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	Control the platforms on which modern economies run, and you control the economies themselves by Rafal Rohozinski SecDev Flashnotes Canada   Nov. 2025   The headlines focused on what they always focus on: the rhetoric about immigrants, the dismissiveness toward European allies, the muscular nationalism that plays well in certain domestic constituencies. But while pundits dissected the predictable provocations of the Trump Administration’s new National Security Strategy, the document’s most consequential passages slipped past largely unnoticed. The real revolution is buried in the fine print. It concerns not borders or battalions, but bytes and bandwidth.   What the NSS articulates, with remarkable candour for a strategic document, is a fundamental reimagining of the global order. Not the reimagining that critics expected, a retreat from international engagement, but something far more ambitious: the explicit subordination of allied sovereignty to American digital dominance. The document announces what might be called a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, positioning the Western Hemisphere as a zone of exclusive American economic and strategic influence. The United States will, it declares, “deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere.”   Read that carefully. “Strategically vital assets” in 2025 no longer means military bases or shipping lanes. It means cloud infrastructure, AI platforms, and the digital arteries through which modern economies flow. The language is aimed primarily at China, but its logic applies universally, extending to any power, including European allies, that might challenge American technological preeminence in Washington’s backyard.   “The terms of our agreements, especially with those countries that depend on us most and therefore over which we have the most leverage, must be sole-source contracts for our companies.”   That sentence, buried in the strategy’s economic provisions, deserves to be read and reread. It is perhaps the most honest articulation of American strategic thinking in decades. Countries within the American sphere (and Canada sits at the very centre of that sphere) are expected not merely to cooperate with American firms but to preference them exclusively. The document pairs this expectation with an instruction to “make every effort to push out foreign companies that build infrastructure in the region,” extending explicitly to “cyber communications networks” and technology infrastructure.   Here is where the document’s internal contradictions become not merely philosophical but practically consequential. The NSS premises its entire strategic logic on the primacy of national sovereignty. Nations, it insists, must “put their interests first and guard their sovereignty.”   This is the animating principle behind every critique of multilateral institutions, every withdrawal from international agreements, every insistence that America will no longer subordinate its interests to global consensus.   Yet the same document that celebrates sovereignty as the foundational principle of international order proceeds to systematically circumscribe the sovereignty of America’s closest allies. The Hemisphere is defined as an American zone of prerogative. Technology procurement is expected to favour American vendors.   Partnership benefits become “contingent on winding down adversarial outside influence,” language elastic enough to encompass European technology partnerships, Asian supply chains, or any collaboration that might dilute American market dominance.   This is not hypocrisy in the conventional sense. It is something more coherent and more troubling: a worldview in which sovereignty exists in concentric circles, with American sovereignty absolute and allied sovereignty conditional.   The United States reserves for itself the right to determine which external influences are “adversarial” and which partnerships are permissible. Sovereignty, in this framework, is not a universal principle but a privilege that flows downward from Washington.   For countries like Canada, the implications are stark. Between 64 and 70 percent of Canadian internet traffic already routes through American territory. All thirteen trans-Pacific fibre-optic cables land on the American west coast; none terminate in Canada. Over 61 percent of Canadian businesses store critical data on American cloud services.   The digital economy that increasingly defines Canadian prosperity runs on infrastructure neither owned nor controlled domestically. The NSS transforms this dependency from an inconvenience into a lever, a mechanism of influence more effective than any tariff.   But the Canadian case merely illustrates a global dynamic. We are entering a zero-sum world where allies and partners are transient and transactional, where relationships are measured not in shared values but in commercial advantage.   The concentration of power within the emerging global digital economy, particularly its commanding heights in AI and cloud infrastructure, means that technological dependency translates directly into political subordination. Control the platforms on which modern economies run, and you control the economies themselves.   This is, in many ways, more consequential than the NSS’s more inflammatory provisions. The disparagement of immigrants will generate outrage and resistance. European leaders will bristle at their diminished status and find ways to push back. These are visible conflicts that will play out in diplomatic exchanges and newspaper editorials.   But the quiet restructuring of digital dependency, the transformation of technological dominance into instruments of statecraft, operates below the threshold of public attention. It reshapes the architecture of power while everyone argues about the furniture.   The question this strategy forces upon America’s allies is not whether to resist American influence (that ship has largely sailed) but whether to accept a future in which sovereignty becomes a formality, a flag to be waved while decisions of consequence are made elsewhere. For countries that have built their prosperity on American-controlled digital infrastructure, the choice may already be constrained.   For those with time and foresight to act, the NSS should serve as a clarifying document: a roadmap of the future Washington envisions, and a warning about the costs of dependency in an age when data is power and platforms are territory. It is always important to read the fine print. In this case, the fine print is not merely important. It is the strategy itself. Everything else is theatre.   * Rafal Rohozinski is the CEO of the Secdev Group, a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), and co-chair of the Canadian AI Sovereignty and Innovation Cluster.
