaconstellations totaling nearly 200,000 satellites]
“The filings have not yet been examined and currently have no regulatory standing, but signal China’s intent to secure the priority for spectrum and orbits for two constellations up to the scale of 96,714 satellites, subject to milestones and national authorization. What will follow is technical examination by the ITU Radiocommunication Bureau and potential objections or coordination requests from other administrations.
SpaceX initially filed paperwork for Starlink to comprise up to around 12,000 satellites, before expanding this to up to roughly 42,000 in later filings.
China last year launched a national record 92 times, with some of the growth led by launches for Guowang and Qianfan. The country is supporting the development of state-owned and commercially-developed reusable launch vehicles as well as expanding its spaceports to support more launch activity.”
🇨🇦🇺🇸🇨🇳[NEWS- Canadian PM traveled to China, signed trade deals on EVs and talked of New World Order]
“On the eve of the trip, Carney said that Canada was “forging new partnerships around the world to transform our economy from one that has been reliant on a single trade partner to one that is stronger and more resilient to global shocks”. Zhao Minghao, professor at the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai, said: “Most US allies are doing some de-risking from the US, so this is a very important opportunity for China to warm up its ties with Canada.”
https://www.ft.com/content/9eeff245-2081-4f97-bc8e-6bbdaf59074e
Canadian PM Carney stated:
“I believe the progress that we have made and the partnership [with China] sets us up well for the New… World… Order.””
He later explained how he sees a new world order emerging: https://x.com/Osint613/status/2012120611896820162?s=20
🇺🇸🇪🇺🧟[NEWS – US Big Tech alliance with EU Far Right?]
“Big Tech companies such as Google, Microsoft and Meta increased their meetings with far-right groups in the European Parliament ahead of the Commission’s push last year, revealed a new analysis by non-profit organisations Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) and LobbyControl. // “This is largely because the far-right has expressed support for the Commission’s deregulation plans,” Bram Vranken, CEO’s researcher and campaigner, told The Brussels Times.“
🇺🇸👎[NEWS – NEW SURVEY ON PERCEPTIONS OF US SHOW DECLINE IN TRUST]
“Europeans are the world’s chief pessimists. They lack faith in the EU’s ability to deal on equal terms with the US or China and worry about Russian aggression and nuclear weapons.“
https://ecfr.eu/publication/how-trump-is-making-china-great-again-and-what-it-means-for-europe
🇪🇺[OPINION – EU MOVING MORE RAPIDLY TOWARDS EUROSTACK?]
🌡️THE SCALE OF DEPENDENCE
“The scale of Europe’s technological deficit makes migrations like Austria’s daunting for most organisations. A recent analysis by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute found that of 64 crucial technologies, China leads in 57 and the United States in the remaining seven. Europe leads in none.
The Draghi report on European competitiveness, published in September 2024, similarly warned of Europe’s growing dependence on foreign technology providers.”
https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/22/europe_gets_serious_about_cutting
🚧THE MIRAGE OF SOVEREIGNTY AS A SUBSCRIPTION SERVICE
“sovereignty will have to be stipulated in procurement contracts as well as through the location and design of products and services. The upcoming EU Cloud and AI Development Act seeks to set standards to clarify which providers truly answer to European law and European democratic institutions. So far, the main benefactors of this shift have been the “sovereign” sellers. But true sovereignty cannot be purchased…”
https://www.ft.com/content/8fc2932e-c8d0-4735-99f0-bbdede45c875
See also: Journal article: “Sovereignty as a service” https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/01634437251395003
🇧🇪[NEWS – BELGIUM TO MOVE .be AWAY FROM AMAZON]
“DNS Belgium wants to eventually remove its infrastructure from AWS and migrate to a European cloud provider. The administrator of the .be, .vlaanderen and .brussels internet extensions wants to further optimise its services in this way. At the same time, the organisation wants to set an example for others to no longer be dependent on non-European service providers in geopolitically turbulent times.”
https://www.dnsbelgium.be/en/news/dns-belgium-leaves-aws
🪠[A PATH? OWNERSHIP vs INTEROPERABILITY?]
