Hu Ying: A Critique of U.S. Digital Hegemony from the Perspective of Digital Imperialism
In the era of the digital economy, the physical world is continuously digitized and simulated within digital space. Presented with data as its fundamental element, the digital world serves both as a mirror and an extension of the real world. As data becomes a form of power, imperialism has likewise permeated from physical space into digital space. Digital imperialism has emerged as the latest manifestation of imperialism, with US digital hegemony serving as its primary expression. Hegemony within the state system refers to the capacity of a major power to impose its economic, political, cultural, military, and diplomatic principles and will upon that system to a significant extent. Immanuel Wallerstein argued that since the emergence of the capitalist world-system, the state system has undergone three major hegemonic cycles, producing three hegemonic powers: the Netherlands in the mid-17th century, Great Britain in the mid-19th century, and the United States in the mid-20th century. During its period of dominance, each hegemonic power opposed trade restrictions and pursued global liberalism to facilitate the smooth operation of unequal exchange. The productive forces brought about by digital technology widen the chasm between affluent nations and those lacking digital technology, digital resources, and investment in digital infrastructure. Developed countries and high-income nations account for over 70% of the total global digital economy. The scale of the US digital economy remains firmly ranked first in the world, reaching $15.3 trillion in 2021, and it leads by a wide margin in terms of the global competitiveness of digital enterprises and R&D strength in digital technology. On a global scale, US digital hegemony has caused the North-South digital divide to widen, signifying an intensification of inequality in global development.
I. The Foundational Basis of US Digital Hegemony: Digital Capital and Digital Oligarchs
Basic scientific research and development in the United States are primarily funded by government and non-profit sectors; basic knowledge and technology in the digital world have been largely driven by state-led R&D. The US was the earliest country in the world to plan for digital transformation. As early as 1998, the US Department of Commerce released a special report on the digital economy, noting that the development of information technology, the Internet, and e-commerce would produce new forms of digital economy. US digital monopoly capital constitutes the foundation of US digital hegemony, and the "digital enclosure movement" [1] carried out by US digital oligarchs represents a new mode of capital accumulation under the conditions of digital imperialism.
1. The dual characteristics of digital capital: Tendency toward concentration and outward expansion
In a narrow sense, digital capital refers to capital invested by companies researching and developing digital technologies—a form of capital aimed at profiting through the provision of digital products. The monopolistic nature of digital capital stems primarily from two aspects: first, the data-driven mechanisms in the operation of digital capital; and second, the network effects brought about by these data-driven mechanisms. Regarding data-driven mechanisms, data is the core of digital technology systems. Digital technology enables the large-scale, real-time collection and analysis of user data, which is used to improve product quality and refine personalized customization. This, in turn, further enhances the digital system's capacity to collect and analyze data, forming a virtuous cycle in data collection and utilization that acts as a driving force strengthening the "winner-takes-all" effect of digital capital. Due to their digital nature, platforms can connect various platform ends through digital interfaces, thereby utilizing more data and external resources at low or even no cost to develop related data-driven products and further improve their own offerings. Regarding network effects, digital technology facilitates matching between different users, easing transactions and thereby creating value. By reducing various costs associated with matching, transactions, and innovation, platforms achieve rapid expansion. Strengthening data integration across industries can enhance the network effects of data, thereby creating more value. The network effect is a major impetus for accelerating the expansion of digital platforms. Robert Metcalfe, the designer of the Ethernet protocol and a pioneer of computer networking, proposed that the value of a network is roughly proportional to the square of the number of users; the more users, the greater the value—this is known as "Metcalfe's Law." The more people use a specific software, network, standard, or game, the higher its value becomes, and the more users it can attract. Consequently, platform developers can use low prices or even free services to attract users. Once the number of users reaches a critical mass and the network effect grows geometrically, the developer can raise fees for users. This is the opposite of the law of diminishing returns in traditional economics. Digital products are non-rivalrous, and their unit costs are inversely proportional to the scale of production; the marginal cost of replicating a digital product is nearly zero. Digital products are "experience goods," where mastering an unfamiliar new system or software increases the switching costs for users moving to other digital products. Furthermore, there are issues of incompatibility between the product ecosystems of different companies; for example, some Apple products can only be used on iOS and not on the Android system. The network effects of digital platforms increase their brand value and enhance user loyalty.
These characteristics of digital capital endow it with a natural tendency toward both concentration and outward expansion, driving the globalization of the digital economy—particularly the platform economy—and the international monopoly of US digital capital. From 2006 to 2020, digital attributes, data assets, and platform business models allowed large US digital technology companies such as Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook to see their market capitalization grow rapidly, becoming the largest and most influential companies globally. Given factors such as data collection and analysis capabilities, economies of scale, network effects, and user switching costs, once a digital technology company occupies a dominant market position, it is very difficult to displace. By the end of 2021, the top five digital platform enterprises in the world were all US companies, accounting for approximately 70% of total global market value. They possessed 31 data platforms valued at over $10 billion each, with a total value scale of $11.4 trillion. The asymmetric landscape of "polarization" in global digital platforms is still intensifying.
Most of these digital technology companies started from a single intermediary business; for instance, Google began as merely a search engine company. As they scaled up, these companies moved into related or adjacent business sectors (e.g., Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram) or even industries that seemed entirely unrelated at first glance (e.g., Google’s acquisition of Waymo), beginning to construct complete platform ecosystems. Digital technology incorporates direct local commercial activities into the global economic system, thereby accelerating the pace of economic globalization. In the early stages of digitization, large US digital capital groups leveraged their substantial capital strength to pursue global expansion strategies. Taking the Amazon e-commerce platform as an example, its initial business scope was relatively concentrated, focusing on online book sales. However, once it realized expansion across the global book market, empowered by digital technology, Amazon gained the capacity to expand into other business sectors and began continuously broadening its product coverage to secure more profit points. In addition to horizontal business expansion, mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are a means for large digital capital groups to maintain market dominance. In the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI), for instance, there were 308 M&A transactions worth $28.4 billion between January 1, 2016, and January 22, 2021. Ranked by the number of acquisitions, the top five globally are all large US tech companies: Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon. The emergence of digital technology has also ensured that the scale of commodity markets is no longer limited by geographic location, thereby achieving infinite spatial expansion. Survey data from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) shows that in 2019, Amazon held a roughly 40% share of global retail activity, Facebook occupied two-thirds of the global social media market, and Google possessed approximately 90% of the internet search market worldwide.
