February 16, 2025
🇨🇳 [News: China’s Trump strategy]
“making the domestic economy more resilient, reconciling with key neighbors, and deepening relationships in the global South.”
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/chinas-trump-strategy
🇺🇸📣[NEWS – US Worldview shift?]
Sec. of State Marco Rubio acknowledging or decreeing the end of the unipolar world:
‘It’s not normal for the world to simply have a unipolar power, that was an anomaly, that was a product of the end of the Cold War. But eventually you’re going to return back to having a multipolar world…’ https://www.state.gov/secretary-marco-rubio-with-megyn-kelly-of-the-megyn-kelly-show/
🇮🇩🧱[NEWS – Indonesia joins BRICS]
Indonesia’s BRICS Membership: A Major Step for the Global South: …”Indonesia’s historical commitment to non-alignment, tracing its leadership back to the 1955 Bandung Conference, which laid the foundation for the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). Today, with rising geopolitical tensions, Indonesia has emerged as a leading voice for the Global South, advocating for sovereignty, economic equity, and a multipolar world order.”
🇺🇸📣[NEWS – US -TikTok shadowbanning #FreePalestine?]
“On Monday, a day after TikTok came back online for the U.S., people started noticing that the app would not let them comment “free palestine.””“
“Some claimed TikTok was striking comments that used phrases like “Free Palestine” and “Free Luigi,” a reference to Luigi Mangione, who is accused of killing a UnitedHealth executive, which had been previously allowed.
TikTok said it does not allow content that promotes violent or hateful individuals on the platform.” https://www.reuters.com/technology/am-i-being-censored-some-us-tiktok-users-say-app-feels-different-after-ban-2025-01-25/
🇺🇸📣[NEWS -USAID gutted?]
[EXPLAINER] “What is USAID, and how central is it to US foreign policy?”
[PODCAST] What does this mean for healthcare systems structurally dependent on aid + for US-Africa & Africa-China relations? https://chinaglobalsouth.com/podcasts/u-s-aid-freeze-creates-new-opening-for-china-in-africa/
[Paper] Carver, J. (2024). Developing digital “peripheries” for strategic advantage: Capacity building assistance and strategic competition in Africa. Contemporary Security Policy, 1–42. https://doi.org/10.1080/13523260.2024.2430021
🇺🇸🧱[NEWS – US – Undersea Cable]
Meta announced Project Waterworth: A cable connecting the US to 3 BRICS countries “Once complete, the project will reach five major continents and span over 50,000 km (longer than the Earth’s circumference), making it the world’s longest subsea cable project…” https://engineering.fb.com/2025/02/14/connectivity/project-waterworth-ai-subsea-infrastructure/
🇺🇸🌎[NEWS – US – MAPS AS GEOPOLITICAL POWER?]
Apple, Microsoft, and Google introduced changes to their maps, which now refer to the Gulf of Mexico as Gulf of America. Changes visible in the US and some other countries. Who sees what where?
“People using Maps in the US will see Gulf of America, and people in Mexico will see Gulf of Mexico. Everyone else will see both names,” Google wrote. https://www.rfi.fr/en/science-and-technology/20250215-google-maps-20-years-of-plotting-a-course-through-geopolitics
📖Digging deeper:
McQuire, S. (2019). One map to rule them all? Google Maps as digital technical object. Communication and the Public, 4(2), 150-165. https://doi.org/10.1177/2057047319850192
Ochigame, R., & Ye, K. (2021, June). Search atlas: Visualizing divergent search results across geopolitical borders. In Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference (pp. 1970-1983). https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3461778.3462032
OPINION & ANALYSIS
🗺️[Opinion – NAM in the 21st Century]
“In most states of today’s so-called “Global South”, there are deep political divisions, diverging interests and asymmetries in economic development, and technological and military dependence, which means that they lack the strength to stand on the international stage independently and autonomously. When they do so -except in exceptional situations- they are ignored or may be punished when it comes to credits or cooperation. This is the harsh reality that cannot be hidden with academic exercises, since countries continue to revolve around power, which is legitimized mainly by military and economic force. It is no coincidence that the greatest power on the planet, the United States, maintains more than 600 military bases around the world and concentrates the largest arms industry and arms sales with figures that surpass imagination.”https://www.meer.com/en/87472-the-non-aligned-movement-and-the-21st-century
🗺️[Opinion – Global South as non-west, not anti-west]
“The Global South has contributed up to 80 percent of world economic growth over the past 20 years and its share of global GDP has increased from 24 percent to over 40 percent in the past four decades. Despite this significant progress, the Global South is still a minor player on the international stage with institutional rights that are incommensurate with its contribution. Such inequality is the leading cause of many intractable global issues, in such areas as development and security…The Global South no longer wants to be the “silent majority”..While the West is obsessed with major country rivalry and geopolitical competition, the Global South focuses on addressing severe and complex global challenges, including climate, energy, food, and debt crises.” https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202502/10/WS67a9627aa310a2ab06eab2bf.html
🇨🇳🇮🇳[Opinion – Sino-Indian war of 1962 that brought US-India closer]
“While JFK’s Forgotten Crisis critiques Nehru’s missteps, it also acknowledges his role in steering India through the aftermath of the war. The defeat catalysed major reforms in India’s defence policy, including a significant military build-up and a strategic reassessment of foreign relations.” https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/modi-nehru-jfk-forgotten-crisis-bruce-riedel/articleshow/117919051.cms
🇧🇷🇮🇳🇰🇪[Opinion – Non-Aligned AI?]
“The rise of regional tech hubs in places like India, Kenya, and Brazil suggests that a new “Non-Aligned Movement” in AI development is possible. These countries are increasingly able to develop their own AI applications and platforms, adapted to local needs and values, while selectively engaging with both US and PRC technologies…the Cold War framing doesn’t trap us in binary choices but rather illuminates the path toward greater technological autonomy for developing nations”
https://www.ictworks.org/artificial-intelligence-cold-war
🪐[Opinion – Post Silicon Valley World]
“The power of the Valley was rooted in its capacity for transcending American nationalism. Now that it has full White House backing, the Valley is losing that capacity…The US has inadvertently become a driver of digital non-alignment”
https://www.sigintelligence.com/sig-blog/2025/2/5/the-america-stack
LONG READS:
🇪🇺 [Sovereignty – A EU Stack? ]
A report by Francesca Bria was launched calling for aEurostack https://www.euro-stackreport.info/#credits
[Announcements]
PhD Positions at The Department of Communication of Arts, Roskilde University in Denmark open until March 28 – https://candidate.hr-manager.net/ApplicationInit.aspx/?cid=1310&departmentId=18969&ProjectId=147569&MediaId=5&SkipAdvertisement=false&utm_source=jobagent
Event: “Debating the Green-digital Transition and Reclaiming Digital Sovereignty” via Zoom on Feb 26, 16:00 – 17:30 (Eastern European Time)/ 14:00 – 15:30 (UTC). To register: https://elomake.helsinki.fi/lomakkeet/133472/lomake.html
curated by Juan Ortiz Freuler – input welcome [juanof @ protonmail.com] – SIGN UP