“The question isn’t “Can we own our stack?” but “Can we move our workloads?” If there was a large and liquid market of cloud provision, the conversation about sovereignty would look very different. Sovereignty through ownership risks being a fantasy for all but the wealthiest. Sovereignty through interoperability may be achievable for nearly everyone.’
https://www.techpolicy.press/the-path-to-a-sovereign-tech-stack-is-via-a-commodified-tech-stack
🇩🇰[OPINION: DENMARK AND MEDIA COLLECTIVES]
“Denmark is tackling it, with 99 per cent of its media organisations banding together in an innovative media collective.And with Denmark currently chairing the EU, it’s being watched closely by Europe’s 27 nation states as a potential model for them too. Something we don’t talk about enough is that most of Big Tech earns more money outside America…”
https://rickysutton.substack.com/p/inside-denmarks-strategy-to-front
🇬🇱[MAP: GREENLAND AT A FAULT LINE]
🌎🌍[ANALYSIS – EU-Mercosur DEAL]
Deepdive geopolitical analysis: “Beyond the noise, Mercosur countries attempt to maximise autonomy in all their partnerships, including this with the EU. Henceforth, the EU could find in Mercosur a partner if it were to pursue a version of hedging or non-alignment”
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/thinktank/en/document/EXPO_STU(2025)754478
🇨🇳💰🇺🇸[NEWS-PROMISING CHINESE AI-AGENT STARTUP MOVES OUT OF CHINA AND GETS ACQUIRED BY META]
“Third, the deal laid bare the global fate of Chinese entrepreneurial talent. Within China, reactions ranged from bewilderment to anger. Some media outlets labeled the acquisition a “defection,” arguing that China was losing one of its most promising AI teams to an American tech giant. According to reports, Chinese authorities are now reviewing the deal over potential technology export control violations.”
⚡🇺🇸[NEWS- POWER MOVING DOWN THE STACK – GOOGLE DEAL FOR ENERGY]
“Google parent Alphabet has agreed to buy Intersect Power, a data center and clean energy developer, for $4.75 billion in cash, plus the assumption of the company’s debt. The acquisition, which was announced Monday, will help Alphabet expand its power-generation capacity alongside new data centers without having to rely on local utilities that are struggling to keep up with the demand of AI companies.”
🔋[NEWS-VISUALIZATION: AFRICA’S GROWING POWER GRID]
If power is moving down the stack and towards energy rich areas, companies and producers. How will this affect the African tech scene and regional geopolitics?
[NEWS FROM WITHIN OUR NETWORK]
[ON OUR DEPENDENCY THEORY READING GROUP]
A reflection from Luciana Musello regarding a reading group on Dependency Theory we are hosting at the Non-Aligned Tech Movement!
“Popularized in the 1960s and marginalized after the late 1970s, dependency theory argues that the economies of certain countries are conditioned by the growth and expansion of another economy to which they are subordinate. This is the definition given by Brazilian economist Theotonio Dos Santos in Imperialismo y Dependencia (Imperialism and Dependency) (1978), a massive work of almost 600 pages that we reviewed in one session. Organized in a center-periphery scheme, the countries at the center define the conditions for growth, while the countries on the periphery grow only “as a reflection” of that expansion. The result for the latter is underdevelopment. Therefore, development and underdevelopment are two sides of the same coin. “
https://4sonline.org/news_manager.php?page=42863
[Handmade collage designed by Luciana Musello]
Next meeting: January 28. Reach out to Guilherme Cavalcante Silva,Luciana Musello, orJuan Ortiz Freuler for more information (lmusello@usfq.edu.ec, juanof@protonmail.com, gcsilva@yorku.ca )
🤔[PONDERING]
- Considering a website overhaul so we can more prominently feature members and their work.
- Considering proposing a panel for AoiR on NATM.
Thoughts welcome!
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