2. Digital ecosystems and the formation of digital oligarchs
Under the global expansion of digital capital, a new mode of capital accumulation has emerged: the "digital enclosure movement" carried out by digital oligarchs under digital technological conditions. A small number of tech giants and monopoly capital interests, possessing advanced digital technologies, compete to build digital economic ecosystems and strive to expand their data territories to achieve the dispossessive appropriation of data resources. According to World Bank statistics, six US companies (Google, Netflix, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon) account for about 43% of global internet data traffic. The "digital enclosure movement" unfolds by constructing digital ecosystems mainly composed of three pillars: software, hardware, and network connectivity. Taking the development of operating system software as an example, the operating system is essentially the allocator of hardware and software resources and the core component connecting the levels above and below it. The task of the operating system is to orderly control the allocation of processors, memory, and other I/O interface devices among competing programs. As the "soul" of the computer system, the operating system is the core of the industrial ecosystem and the cornerstone of security in the information age. Having the operating system ecosystem controlled by others is not just an information security issue, but more importantly, an issue of the "right to development" [2] for the information industry. Looking at the history of operating systems, although many excellent systems have emerged, Windows and Mac OS have nearly split the entire market share for desktop operating systems to this day. In 2020, Microsoft, Apple, and Google together held 98.8% of the global operating system market share, with the Windows system covering 80.5%.
The "Wintel" alliance (referring to the Windows-Intel architecture) is a commercial alliance between Microsoft and Intel, denoting personal computers composed of the Microsoft Windows operating system and Intel CPUs. This alliance successfully displaced IBM's dominance in the PC market. In terms of hardware, the "Wintel" alliance firmly grasped control over downstream manufacturers through bundled sales; meanwhile, Intel, as a chip Integrated Device Manufacturer (IDM), gained market discourse power. Furthermore, as many as 360 supercomputers on the global Top500 list use Intel CPUs, accounting for 72%. In software, Microsoft launched different levels of products in professional-grade application software and games to compete with companies such as Adobe, SAP, Oracle, and SAS—products such as Dynamics, SQL Server, and Skype. In terms of the developer ecosystem, because the Windows platform has a high penetration rate, it has coalesced a large number of developers. Thus, Microsoft formed an absolute advantage over application software developers in the software market, while Intel became the enterprise with the strongest technical strength in the entire semiconductor industry. The "Wintel" alliance deeply bound Microsoft's Windows system to Intel's CPUs, constructing technical barriers of hardware-software compatibility upon this foundation. This forced other manufacturers to become dependent on it; those attempting to start anew faced the risk of being marginalized or becoming non-mainstream products. Leveraging their dominant positions in the digital ecosystem, these digital oligarchs have accumulated massive profits. These technologies enable them to control the flow of information and the social activities of people worldwide, while also exercising numerous other political, economic, cultural, social, and military functions influenced by their digital technology.
II. The Central Manifestation of US Digital Hegemony: Control over Other Countries' Data and Digital Space
As a result of the "digital enclosure movement," the United States has begun to exert control over the data and digital spaces of other nations. In the earlier era of imperialism, Great Britain controlled the seas for the sake of its interests. In the digital age, data is a form of power. Just as Britain previously controlled the oceans, if a nation controls data, data—as a means of controlling the international environment—will be selectively blocked or disseminated. How, then, do US digital oligarchs exercise control over the data and digital spaces of other countries?
1. The digitization of unequal exchange
The first method by which the US controls the data and digital spaces of other countries is through software that is authorized for use in translating raw data into useful forms. In classical imperialist theory, the core countries obtain cheap raw materials and market access from the periphery and then sell processed finished goods back to the periphery at high prices. In the digital age, this unequal exchange unfolds in a new form. The US utilizes digital network systems to collect various data and information from peripheral countries, سپس processes this collected raw data, and resells it to the peripheral countries at much higher prices.
Microsoft and other American software firms, alongside consulting agencies, are frequently permitted to collect data concerning the commercial and even military operations of other nations in this manner. After "processing" this data and information, they sell it back to these countries in the form of "recommendations." Such U.S.-led consulting firms are ubiquitous across the globe, with their primary business being the provision of advisory services to enterprises in various industries within their host countries. These firms have progressively incorporated fields related to national security—such as policy research, the defense industry, and energy resources—into the scope of "consulting." Operating under the guise of "consulting," these firms are in fact intelligence agencies of certain Western powers or their proxies. By conducting "consultations" with experts in various fields within the host country via telephone or video, they are actually scouting and stealing relevant data and information. This data and information may involve a nation's political, economic, diplomatic, and military affairs, some of which are even classified as top secret, highly confidential, or secret national secrets and intelligence. Microsoft, by allowing its software to integrate raw data into a usable format, then resells this processed information to other individuals and units at a much higher price. Although the products resold to peripheral countries appear in the form of intangible products such as "recommendations" or software rather than material goods, this essentially remains a form of unequal exchange. Within the world market, a vast digital divide exists between developed and underdeveloped countries. Among the top ten countries in terms of digital service export volume, six Euro-American countries (the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, France, and the Netherlands) together account for 48.9% of the global digital service export share. Countries that hold dominance over digital trade also command the power to set the rules for digital economic and trade governance. By the end of 2020, the top ten countries in digital service trade had signed approximately 70% of digital economic and trade agreements, leading to the gradual formation of digital trade rule barriers. Leveraging its leading level of digital economy and trade, the United States formulates and promotes digital trade rules conducive to its own unequal exchange, further consolidating its hegemonic status.
