History may record our era as one of remarkable naïveté — when nations willingly anchored their digital sovereignty without questioning who controlled its foundations. America’s long-standing dominance of the internet’s architecture — once celebrated as a force for innovation and open commerce — is increasingly wielded as a brutalist instrument of national interest. When an unnamed US negotiator allegedly threatened Ukraine with “either sign the minerals deal, or we’ll shut down Starlink,” it demonstrated how swiftly digital infrastructure can transform from lifeline to leverage. That moment marks not an aberration but the emergence of a new paradigm in geopolitical competition: the deliberate weaponization of digital dependency.
The global digital economy, now representing 12.5 to 35 percent of worldwide GDP, has its commanding heights firmly in American hands. From cloud computing to artificial intelligence (AI), from internet protocols to satellite networks, America’s technological supremacy extends into virtually every domain of the information age. Yet what distinguishes this form of imperial reach from its historical antecedents is both its ubiquity and its invisibility. Unlike the gunboats of colonial powers or the military bases of Cold War superpowers, America’s digital dominance operates largely beyond public view, embedded in the very infrastructure that enables modern economic life.
President Trump’s “America First” doctrine has pulled back the curtain on this reality. Where once the United States championed a multi-stakeholder vision of the global internet purportedly dedicated to the global good, now, under the transactional “America First” approach, former allies need to contend with the reality that the United States may, at any time, weaponize its dominance of the digital economy. Those allies who have long entrusted their digital futures to American-dominated systems are experiencing a rude awakening.
From United Fruit to United Cloud
America’s technological hegemony represents merely the latest chapter in a long history of leveraging dominance for strategic advantage. In the early twentieth century, the United Fruit Company wielded near-sovereign control over Central American economies, orchestrating coups and regime changes that gave birth to the term “banana republics.” Theodore Roosevelt’s engineering of Panama’s independence from Colombia in 1903 secured American control over a vital global shipping lane. During the Cold War, the Central Intelligence Agency’s orchestration of the 1953 coup in Iran ensured Western access to Middle Eastern oil reserves.
Today’s digital imperialism operates with greater subtlety and broader reach than these territorial precedents. The battles are no longer over bananas and oil but over the binary architecture of the global economy. Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) have become the new United Fruits — essential infrastructure providers whose services are indispensable to governments, businesses and citizens worldwide. The sovereign territory being contested is not physical but virtual: the cloud environments, communication networks and data repositories where modern economic and political life increasingly unfolds.
The Commanding Heights of the Digital Economy
The extent of America’s digital hegemony is staggering by any measure. In cloud computing — the distributed processing and storage capacity that underpins everything from banking to health care — American companies control approximately 63 percent of the global market. Around 97 percent of Germany’s leading companies rely on cloud services, the majority using AWS, Azure and GCP, and governments from Britain to Australia entrust critical functions to American cloud infrastructure, including the widely used business desktop suite and operating system Microsoft 365.
Internet routing and governance remain firmly in American hands. US companies own or operate the majority of the world’s undersea cables and nine of the 13 root domain name servers; and US data centres handle up to 70 percent of global internet traffic. Countries from Brazil to Kenya route their connectivity through American hubs, making the United States the de facto gatekeeper of global communication.
In artificial intelligence (AI), America commands the global market through pioneers such as OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, Grok and Anthropic, and a multitude of start-ups and scale-ups. Despite ambitious challenges from China’s state-backed AI programs and Europe’s regulatory frameworks, its advantage in research, talent and investment gives America decisive influence over how this transformative technology evolves.
America’s dominance extends even beyond Earth’s atmosphere. With 70 percent of operational satellites, the United States dominates space, accounting for nearly 90 percent of all communications capacity in orbit. America’s space-based assets define the limits of possibility for everything from precision navigation to weather forecasting. The Global Positioning System, or GPS — relied upon by billions daily — epitomizes this supremacy, underpinning navigation and telecommunications globally, particularly in regions where terrestrial infrastructure is underdeveloped.
