Data mining, artificial intelligence and national security: The geopolitical use of American legal infrastructure as an obstacle for a global data governance. The TikTok case as a paradigm

Abstract

This article aims to show the close link between data mining and national security. The aim is to show how data mining is not only important for big tech’s commercial and profiling operations, because it is also critical to develop AI driven warfare. Thus, the article shows how the main goal of the State intervention – particularly in the US – in the data market is not guaranteeing the protection of the individual’s data, but is establishing a close relationship with the companies so that the collected data can be used for the development of AI, in a strategic – and not merely commercial – perspective. In this sense, primary for the US is the protection of domestic data through market restrictions to Chinese companies, achieved throughout the intervention of the Committee on Foreign Investments in the US (CFIUS) and the use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). The paper claims that this zero-sum approach to the digital space makes the achievement of a global data governance extremely difficult. In conclusion, the paper analyzes the TikTok case as a paradigmatic example, since the US consciously decided to use the IEEPA in an anti-Chinese way, although they could have used it to generate a domino effect capable of triggering a virtuous circle that could have opened the way to an effective process of data regulation. The main conclusion of this paper is that it is because of geopolitical dynamics that the achievement of a global data governance is difficult, and not just because of corporates opposition to such policies.