For example, ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software is an indispensable core system for corporate management and operations, managing and running a company's core data. Before deploying ERP, an enterprise needs to invite ERP vendors to consult on management processes and carry out transformations according to ERP standard procedures. ERP vendors take this opportunity to acquire large amounts of the enterprise's raw data. By analyzing this data, they continuously optimize their ERP products, relying on massive amounts of corporate data to create more mature, high-performance products to resell to the enterprise. In China's high-end ERP market, the products of European and American companies SAP and Oracle hold market shares of 33% and 20% respectively, ranking first and second in the industry. They have thus gained control over the data of a large number of Chinese enterprises, particularly large and medium-sized ones. Another example is Palantir Technologies, founded in 2003 with the support of In-Q-Tel, the venture capital arm of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). It is the preferred company for intelligence and law enforcement applications to mine massive datasets. With its sleek software interfaces and programmers stationed at client headquarters to customize procedures, it can turn a chaotic swamp of information into intuitive maps, histograms, and link graphs. Its "Forward Deployment Engineers" spend days crawling, tagging, and integrating every fragment of client data to elucidate disparate issues such as terrorism, disaster response, and human trafficking. Palantir Technologies mainly consists of four platforms—Gotham, Foundry, Apollo, and AIP—and has become an indispensable big data analysis company for the U.S. government. Palantir’s 2021 annual report shows that average annual revenue per government customer grew from $6.8 million in 2020 to $10.0 million in 2021. Against a backdrop of growing geopolitical threats, Gotham, Foundry, and Apollo will work together to provide AI-driven command decision-making across all domains of warfare, including logistics, readiness, operations, planning, and intelligence. In 2021, its commercial revenue in the U.S. exceeded $200 million, and its non-U.S. commercial revenue grew by 16%. Palantir has completed numerous deals in Europe, including a partnership with Merck KGaA; established a partnership in South Korea with Hyundai Heavy Industries, the world's largest shipbuilder; and achieved cooperation with Komatsu and Fujitsu in Japan. The capitalist world-economic system is an unequal system built on the basis of unequal exchange. The core region possesses a powerful state apparatus, and this state power leads to unequal exchange—that is, the powerful core states are able to appropriate the surplus of the entire world economy. "The 'world-economy' is a vast, unequal chain of integrated production segmented by various political structures. Its fundamental logic is that accumulated surplus value is unequally distributed to support those who can obtain various temporary monopolies in the market system. This is a 'capitalist' logic." [3]
2. Controlling the Gateways to Digital Space
The second method the United States uses to control the data and digital space of peripheral countries does not require the direct acquisition of data; it only requires controlling the gateways to digital space. The gateways to digital space are analogous to the maritime laws and laws of the sea formulated by Britain during the era of industrial imperialism. In the era of digital imperialism, the U.S. also dominates the formulation of various rules concerning the information superhighway, the Internet, and digital space. This is led by "symbolic analysts" [4] who specialize in using networks to buy and sell ports, information, and advice. American advertisers are providing various online slogans embedded with the "American Dream"; American marketers are using big data to analyze the consumption preferences of global customers; and American engineers are providing advice for global commercial networks. The operating system is a specific component of the gateway to digital space. Microsoft's Windows, Google's Android, and Apple's iOS are all representative operating systems commonly used internationally. Within the global industrial ecosystem, there are "three carriages": Microsoft for desktop operating systems, Google's Android as the giant in mobile terminals, and Red Hat for the server side. When users utilize these operating systems, their data is collected by the companies to which these systems belong. For this reason, the Chinese government requires Apple to store its user data within China. The United States, however, is dissatisfied with the data localization policies of various countries; on the one hand, it advocates for data flow liberalism internationally, vigorously promoting the cross-border flow of personal data, while on the other hand, it strictly restricts the export of certain data through forms such as export controls and foreign investment reviews. Another common gateway to digital space consists of network equipment such as routers, gateways, and switches, which are generally deployed in the machine rooms of operators. Data generated when users go online or communicate must pass through these devices, making it possible for user data to be collected and retained.
For instance, AWS (Amazon Web Services) has become a vital infrastructure element for many industries worldwide, which seemingly sets a precedent for developing industry-specific products and services on that platform. With the expansion of market demand for cloud services in the Asia-Pacific region, cloud service providers such as AWS, Microsoft, and Google currently have more than one-third of their availability zones deployed in the Asia-Pacific. AWS alone has built over 40 availability zones in places like India, Singapore, Australia, Japan, and South Korea. By virtue of its infrastructure technology, AWS has gained digital access to most areas of commercial activity, mastered vast amounts of relevant data, and monitors business activities across various fields. At the same time, AWS cloud services are currently the most common choice for Web3 application deployment. In 2018, Apple provided the "Health Records API" for developers and researchers in the medical data-related app ecosystem. In 2020, Apple and Google jointly developed a COVID-19 tracking technology for their respective mobile operating systems. In this way, relevant medical data for all users of these two mobile operating systems could be captured. Major U.S. technology platform companies, such as GAFAM (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft), also set up digital barriers by constructing digital ecosystems, hindering the competitive compatibility of rival products. For example, Apple uses its technology in platform connectors or infrastructure (especially APIs and SDKs) to develop an ecosystem of applications compatible with its hardware. Relying on its user base of devices and basic platforms (iOS and the App Store), Apple can access huge amounts of data, which become its core assets. Similarly, the free services provided by Google—search engine, Gmail, YouTube, Android, Chrome, Google Maps, etc.—help the company collect massive amounts of user information, which it then uses to target advertisements accurately for its own profit.
