Hindustan Times ST (Mumbai) - Live
‘Big tech firms have power to manipulate global opinion’
Amid an array of global challenges, countries are becoming more self-sufficient, self-reliant, says external affairs minister S Jaishankar. The Union minister also highlights the issues that may come up at the G20 summit in India
External affairs minister S Jaishankar said on Thursday there are no “easy answers” to the power wielded by big technology firms and certain people with economic interests who believe they can certify or delegitimise issues.
Jaishankar said in a conversation with HT editor-in-chief R Sukumar for the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit that globalisation has “globalised politics”. He added, “When you cannot win inside a country, you export the debate outside, when you cannot get enough voices inside the country, you will call up backup from outside. These are all challenges in today’s politics.”
Responding to a question on digitisation and the ability of large non-state actors and big tech firms to manipulate opinion, he said: “I don’t think there are easy answers but I think first of all there should be awareness that you have private players whose size is bigger...than many countries.”
The market cap of some of these companies is greater than the GDP of countries, and they increasingly have “interests, agendas, views”, he said. “Typically, we tend to pick on the tech companies because they are very visible but I think it’s a bigger problem than that.”
There are also people with economic interests and ideological viewpoints who believe “that it is their power to certify, decertify, criticise, support, legitimise, delegitimise [and] this is an issue”.
When “democracy gives results which sometimes does not suit an elite in some part of the world, you start attaching adjectives and caveats, this is completely ideological”, he said.
“It’s like saying I didn’t like the way this match produced a result so now I’ll question the match, or I’ll say there is something wrong with the pitch. Please understand this is politics, do not take this as a debate, do not take this at all as an objective evaluation,” the Union minister added.
In response to an array of global challenges, countries are “trying to de-risk their daily existence” and becoming more self-sufficient or self-reliant while limiting international exposure in key areas, he said.
“There is a big economic churn which is centered around more resilient, reliable supply chains. There is also a digital churn [about] where your data is, who harvests your data, who processes your data, these things matter,” Jaishankar said.
With India set to take over the presidency of the G20, which groups the world’s 20 largest economies, in December this year amid intense polarisation among world powers, Jaishankar said that the country will wait and take stock of the situation after Indonesia hosts the G20 Summit in Bali during November 15-16.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi too is holding consultations inside and outside the government, and India needs to reflect on the needs of the developing countries that it represents, he said.
“At the moment, it’s fairly obvious that emotions are high...to some degree, it has become a North-South polarisation because the South is feeling the brunt of the impact [of the Ukraine conflict] without actually being able to influence any of the decision-making,” he said.
There are also economic issues, respect for international law and norms, and countries respecting each other’s sovereignty, the Union minister said.
“Some of these will influence G20 but G20 is not the forum to settle these issues or frankly even to primarily debate these issues. G20 has an economic and financial mandate. But this is the real world, so I guess we will see a spillover,” the external affairs minister said.