Can governments keep their sovereignty without becoming innovation-stifling totalitarians? And on the other hand, are the tech feudalists willing to provide innovative digital infrastructure without eating into state sovereignty and freedoms?

 

Non-State Actors, Techno-feudalism, and Governments’ Dependency Syndrome

BY Tamer Mansour

 

When governments find themselves negotiating with tech billionaires rather than their own legislative bodies, you know something fundamental has shifted in the global power structure. It might sound like science fiction, but we’re witnessing the emergence of a new form of governance where traditional nation-states increasingly depend on corporate entities that operate beyond their jurisdictional reach yet control the very infrastructure their societies rely upon.

But in reality, that’s how the modern world operates now. They think “digital dependency” is just another policy challenge, not understanding that they’ve essentially handed over the keys to their sovereignty to entities that answer to shareholders, not citizens. That’s what they fail to grasp.

Digital Feudalism vs Claptrap Sovereignty! 

Medieval feudal lords took hereditary control of large swaths of fertile lands and used peasants as workers from whom they would extract rents. While contemporary tech giants took control of the digital space and collected rent from their digital peasants—sorry, “subscribers”- whether through data, subscriptions, or digital monopolies, effectively acting as modern-day “digital” feudal lords.

Tim Cook (Apple), Sam Altman (Open AI), Mark Zuckerberg (Meta), Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Sundar Pichai (Google), and Elon Musk (Tesla, X) are the feudal lords of this neo-feudalism. These digital barons have created ecosystems where participation isn’t optional; it’s compulsory for economic and social survival. The dependency syndrome manifests in countless ways.

Public-private partnerships are increasingly becoming a sought-after approach, as lobbied politicians seek to normalize the increasing dependency and receding sovereignty 

Governments and citizens depend on Amazon Web Services for cloud infrastructure and sensitive data encryption, on Microsoft and Apple for OS software infrastructure, and on Meta et al. for search, listings, and advertising revenue, and for modern-day social connectivity and communication.

When these platforms decide to change their terms of service, entire government operations must adapt. When they experience outages, government services grind to a halt. They are building this dependency while they know the strategic risks that such technological reliance creates, and more importantly, the erosion of democratic accountability that comes when private corporations become essential public utilities without public oversight, and the “digital utility” bills are not even paid to the government.

Talk to me about national sovereignty. A term increasingly becoming a claptrap trope to use on citizens when governments want to push their sentiments towards or against “anything,” nothing more!

Selective Digital Jurisdiction?!

When you observe how these tech giants navigate international law, you begin to see a pattern of jurisdictional shopping that would make medieval merchants envious. They incorporate in tax-friendly jurisdictions, store data in privacy-weak countries, and claim immunity from local laws by pointing to their terms of service agreements. Despite the massive amount of data and sophisticated computing capacity, Big Tech has evolved into the new data sovereigns that governments must accept in the data era.

Governments that once commanded armies and controlled currencies now find themselves supplicants before corporate boards, begging for data access or platform compliance, and even currency supply, hello FED!

The most revealing aspect of this relationship is how governments have internalized their dependency. Rather than challenging the arrangement, they seek to manage it through regulation that often ends up legitimizing corporate power rather than constraining it.

Dependency (Đ) as a Currency!

Governments tend to pool their dependencies instead of breaking free of them. They create continental, multinational, and international frameworks to codify and delegitimize their subservient dependency on tech feudalists.

What makes this approach even more harmful to governments’ sovereignty is that these non-state tech actors not only suffice with selling products or services, they actually lobby to shape government policies, influence public opinion, and even take control of democratic participation by redirecting consensus.

Can you see any elections now that don’t rely on social media platforms? Or intelligence data security that does not use the giants’ cloud computing? Will you be able to receive economic or trading data without their networking infrastructure? If the answers to all of the above are no, then what “sovereignty” or we even talking about?

The revealing nature of this dependency becomes clear when governments find themselves unable to function without these private services. They’ve created a situation where challenging big tech means risking the collapse of their own operations. Basically, what I would suggest is to stop minting the forged currency of “Sovereignty ($)” in the West and start minting the real currency, “Dependency (Đ)”.

The No-Alternatives Power Shift

“Power” as a concept is basically being redefined by non-state creatures that live beyond old-school national and international frameworks. These tech creatures are not bound by any treaties or diplomatic conventions, unlike nation-states, who willingly shackle themselves with them.

These digital feudal creatures enjoy unprecedented flexibility and freedom to teleport operations across jurisdictions, relocate their headquarters, migrate their data centers, and shuffle their corporate hierarchies way quicker than any government can ratify regulatory legislation.

Meanwhile, the few attempts at creating sovereign alternatives reveal the depth of the dependency syndrome. Europe’s digital sovereignty initiatives, China’s tech nationalism, and various national cloud projects all highlight how difficult it becomes to escape the gravitational pull of established platform ecosystems.

The emergence of artificial intelligence adds another dimension to this power shift. Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill is heavy on AI, including a 10-year moratorium during which any U.S. state or local government cannot regulate AI. This demonstrates how even attempts at governance surrender regulatory authority to corporate actors, creating legal frameworks that protect private interests over public accountability.

Digital Protectionism is a Thing!

Another challenge to the existing order might soon emerge from state-directed alternatives, as countries like China demonstrate that technological sovereignty is possible with sufficient political will and resources. Look at China; they’re extremely focused on data sovereignty. They have clear rules about where data can be collected, stored, and processed, as all of it has to stay in China.

But these types of state policies are usually susceptible to being painted as “authoritarianism” by tech feudalists at every chance. They succeed with their propaganda in defacing sovereign digital protectionism into “governmental authoritarianism” to make it unappealing to so-called democratic societies.

Yet, the question remains valid on both sides. Can governments keep their sovereignty without becoming innovation-stifling totalitarians? And on the other hand, are the tech feudalists willing to provide innovative digital infrastructure without eating into state sovereignty and freedoms?

The Dependency Paradox

Public-private partnerships are increasingly becoming a sought-after approach, as lobbied politicians seek to normalize the increasing dependency and receding sovereignty.
They celebrate when tech companies invest in their jurisdictions, not recognizing that such investments often come with conditions that further entrench dependency. Big Tech does not exercise direct political coercion over workers or users. Instead, it creates an economic ecosystem that compels participation.

This form of control has proven way more effective than old-school coercion, while in reality it still replaces voluntary and publicly debated participation with a monopolistic, no-alternative “public-private partnership”.

They implement policies that primarily serve platform interests, regulate in ways that entrench existing power structures, and compete for the favor of entities that view governmental regulations and national borders as inconvenient obstacles to profit maximization.

Techno-Feudalists vs Digital Sovereigntists

The question will sound weird, but we have to ask it anyway: Who do you think would prevail in this data war, the “techno feudalists” or the “digital sovereigntists”?

The answer to this question will determine whether the 21st century sees the evolution of governance beyond the nation-state model or the devolution of democracy into a managed decline under corporate oversight.

The choice, for now, remains ours, but the window for meaningful action grows narrower with each platform update and each government contract signed with big tech. The infrastructure of freedom cannot be rented indefinitely from those who profit from its restriction.

So, what do you think, free people?!

https://journal-neo.su/2025/09/29/non-state-actors-techno-feudalism-and-governments-dependency-syndrome/