3. Implementing Digital Technological Colonialism through "Digital Technological Assistance"
The third method is for the United States to implement digital colonization by providing "digital technological assistance" to peripheral countries. Under traditional colonialism, colonizers established colonies through violence, controlled maritime routes, and built infrastructure like railways to serve military power and economic plunder. They monopolized heavy machinery for economic and military use, extracted materials to transport back to the core country for production, and shipped cheap products back to the peripheral countries to destroy local markets, thereby making the peripheral nations dependent on the core and creating an unequal global division of labor. Andre Gunder Frank argued that during the transition from the industrial capitalist stage to the imperialist stage, the exchange relations and modes of production in the underdeveloped countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America changed. The unequal development of various countries intensified in more covert ways, and the metropole controlled and exploited the satellite states in more hidden manners. [5] Relying on unique technological advantages and abundant capital strength, the metropole initiated external aggression primarily through capital export. Under the banner that "increased contact, strengthened integration, and the diffusion of capital, technology, and institutions would only lead to the development of these regions," they began to carve up the world. This allowed the capitalist mode of production to develop in various places so as to extract value from deep within the colonial dependencies, further turning these nations into their own vassals and greatly altering the economic structures of the dependent countries. Under the conditions of digital colonization, colonization does not necessarily mean the loss of sovereignty or the occupation of territory; rather, it primarily manifests as dependence in terms of technology, economy, politics, and social development. The process of digital colonization can basically be divided into four stages: first, providing data infrastructure services to peripheral countries and their enterprises; second, directly or indirectly (through cooperation with primary service providers) obtaining various types of data from the industrial development of peripheral countries; third, providing data-driven insights; and fourth, the design and transaction of new products and services.
Conducting "digital technical assistance" serves as a means for the United States to compete for the power of discourse [6] over technical rules and standards. By promoting American-standard science and technology and establishing tech alliances, the U.S. can strengthen its dominant position in the formulation of global digital technical rules and standards. A report released by the Atlantic Council in October 2021 stated that the U.S. maintains a dominant position in 39 technical standards organizations and holds more than 50% of the votes in 11 of them. In 2021, the World Bank and the UN Broadband Commission jointly released a report stating that if Africa is to bridge the digital divide, it needs to invest $100 billion by 2030. While the average global internet penetration rate is 51%, it generally does not exceed 30% in West and Central African countries. African countries face multiple difficulties in digital technology development, including low internet penetration, poor network quality, high operating costs, high investment risks, and a lack of competition. If African countries allow the products of large American digital tech enterprises such as Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft to enter their social spheres, the U.S. will acquire immense power within the African economy and create technical dependency, establishing dominance over the exploitation of Africa's data resources. The U.S. is currently implementing this plan; internet access via smartphones across much of the African continent is dominated by Facebook’s "Free Basics" internet service. Through its "Google Station" program, Google has attempted—under a cloak of benevolence—to provide "free" Wi-Fi services in Nigeria, the country with the largest number of internet users in Africa. Its true goal, however, is to acquire the "next billion users" who are not yet connected to the internet.
3. Utilizing Digital Technological Advantages to Consolidate America's Cultural and Political Hegemony
The reason American digital oligarchs control digital technology and intellectual property is that more and more predatory acts are appearing within digital space. The power of digital monopoly capital is continuously expanding globally, manifesting an unprecedented influence on global economic, cultural, and political development. American digital hegemony is a vital supporting force for maintaining its cultural and political hegemony. Digital oligarchs and the U.S. government have formed a community of interests; utilizing digital technology to break through the constraints of time and space, they further export American values and ideology globally to maintain global cultural hegemony. The U.S. uses its advantages in digital technology to intervene selectively in markets through the state apparatus, providing monopoly political conditions for its pursuit of maximum profits in the world market. This constitutes the political function of digital hegemony within the world system.
1. Utilizing Digital Technological Advantages to Consolidate America's Cultural Hegemony
The reason American symbols and analytical insights can expand the world market and increase global demand lies in the massive global development of digital communication and media systems. Digital systems integrate and package information such as news, presenting it in a convenient mode of consumption. It is becoming increasingly easy for people to obtain information, and the volume of information obtained is growing. Digitalization has changed the specific operational modes of mass media, combining the "pulling" of data with the "pushing" of information. Marc Grossman, then U.S. Under Secretary of State, pointed out at the second annual "Information Technology in Africa" conference: "We have had to use these technologies to tell America's story, advance American interests, and thereby promote the concepts of freedom and democracy throughout the world." The U.S. utilizes digital communication and media systems, such as digital platforms and social media software, to instill American ideology and socio-political programs into the cultures of other nation-states, especially those of developing countries. Gramsci once pointed out that cultural hegemony is a mode of rule exercised through mass consent. Cultural hegemony already contains economic elements. Economic dependence will transform into a subordinate position in the fields of communication and dissemination, and further into cultural and ideological dependence. So-called "cyber-imperialism" or "surveillance imperialism" are merely concrete manifestations of digital imperialism; digital imperialism, characterized by digital hegemony, is their root source.
The digital space created by the development of digital technology affects humanity’s own mental space. The "free" use of digital platforms is intended to collect more user data. Digital platforms then push relevant information to users based on this data, thereby controlling users’ thoughts by controlling the information they understand. Users of digital platforms such as search engines, social software, and video websites are both consumers and producers; the process of their consumption and use of digital platforms is also a process of leaving traces and producing data. The process by which these "prosumers" produce data belongs to non-wage labor and is also a form of unpaid labor; this data is usually used without compensation by platform developers to obtain profits. Moreover, the free search engine or email services provided by digital platforms are nothing more than sophisticated surveillance tools. Take, for example, the music software developed by the U.S. streaming music provider Pandora; it can transform user preferences into song-selection algorithms. This software has 200 million users who have pressed "like" and "dislike" buttons 35 billion times; all of this data is used for analysis to sell more products. It not only turns people's desire for music into a desire for more commodities but also analyzes the political beliefs, social issues, and religious faiths reflected by different users' tastes through algorithms. Based on this, it exerts influence on political campaigns through its own political advertisement targeting system. Data is a primary component of "surveillance imperialism." Large American digital technology multinationals extend the tentacles of "surveillance imperialism" into the Global South, realizing the "pulling" of data by deducing the individual and collective characteristics of internet users in Southern countries to analyze their religious beliefs or political stances. Then, this analyzed data is used by digital platforms to accurately "push" information to users, exporting American values and socio-political programs to manipulate various organizations and individuals, thereby seeking interests in terms of economic and state power. On the surface, the U.S. promotes information freedom and internet transparency, but in reality, it spares no effort in developing and deploying various cyber-communication surveillance technologies, wantonly trampling on the data privacy rights of citizens in other countries.