Dependency as Vulnerability
The strategic implications of this dependency are increasingly evident. The Dutch government recently raised concerns about the security of its data stored on American cloud servers, highlighting vulnerabilities stemming from foreign control over critical information infrastructure. Similar apprehensions have surfaced across Europe as policy makers confront the risks of entrusting essential governmental and societal functions to American technology companies.
We’ve already seen previews of this new reality. When France and Britain proposed digital service taxes on technology giants, America responded with threats of retaliatory tariffs. Ukraine’s experience offers perhaps the most sobering preview of digital dependency’s dangers. Amid Ukraine’s existential struggle against Russian aggression, reports emerged that SpaceX threatened to disable vital Starlink satellite terminals — which enable both military communications and civilian services — unless the country conceded control over valuable mineral reserves. In March 2025, the United States severed Ukraine’s access to satellite imagery provided by US-based Maxar Technologies following the public dispute between President Zelenskyy and President Trump. This was not diplomacy but coercion, leveraging digital infrastructure as a bargaining chip more powerful than traditional sanctions.
For Canada, America’s northern neighbour and ostensible ally, the vulnerabilities are particularly stark. Studies from the Canadian Internet Registration Authority and Packet Clearing House reveal that between 64 percent and 70 percent of Canadian internet traffic routes through American territory, with a typical email crossing the border multiple times before reaching its domestic destination. The physical infrastructure landscape is even more concerning — all 13 trans-Pacific fibre-optic cables land on the US West Coast, with none terminating in Canada. Of 14 trans-Atlantic fibre-optic cables, 12 make landfall on the US East Coast, while only two connect directly to Canada. Canadian critical infrastructure — from energy grids to John Deere tractors — relies on digital services neither owned nor controlled domestically. More than 61 percent of Canadian businesses store critical data on American cloud services. Any decision to restrict access — whether through outright denial or punitive surcharges — would devastate Canada’s economy more effectively than any conventional tariff, crippling digital operations and exposing sensitive data to foreign surveillance.
From Rhetoric to Reality
The question is no longer whether America will weaponize its digital hegemony, but how and when. Early indications are already visible. When France and Britain proposed digital service taxes on technology giants such as Google and Amazon, America responded with threats of retaliatory tariffs, portraying these sovereignty measures as unfair trade barriers while demanding preferential treatment for its digital champions.
The Ukraine minerals dispute demonstrates how quickly digital leverage can escalate beyond mere rhetoric. The Trump administration did not simply negotiate access — it reportedly deployed technological leverage as ransom for control over lithium and rare earth reserves essential to American strategic interests. If America is willing to flex its muscle so forcefully over physical resources, it seems inevitable it will do the same with its digital supremacy, where its grip is even more secure.
The Great Reversal
The solution demands what might be called a “great reversal” of the globalization and interdependence that have defined the digital economy since the 1990s. Nations must now prioritize digital sovereignty as protection against weaponized infrastructure in an increasingly fractured geopolitical landscape.
This transition requires untangling complex dependencies across competing systems. Critical resources such as GPS cannot be replaced overnight, even with alternatives such as China’s BeiDou, Russia’s GLONASS or the European Union’s Galileo in development. Global submarine cables and satellite networks require diversification and redundancy. Governments must implement policies that incentivize domestic computing and data centre growth, directing investment toward secure, sovereign digital infrastructure.
The coming years promise to be messy and unpredictable as the global digital economy fractures from an American-dominated system into a patchwork of regionally aligned networks. For decades, Russia advocated for a sovereign internet, a vision dismissed by Western powers as authoritarian overreach. Now, in a delicious twist of irony, it is America — the dominant brutalist digital hegemon — that is orchestrating the final act in this revised playbook of globalization, forcing nations to reconsider the price of digital dependence.
As this new reality emerges, countries face a stark choice: develop sovereign digital capabilities or remain vulnerable to the whims of foreign powers wielding infrastructure as a weapon. The era of digital naïveté is over. The brutalist web awaits.
