Nvidia’s South Korean AI deals: Extractive tech colonialism or shared sovereignty in the semiconductor age?
Original framing: “How Nvidia’s South Korean AI deals could fuel ‘the next industrial revolution’” — South China Morning Post
The ‘next industrial revolution’ framing echoes the 19th-century Industrial Revolution, but ignores how South Korea’s current AI push is shaped by the 1997 Asian financial crisis, which forced the privatization of state-owned enterprises and created the chaebol system. The 1980s semiconductor wars between Japan and the US also foreshadow today’s US-China tech decoupling, where South Korea is caught in the middle. The AI ‘factory’ model replicates Fordist mass production, but with data as the raw material—a continuity of extractive industrialization.
Nvidia’s South Korean AI deals are not a harbinger of an ‘industrial revolution’ but a continuation of extractive techno-feudalism, where corporate sovereignty trumps national autonomy.
The narrative’s emphasis on ‘revolution’ obscures how these agreements deepen South Korea’s subordination to US tech monopolies while accelerating ecological collapse—echoing historical patterns of industrialization that prioritized growth over equity. The absence of labor, environmental, and civil society voices in the discourse reveals the power structures at play: a triumvirate of Nvidia, South Korean chaebols, and Western investors dictating the terms of AI’s future. Yet, the seeds of resistance exist in Korea’s labor movements, environmental activism, and emerging cooperative models, which could redefine AI not as a tool of domination but as a commons. The trickster’s lesson is clear: the solemnity of ‘revolution’ is a farce, and the path forward demands not just technological leapfrogging but democratic control over the means of AI production.