When we enter a word or phrase into the Google search engine, Google's response is divided into four steps: analysis, selection, ranking, and display. For example, if one enters "best dog food," the system first analyzes the terms "dog food" and "best." During the analysis process, it also references a great deal of information collected previously regarding your address, dog-owning preferences, income level, and consumption habits. Then, the system uses crawler software to select relevant webpages based on its index. Next comes a very important step: ranking. As for the standards of ranking, we have no way of knowing; perhaps the webpages are ranked according to Google's degree of profitability. Finally, all relevant webpages are displayed in order. In this way, search engines like Google largely influence people's consumption behavior. If what we enter into the search box is "how to understand U.S. sanctions on Huawei," "are Jews evil," or "should the UK stay in the EU," how would Google rank the relevant webpages? American digital platforms or social software such as Google, Facebook, and YouTube are absolutely not just cultural exchange software; they are also important channels for the implementation of the U.S. cultural export strategy. They incorporate economic democracy, individual freedom, individualism, private property, and consumerism into the commercial ideological discourse of the digital economy era. This discourse masks the exploitation of digital laborers by digital monopoly capital and masks the distributive accumulation [7] of digital imperialism globally. In the digital age, digital technology is widely applied in the export of American culture and ideology. The U.S. possesses the world's most visited search engine—Google, the largest video website—YouTube, and the most influential social media platforms—Facebook and Twitter. According to World Bank statistics, among the 10 most visited websites globally, Facebook, Google, and YouTube are the three websites where each global user spends the highest average time per day, reaching 17.42 minutes, 13.12 minutes, and 13.04 minutes respectively—far higher than the 7.01-minute average of the remaining seven websites. These large American digital technology companies also monitor news, speech, and associations in foreign territories whenever they deem it appropriate, which is an act of infringing upon the human rights of Global South countries.
2. Utilizing Digital Technological Advantages to Consolidate America's Political Hegemony
After Trump was elected president, he withdrew from various international organizations, emphasized "America First," significantly reduced the provision of international public goods, weakened relations with traditional allies such as the EU, and suppressed China's development in various ways to maintain U.S. political hegemony worldwide. The foundation of U.S. global hegemony lies in its technological hegemony. Digital hegemony is a powerful support for maintaining U.S. technological hegemony and is an important component of it. The Trump administration established the "Cyberspace Solarium Commission" in May 2019, named after the "Project Solarium" during the Cold War against the Soviet Union, comprehensively introducing Cold War concepts such as enemy states, allies, and deterrence. The Biden administration has continued this line of thinking, hyping a "New Cold War mentality" globally while simultaneously launching digital ecosystem warfare, digital innovation warfare, and digital governance warfare. Digital ecosystem warfare aims to establish a U.S.-dominated digital ecosystem, comprehensively suppressing other countries in terms of hardware, software, and network connectivity. Digital innovation warfare aims to comprehensively block the sources of digital innovation in other countries from the supply chain to the R&D chain, abusing domestic laws to suppress digital technological progress in countries like China. Digital governance warfare aims to further consolidate the dominant position of the U.S. in the international political order through the formulation of digital technical standards and rules. During the Gulf War and the NATO invasion of Kosovo, American electronic information warfare paralyzed almost all network communication systems in Iraq and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia; people saw the power of an information war and also became concerned about Microsoft's monopoly. In February 2021, in response to Australia's proposed News Media Bargaining Code, Facebook refused to pay for news content and, by banning Australian users from viewing and sharing news on its platform, turned a large nation into an "information island" to a certain extent. After the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the stock prices of American defense enterprises rose significantly. One could say that wherever there is war in the world, there are American weapons and the shadow of American defense enterprises. As long as the war does not end, massive profits will continuously flow to defense enterprises. War based on digital technology centers on new types of digital weaponry and equipment; its complexity far exceeds traditional military warfare. In addition to new digital weapons, the U.S. also attempts to use its soft power to dominate international public opinion. For example, YouTube blocked accounts such as "RT" (Russia Today) within Ukraine, and Twitter deleted Russian statements regarding the conflict, exerting all-around pressure on Russia. Trump's use of the political role of social media was also pushed to the extreme, even being jokingly called "governance by Twitter." During his term, he posted nearly 60,000 tweets, instigating supporters and gathering political energy, which invisibly brought massive traffic to American social media. Using digital technology to weaken the regulatory influence of other countries and shaping platform dominance is also a means for the U.S. to consolidate its hegemony. Taking the ride-hailing platform Uber as an example, Uber exploits institutional weaknesses in the markets where it operates, identifying and targeting regulatory loopholes and gray areas to escape state control as much as possible. The disruptive strategies of these platforms are particularly effective in some Southern countries where public institutions, influenced by neoliberal doctrine, provide favorable conditions for laissez-faire platformization.
The United States practices double standards, utilizing its advantages in digital technology to maintain its political hegemony. The U.S. carries out global data extraction and implements extensive surveillance over the digital spaces of other countries, while simultaneously suppressing the digital services and superior digital products of other nations under the banner of national security. This act of politicizing digital development issues violates the spirit of openness and sharing inherent to the Internet, as well as the most basic principles of fair competition in the international market. The United States has long posed as a "free" and "democratic" nation; in recent years, it has gone even further in vigorously promoting a narrative of "democracy versus authoritarianism." However, the reality of the U.S. instigating wars and conflicts all over the world has long since pulled back the curtain on the hegemonic truth of American-style "freedom" and "democracy." There are countless examples of the United States using the banners of so-called democracy and human rights to attempt to reshape other countries and the world order according to American values and political systems, interfering in the internal affairs of other nations. In today's world, American hegemony is omnipresent; one can find the shadow of the United States in almost any international affair to a greater or lesser degree. The most direct manifestation of U.S. hegemony is political hegemony, and political hegemony serves the entirety of American hegemonism.
