Digital colonialism, techno-sovereignty, and infrastructural power

Bibliographic Data

ID19491967
AuthorsArtur Ishkhanyan (Institute for Physical Research, corresponding author)
Year2026
Volume8
Publication date2026-05-19
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueFrontiers in Political Science (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2673-3145 • E-ISSN: 2673-3145
PublisherFrontiers Media SA (PUBLISHER • CH)
DOI10.3389/fpos.2026.1811790
OpenAlexW7161626963
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited14

This paper develops a political-theoretical critique of artificial intelligence (AI), situating contemporary AI infrastructures within debates on digital colonialism and techno-sovereignty. The analysis focuses on AI systems deployed for identification, classification, and governance—domains where sovereignty is most visibly reconfigured. It argues that AI constitutes a historically continuous yet technologically novel form of colonial power, shifting sovereignty from territorial authority toward infrastructural and algorithmic control—a transformation theorized here as infrastructural sovereignty. To substantiate this claim, the paper advances two arguments. First, it distinguishes digital colonialism from surveillance capitalism by showing how AI systems extend historical patterns of dispossession and epistemic domination beyond the commodification of individual behavior, embedding extractive and classificatory logics within data architectures, models, and standards. Second, it conceptualizes techno-sovereignty as a mode of authority grounded in control over data, computation, and AI infrastructures, exercised through state, corporate, and community or Indigenous configurations. Drawing on political theory, decolonial scholarship, and genealogical analysis, the paper traces continuities between colonial identification infrastructures and contemporary biometric and algorithmic systems, illustrating how sovereignty migrates from territory to systems, platforms, and protocols. Authority in AI systems, it shows, is exercised not through formal jurisdiction but through infrastructural chokepoints and dependency pathways that precede and condition law. It concludes by examining implications for AI governance, demonstrating that regulatory frameworks addressing only downstream applications leave the upstream concentration of infrastructural power largely intact, while community and Indigenous approaches—though constrained—offer alternative models of authority rooted in stewardship rather than extraction

Capitalism · Colonialism · Commodification · Indigenous · Sovereignty · Cybersecurity and Cyber Warfare Studies · Digital Education and Society · Ethics and Social Impacts of AI

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