	UN experts urge binding accountability for agribusiness to safeguard global food security by UN Office for Human Rights   Oct. 2025   A handful of powerful corporations now control vast portions of global agricultural production, input markets and food supply chains, a concentration of power that undermines the autonomy of small-scale farmers, exacerbates inequality and endangers the ecological foundations of our food systems, UN experts warned today.   In their reports to the UN General Assembly, the Working Group on peasants and rural workers and the Special Rapporteur on the right to food warned that the growing dominance of transnational corporations and industrial agribusiness in global food systems poses an escalating threat to food security, rural livelihoods, and human rights.   “Peasants and small-scale farmers feed the majority of the world’s population with healthy and diverse food, yet they are increasingly marginalised and dispossessed by the expansion of corporate-driven food systems,” the experts said. “The current model of agribusiness, supported by powerful States, prioritises profit over people and the planet — this must change.”   Corporate practices, including large-scale land acquisitions, monopolisation of seeds and agrochemicals, food speculation, exploitative contract farming, and the escalating corporate capture of decision-making spaces traditionally held by peasants and rural workers in food system governance have cumulatively created deep dependencies that erode rural resilience and undermine the autonomy of those who sustain our food systems.   Digital technologies are further reshaping food systems, often extending corporate control through the capture of agricultural data. These trends, combined with the climate crisis, have further jeopardised the right to food for millions.   The experts reaffirmed that the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP) provides a crucial legal framework for addressing systemic injustices faced by small-scale farmers, fisherfolks, pastoralists and rural agricultural workers.   “States have an obligation to regulate corporate activity, prevent human rights violations and abuses, and ensure access to justice for victims,” they said.   “Voluntary commitments are not enough. The rights enshrined in UNDROP — including rights to land, seeds, biodiversity, and participation — must be implemented through binding laws and robust accountability mechanisms. To ensure digitalisation serves equitable and sustainable food systems, data governance must protect farmers’ rights, knowledge, and autonomy.”   Peasants and rural workers harmfully affected by corporate misconduct, from land grabs and toxic exposure to wage theft and forced evictions, still struggle to access effective remedies.   The Working Group and the Special Rapporteur called on all governments, the private sector and UN agencies to place small-scale farmers, fisherfolks, pastoralists and rural workers at the center of food policies and global governance.   “Food is not a commodity — it is a human right,” they said. “We must act now to ensure that those who feed the world can live and work with dignity, free from exploitation and fear.”   Ahead of the upcoming session of the Open-ended Intergovernmental Working Group on Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with Respect to Human Rights, the experts urged all Member States to prioritise the finalisation of a legally binding treaty to regulate corporations and financial institutions and hold them accountable for human rights violations and abuses.   “A binding treaty is essential to close the accountability gap and rebalance power in our food systems. Without enforceable obligations, corporate impunity will continue to erode human rights and the planet’s capacity to feed itself sustainably,” they said.   http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/10/un-experts-urge-binding-accountability-agribusiness-safeguard-peasants http://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/thematic-reports/a80213-corporate-power-and-human-rights-food-systems-report-special http://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/thematic-reports/a80180-right-participation-peasants-report-working-group-peasants-and http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/10/global-financial-architecture-needs-urgent-reform-uphold-equality-and-human Visit the related web page
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