IV. The Essence of U.S. Digital Hegemony
Digital oligarchs transform their technological advantages into digital hegemony, achieving dominance in every link of production, circulation, consumption, and distribution, as well as in all involved industries. The concentration of digital resources has brought about extreme inequality in the possession of wealth. The logic of capital behind digital monopoly capital is the driving force propelling the emergence and development of digital imperialism. Digital oligarchs, represented by large multinational digital technology companies, have become the center of digital imperialism. They continuously expand their dispossession-based [8] appropriation of global digital space, attempting to construct a new form of imperialism through data extraction, digital enclosures, capital convergence, and digital export.
1. Treatises by Classical Marxist Authors on the Essence of Imperialism and Their Insights for Analyzing U.S. Digital Hegemony
Competition is one of the central themes in Marx's analysis of the capitalist mode of production. The internal drive to chase surplus value and the external pressure of capital competition force every enterprise to pursue profit maximization and seek new production methods, new markets, and new sources of raw materials. Marx did not use the term "imperialism," but his analysis of capitalist dynamics pointed to the inevitable trend of global capitalist expansion. Marx and Engels wrote in The Communist Manifesto: "The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere. The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country." The emergence of modern industry was a turning point in the history of capitalism and its global expansion. Modern industry was the highest stage of capitalist development explored by Marx, as it was the highest stage reached in his era. Marx noted: "This splitting-up of the total social capital into many individual capitals or the repulsion of its fractions one from another, is counteracted by their attraction... This is no longer the simple concentration of the means of production and of the command over labour, which is identical with accumulation. It is concentration of capitals already formed, destruction of their individual independence, expropriation of capitalist by capitalist, transformation of many small into few large capitals." Marx analyzed the concentration of capital [9] and foresaw that the development of monopoly was an inevitable result of the process of competition; the task left to his successors was to identify monopoly capital as a new stage following modern industry.
The hallmark of the creation of Marxist imperialist theory was Lenin’s answer to the question of the essence of imperialism. He revealed the essence of imperialist monopoly and demonstrated that imperialism is the result of the concentration of production and monopoly. To directly grasp the core issue of imperialism, Lenin proceeded from the characteristics of the development of social production, using monopoly as the base point for understanding imperialism. He elucidated the profound changes occurring in the relations of production and viewed imperialism as a special stage in the development of capitalism. Regarding the operational mechanism of the capitalist mode of production, Lenin extracted the ontological definitions of the economic form during the imperialist stage. Monopoly, as the most central theoretical axis, supports Lenin’s theoretical system of imperialism. Lenin emphasized: "Imperialism emerged as the development and direct continuation of the fundamental characteristics of capitalism in general. But capitalism only became capitalist imperialism at a definite and very high stage of its development, when certain of its fundamental characteristics began to change into their opposites, when the features of the epoch of transition from capitalism to a higher social and economic system had taken shape and revealed themselves in all spheres." Only by fully understanding Lenin’s analysis of the problem of monopoly can one understand the connotations of imperialism as revealed by Lenin. This inspires us to use the emergence of digital monopoly capital as the logical starting point for our analysis of digital imperialism and its concrete manifestation, U.S. digital hegemony. Lenin believed that the combines [10] of monopoly capitalism strive to seize all sources of raw materials, making them ardent supporters of colonial annexation by their respective national governments. The control of digital space and digital technological colonization activities by U.S. digital oligarchs are also fundamentally aimed at possessing the sources of "raw materials." "Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed." Digital export and digital enclosures led by digital monopoly capital are the manifestations of "capital export" and the "division of the world" under the conditions of digital imperialism.
Whether it is cultural imperialism, financial imperialism, ecological imperialism, or digital imperialism, the essence of various "imperialist" variants always remains the essence revealed by Marxist imperialist theory; greed and plunder remain the nature of these variants. Digital imperialism, primarily manifested as U.S. digital hegemony, has not changed its nature; rather, it possesses even stronger monopolistic, exclusive, aggressive, and expansive characteristics. Under the dominance of U.S. digital oligarchs, the United States controls the data and digital spaces of other countries through the digitalization of unequal exchange, the control of gateways to digital space, and the implementation of digital technological colonization via "digital technical assistance." It uses its advantages in digital technology to consolidate American cultural and political hegemony globally. This proves that the discourses of Marxist imperialist theory regarding the laws of capitalist development and the essence of imperialism are not only not obsolete, but that only by applying Marxist imperialist theory can one clearly perceive the essence of U.S. digital hegemony.
2. Digital Monopoly Capital and the Capital Logic of the "Data-Power World"
Digital capital is the latest form of capital that has emerged with the arrival of the era of data productive forces. In the era of the digital economy, data resources have become the most central factor of production, and the struggle for data resources has become the focal point of competition between nations. For digital capital, data is the important pillar for achieving value valorization. The digital economy, characterized by being data-driven, has condensed data into a key strategic resource on a global scale, and this strategic resource is essentially "data-power" (shuquan) [11]. The core of data-power is the value of data. Data becomes a factor of production first because of its inherent value, but more importantly due to the support of information technologies such as big data and cloud computing. Therefore, the digital divide between countries is reflected not only in the volume of data but also in the capacity to participate in the data value chain. According to United Nations statistics, as of January 2021, nearly 80% of the 4,714 co-located data centers worldwide were located in developed countries. By the end of 2020, the United States alone accounted for 39% of the 597 hyperscale data centers globally. The U.S. agricultural data analysis service provider Farmobile launched the industry's first "Data Store" platform, where all third-party enterprises with a need for agricultural data can purchase relevant data. As farmers work in the fields, Farmobile automatically builds electronic field records of the data, including planting dates, commodity varieties, populations, harvest dates, total yield, average yield, and average moisture. Twice a year, at the end of the planting and harvesting seasons, the data is certified and placed in data storage for purchase by equipment manufacturers, agronomists, insurance companies, and other interested parties. Data can be sold multiple times per quarter to different buyers. Only through the mining, aggregation, tracking, analysis, and fusion of massive amounts of individual "small data" can "big data" with commercial interests and social value be formed. Methods for obtaining economic value from data are not limited to selling data to other companies. Enterprises can also profit from data generated directly or indirectly using big data analysis and artificial intelligence by improving customer experience, reducing costs, and finding new customers.
