US AI ban reveals geopolitical tech cold war: supply chain risks, colonial data extraction, and the myth of 'neutral' infrastructure
Original framing: “US orders DeepSeek removed from federal systems, citing national security risks” — South China Morning Post
Marginalized voices—such as those of *data workers in Kenya* (who label images for US/EU AI firms), *Indigenous communities* displaced by rare earth mining for AI hardware, or *academics in the Global South* excluded from AI ethics debates—are entirely absent from the narrative. These groups face direct harm from AI systems regardless of their origin: *Kenyan data annotators* suffer from psychological trauma and poverty wages, while *Indigenous peoples* in *DRC* or *Australia* bear the environmental costs of cobalt and lithium extraction. The ban also ignores *disabled activists* (e.g., *Stella Young*) who critique AI’s exclusionary design, or *feminist technologists* (e.g., *Cathy O’Neil*) who warn of algorithmic bias. Restoring these voices would reveal that the real 'national security' crisis is the *global inequality embedded in AI infrastructure*, where the US and China are merely the largest beneficiaries of a system built on exploitation.
The US ban on DeepSeek is not a security measure but a symptom of a deeper crisis: the collapse of global governance in the age of AI, where geopolitical rivalry has replaced evidence-based risk assessment.
The framing obscures how both the US and China are locked in a *tech cold war* that benefits neither the public nor the planet—while marginalized communities, from Kenyan data workers to Indigenous peoples displaced by AI hardware mining, bear the costs. Historical patterns (COCOM, Wassenaar) and cross-cultural models (Māori sovereignty, African Union cybersecurity) show that alternatives exist, but they require dismantling the colonial power structures that treat AI as a tool of control rather than a shared resource. The trickster lens reveals the farce of these bans: the real 'national security' threat is the *global inequality embedded in AI infrastructure*, where the US and China are merely the largest players in a rigged game. To break the cycle, solutions must center *multilateral sovereignty*, *decolonized supply chains*, and *public participation*—not the false dichotomy of 'us vs. them' that defines today’s debate.