Internet Infrastructure and the Persistent Myth of U.S. Hegemony
Winseck Dwayne. “Internet Infrastructure and the Persistent Myth of U.S. Hegemony.” In Information, Technology and Control in a Changing World: Understanding Power Structures in the 21st Century, edited by Blayne Haggart, Kathryn Henne, Natasha Tusikov, 93-120. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.
According to many observers, economic globalisation and the liberalisation of telecoms/internet policy have remade the world in the image of the United States. The dominant role of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google has also led to charges of U.S. internet imperialism. This chapter, however, will argue that while these internet giants dominate some of the most popular internet services, the ownership and control of core elements of the internet infrastructure—submarine cables, IXPs, ASN, data centres, and so on—is tilting increasingly towards the EU and BRICS countries and the “rest-of-the-world,” complicating views of hegemonic U.S. control of the internet and of what Susan Strange calls the knowledge structure.
Keywords: Knowledge; Structural Power, Power