Lenin believed that imperialism is the highest stage of capitalist development, and the emergence of monopoly is the foundation of the birth of imperialism. "The replacement of free competition by monopoly is the fundamental economic feature, the quintessence of imperialism." Digital capital achieves the possession of data precisely through the monopoly of technology and platforms, which is the logical starting point of digital monopoly capital. Digital platforms skillfully use various means to achieve unpaid use and appropriation, typically by directly or covertly including content in service agreements or privacy terms that dispossesses [the user] of this raw data. This raw data, which originally belonged to individuals or the public, is transformed into private possession by digital capital, thereby completing the concealed exploitation of the global platform "prosumers" [12]. Statistics show that more than half of low-income countries have no restrictions on the cross-border transfer of personal data, which means low-income countries are more likely to fall into the status of digital colonies. The "Wintel" alliance [13] is a concrete manifestation of oligopoly in the digital age. The continuous research and development of technology and constant optimization of products by digital oligarchs constitute high entry barriers for the industry and build high ecological walls. Combined with high market concentration, it is difficult for potential and new entrants to shake the original market structure, leaving digital oligarchs as the overlords of the digital information industry. The development of digital technology creates new products that are both "scarce" and highly profitable, reducing the demand for living labor; the fruits of past social labor are expressed in the form of digital monopoly capital, and the general intellect of humanity is manifested as the power of digital monopoly capital.
3. The Accumulation Mechanism of Digital Imperialism
Rosa Luxemburg argued that when the accumulation process of capitalist states encounters the limits of the domestic market, non-capitalist regions are incorporated into the capitalist global economy, allowing the production and realization of surplus value to continue. Therefore, accumulation is not merely an internal relationship between various sectors of the capitalist economy; it is primarily "a transaction between the capitalist and non-capitalist modes of production." If financial monopoly capital was the core element in the imperialist accumulation process at the beginning of the 20th century, then digital monopoly capital is the core element in the accumulation process of contemporary digital imperialism. Multinational digital oligarchic companies have formed digital oligarch alliances to divide the global industrial chain by building digital ecological walls, gradually playing a decisive role in global economic, cultural, and political life. Data extraction, digital enclosures, capital convergence, and digital export constitute the accumulation mechanism of digital imperialism.
First, digital platforms have become a new organizational form to achieve maximum data extraction. Platforms position their services as a way to transform idle resources into maximum productive assets and release the potential value of existing spaces. For example, Airbnb turns vacant bedrooms into productive assets that generate rent, while Uber turns vacant car seats into productive assets that generate fares. Digital platforms carry out "data extraction" of global platform users serving as "prosumers." The key technology for "data extraction" is software licensing, which grants software providers ownership of data from more and more physical objects used in our daily lives.
Secondly, digital oligarchs implement "digital enclosures" [14] by constructing digital ecosystems. To capture and possess massive amounts of data, digital oligarchs utilize digital technologies to build digital ecological circles—through the control of software, hardware, and network connectivity—to ensure they occupy a dominant position in the formulation of international rules for digital space. Through digital enclosures, they collect data and information from human production and daily life, achieving the dispossessionary ownership of data to accumulate profit. Digital oligarchs achieve digital enclosure by controlling the gateways to digital space, excluding other competitors from possessing data and digital territory. Leveraging digitalized software, hardware, and network connection systems, digital oligarchs can establish new mechanisms for the appropriation of surplus value without even needing to own land or physical assets.
Furthermore, in the process of digital industrialization and the digitalization of industry, digital monopoly capital has not only acquired an independent form but has gradually penetrated traditional forms of capital, such as industrial and financial capital. The ultra-strong permeability of digital technology can link industries that previously seemed unrelated, connecting upstream and downstream sectors through digital platforms to achieve efficient and convenient coordination. The trend of de-bordering among the primary, secondary, and tertiary industries has become more pronounced, and industries have begun to develop in an intertwined manner under the integration of digital technology. For example, when old and new representatives of capital forms—such as hotels and platforms (like Airbnb)—come into direct contact, we see the fusion of two types of capital: real estate capital invested in physical property and digital capital invested in digital platforms. With the emergence of internet finance, digital capitalists have begun joining financial and industrial capitalists in investing capital into the sphere of production and dividing profits; many platforms even bypass financial institutions to develop independent financial instruments. At the same time, the monetization of data and digital currencies are steadily advancing in the United States. Data monetization refers to taking action to generate measurable economic benefits from an organization's data. Companies such as Amazon, Facebook, and Google have already monetized their data and used it to drive the growth of trillion-dollar businesses. In March 2020, the U.S. Congress passed the COVID-19 relief and stimulus bill, which for the first time proposed a development plan for a U.S. central bank digital currency—the digital dollar. The expansion of cryptocurrencies has further strengthened the motivation for the U.S. central bank to issue a digital currency to defend its monetary sovereignty. Digital oligarchs will combine the forces of industrial and financial capital, striving to rely on their technological advantages to become the dominant player among all capital forms. The global chain of capital operations is gradually being integrated by digital monopoly capital, and digital oligarchs utilize their monopoly status to occupy a dominant position in the division of surplus value.
Finally, digital oligarchs achieve controlling possession of global digital space through digital output. Relying on the digital platforms they control, digital oligarchs can conveniently export physical and digital commodities, thereby realizing global transactions on a larger scale that break through the constraints of time and space; the unequal exchange between the North and South is further deepened in a digitalized manner. In 2021, the digital services exports of developed economies accounted for 77.8% of the world total, service trade reached 72.8%, and goods trade reached 55.6%. Relying on their digital resources, digital oligarchs participate in global industrial chains and use their intellectual property and data ownership to control global modes of production. The tentacles of digital output are gradually extending from the economic sphere and penetrating the cultural and political spheres, attempting to construct a new global social order. Just like the slogans of "freedom" and "democracy" put forward by traditional imperialism, digital imperialism peddles slogans such as the "Internet of Everything" and "personalized customization," which are nothing more than slogans to mask its accumulation by dispossession. Digital technological superiority allows digital oligarchs to control economic, political, cultural, social, and military activities influenced by digital technology.
