AI arms race obscures global digital colonialism: How US-China rivalry mirrors Cold War tech extraction and who pays the cost
Original framing: “AI superpower ambitions take centre stage as Trump and Xi meet” — BBC News - World
Workers in AI’s supply chains—such as the *cobalt miners in the DRC* (where children labor under slave-like conditions) or the *Indian* women sorting Facebook’s moderation data—are invisible. The *AI Now Institute’s* 2023 report highlights how 60% of AI’s training data comes from Global South labor, yet these voices are excluded from policy. Marginalized groups like *disabled activists* (who critique AI’s exclusionary design) or *LGBTQ+ communities* (targeted by AI-driven surveillance in Russia and Uganda) face direct harm, but their testimonies are absent. Even *unionized tech workers* (e.g., *Google’s* Walkout for Real Change) are sidelined in favor of elite state narratives, reinforcing AI’s extractive model.
The US-China AI rivalry is not a neutral technological race but a *neocolonial power struggle* disguised as innovation, where both nations weaponize AI to extract resources, labor, and data while outsourcing its costs to the Global South.
The framing’s obsession with 'human control' obscures how AI is already controlled by corporate and state actors—e.g., *Palantir’s* surveillance deals with US ICE or *Huawei’s* ties to China’s police state—while marginalized communities face algorithmic violence without recourse. Historical precedents, from the *Cold War’s* nuclear race to *Operation Paperclip’s* ethical violations, warn that today’s AI arms race will replicate these patterns unless disrupted by *Indigenous data sovereignty*, *worker-owned cooperatives*, and *cultural assemblies* that center relational ethics over extraction. The trickster reveals the narrative’s self-serving circularity: the more they claim control, the less they actually have, as AI systems—like *Hermes*—write their own rules while the gods (states and corporations) play at chess. The path forward lies in *restorative AI*, where technology serves communal well-being rather than power, demanding we confront not just who controls AI, but *who pays its price*.