4. Digital Hegemony is the Latest Manifestation of Imperialism
Market differences are, to a certain extent, caused by artificial shortages induced by military force or temporary shortages in complex production processes. Center countries sell less "scarce" goods to peripheral countries that have more "scarcity," and profits flow from the periphery to the center. This unequal exchange is a hidden process, and the widespread application of digital technology further deepens this invisibility. In the geographic structure of this economic movement, commodity prices and profits always seem to be dominated by impersonal economic forces. Digital technological revolutions create new "scarcities" and digital products with higher profit margins; the development of digital technology reduces the cost of integrating regions far from the center into the global capitalist system.
Capital accumulation in center countries provides a powerful economic base and state apparatus for their hegemony, the vital function of which is to maintain the relatively weak state of peripheral countries. In this way, center countries can exert pressure on peripheral countries, forcing them to lower their positions in the commodity chain hierarchy. The geographic orientation of commodity chains and profit flows exhibits a trend of moving from the periphery of the global capitalist economic system toward the center. At the beginning of this process, the geographic differences in commodity chains were relatively small, and the degree of regional specialization was relatively limited. However, these differences are reinforced and fixed within the global capitalist system along with the accumulation of capital and the development of technology. A crucial point in this process is that violence intervenes in the determination of prices within the commodity chain. Of course, in every individual transaction, it is not necessary to resort to the massive violent apparatus of the center country to ensure the smooth progress of unequal exchange. Whether in the era of industrial imperialism, financial imperialism, or digital imperialism, as long as the unequal exchange between center and periphery faces a significant challenge, the violent apparatus of the imperialist state will begin to function. U.S. digital monopoly capital relies on its digital technological advantages to exercise economic, social, and political control over other countries or regions. Large U.S. digital technology companies establish their digital ecosystems and carry out "digital enclosure movements" through software and hardware equipment, network connection systems, data possession, and digital platforms. Although they have not established colonies through violent conquest, their purpose in researching and developing digital technology remains the same as that of hegemonic powers in the era of industrial imperialism—to obtain profit and carry out plunder—only taking a more concealed technological form to achieve this end.
Digital hegemony, as a specific form of technological hegemony, is the latest manifestation of imperialism and an expression of capital power and imperial power in the digital age. The application and rise of digital technology have changed the forms of expression of global power, but what remains unchanged is the predatory nature of imperialism. The United States occupies an overwhelming position and absolute advantage in the fields of digital technology and investment; digital hegemony has become the latest manifestation of imperialism. No matter what changes occur in the specific manifestations of imperialism, achieving the predatory possession of global surplus value remains its constant goal, and technological progress provides continuously updated advanced tools for the realization of this goal. Marx believed that the fundamental contradiction of capitalism is the contradiction between the socialization of production and the private capitalist ownership of the means of production. The digitalization of the means of labor has widened the gap between labor income and capital income. The global digital divide has widened the income gap between the North and the South; in the era of digital imperialism, the purchasing power of laborers has not significantly changed with the improvement of the level of productive forces, and the exploitation of digital labor by digital monopoly capital has also become more concealed. Digital imperialism, as the latest manifestation of imperialism, is merely a "new solution" by which the capitalist world attempts to use digital technology to resolve its own fundamental contradictions, but it ultimately cannot overcome the fundamental contradictions of capitalism.
V. Conclusion: Accelerating the Construction of a Community with a Shared Future in Global Digital Space
Data is a typical "renewable resource" whose value can only be derived and expanded through continuous use. The repeated utilization of data does not lead to the consumption of the resource itself or the depreciation of its value; on the contrary, it facilitates the iterative upgrading and real-time updating of data. Therefore, being utilized to the maximum extent and with high frequency is the essential requirement of data resources, and constructing a community with a shared future in digital space is the best path to realize this requirement. A secure, stable, and prosperous digital space is of increasing significance for a country and even for world peace and development. All countries in the world should actively promote the improvement of international rules for digital space, create collaborative forms of digital ecology, share the fruits of digital development, and accelerate the construction of a community with a shared future in digital space. General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized: "There should be no double standards in maintaining network security. We cannot have one country's security while others are insecure, some countries secure while others are insecure, and still less can we seek so-called absolute security at the expense of the security of other countries." We must "allow more countries and peoples to board the express train of the information age and share the fruits of internet development." We must take the promotion of people's well-being and the realization of well-rounded human development as our starting point and objective, enhance the fairness, effectiveness, and inclusiveness of global development, vigorously promote digital ecological cooperation, and let the fruits of digitalized development better benefit the people of all countries.
On April 19, 2016, at the Symposium on Cyber Security and Informatization, General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out: "Cyber security is relative, not absolute. There is no absolute security. We must base security on our basic national conditions and avoid pursuing absolute security regardless of the cost; doing so would not only create a heavy burden but might even result in losing sight of one thing while attending to another." [15] In September 2020, China issued the "Global Initiative on Data Security," calling on all countries to follow the three principles of upholding multilateralism, balancing security and development, and adhering to fairness and justice. The initiative aims to accelerate the construction of a global data security governance system, strengthen comprehensive cooperation and common development among all countries in the field of the digital economy, and balance the relationship between technological progress, economic development, and the protection of national security and public interests. The "Global Initiative on Data Security" emphasizes the need to view data security issues comprehensively and objectively, actively maintain the openness, security, and stability of the global supply chain for information technology products and services, and oppose undermining the critical infrastructure of other countries, stealing important data, or conducting large-scale surveillance and violating personal information targeting other countries. The principles are the same as those in the physical world: all countries are equal in digital space. Any country's dispossessionary ownership of data, any form of data monopoly, digital technological colonialism, or any disorderly competition between digital platforms should be opposed and resisted.
(About the Author: Hu Ying is a Professor and Doctoral Supervisor at the School of Marxism, Sun Yat-sen University, and a Special Researcher at the Guangdong Center for the Study of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.)