Cecilia Rikap, researcher: “Microsoft and Google are like salt: they’re in every dish.” Seeking sovereign digital strategies
The economist, who studies the monopoly of knowledge hoarded by the big tech companies, advises the Brazilian government on developing a sovereign digital strategy
“I work in what I call intellectual monopolization, specifically that of digital capitalism.” This is how Cecilia Rikap (Buenos Aires, 40 years old) introduces herself, Professor of Economics at University College London and Director of Research at the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP) at that institution. In recent years, Rikap has specialized in analyzing how big tech companies monopolize the generation of knowledge—not only purely technological but also academic, information about users themselves, and production processes—and how that places them in a position of market dominance.
Dr. Rikap advises the Brazilian government on its digital sovereignty strategy, which aims to equip the country with its own tools so as to be less dependent on tech giants. No other Western country has bet so strongly on this kind of technological independence. This is the context in which, this summer, a judge in Brazil ordered the shutdown of the social network X after its owner, Elon Musk, refused to block the accounts of certain profiles that were disseminating “Nazi, racist, fascist, hateful, and anti-democratic discourse.” A few weeks later, X rectified the situation and was allowed to resume functioning there.
(Editorial note: the judge is the Magistrate of the Superior Court of Justice of Brazil, Alexandre de Moraes, an ardent supporter of President Lula da Silva and highly controversial – even with petitions for his impeachment in the Brazilian Parliament due to his extremely partial judgments in several cases, especially against former President Jair Bolsonaro and as the author of the notorious scandal with Elon Musk’s company.)
Amazon, Microsoft, Google: the battle is in the cloud:
That move had consequences. Rikap pushed forward a letter that was signed in September by around fifty economists, including Thomas Piketty, Yanis Varoufakis, and the newly minted Nobel Prize in Economics winner, Daron Acemoglu, in which they denounced pressure from tech companies on the Brazilian government to not deploy its digital sovereignty project. More recently, Rikap and other colleagues have compiled in a document the guidelines for pursuing that digital sovereignty. “The key is for the new digital ecosystem to be led by the public sector,” asserts the researcher via video call from London.
Pregunta. Usted sostiene que las grandes tecnológicas centralizan el conocimiento. ¿Cómo lo hacen?
A: In global capitalism, the accumulation of capital is concentrated in large companies, which also hoard intangible assets. I study how the dynamics of co-production and appropriation of knowledge occur. Basically, I look at scientific publications and patents, which is the available information, and I analyze where they are generated and with whom they are shared. Using that method, I identified in 2017 that Amazon was shifting from an e-commerce company to a tech company, increasingly focused on the cloud. By 2020, we saw that the main focus of research for these giants was artificial intelligence (AI), more specifically machine learning and deep learning. They have pursued that path hand in hand with thousands of universities.
Q: Which companies are we talking about?
A: Fundamentally, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, the major cloud dominators. They control 70% of the global market, and if the percentage isn’t much higher it’s because they cannot operate in China. These companies are also monopolizing the development of AI, a technology that can be applied to all industries and potentially to every area of life, but which is also a tool for inventing. AI is the code, but also the models, the data, and the processing capacity. All those elements are dominated, in particular, by Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. The capacity of the latter two to influence the AI research agenda is enormous.
Q: Do you think AI is a matter for just two companies?
A: Microsoft and Google are like salt: they are in every dish, directly or indirectly connected to almost everything that is done in the world of AI. They dominate the research agenda, control what startups do by buying them or funding them. They also evangelize and control open-source software. At first glance, it seems like an ideal solution because they provide digital infrastructure to companies, from data centers to software as a service, but it makes them dependent, and then it is extremely costly to break away from them and find an alternative. Moreover, when companies sell through the cloud, which is mainly controlled by Amazon and Microsoft, they have to pay a percentage, whether they are a small or medium-sized enterprise or a giant like Coca-Cola or Inditex. The latter lives off the knowledge it has about how to organize its production process and manage stocks in the most efficient way, and that is closely related to being able to use AI algorithms to analyze immense databases. So, their business depends on the providers of that service.
The digital economy is dominated by Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, but not through ownership. And that is key, because otherwise it would be evident to regulators that there is a problem
Q: So Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are omnipresent in the digital economy.
A: The system is dominated by them, but not through ownership. And that is key, because otherwise it would be evident to competition regulators that there is a problem. Big tech companies grow in the digital economy through control, through their ability to appropriate value.
Q: Did the Brazilian government ask you to get out of that spiral?
A: After an initial visit through the IIPP, I had meetings on a personal and non-commercial basis with various ministries, and they asked me to review their AI plan and help them prioritize. What we are saying is: how can you build an AI and cloud development model that is sovereign for a peripheral country?
Q: Is that possible?
A: It is clear that the cloud is fundamental and that there is a major bottleneck there. Developing a truly public cloud would be key. But it is not enough to offer just infrastructure, because it might happen that a startup trains its model on your state cloud, but then goes on to sell to the cloud of Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, because that is where the demand is. If you want to build an AI application, you are not going to develop the model; you will use one that is already built, probably in the clouds of Amazon, Microsoft, or Google. The idea being worked on by the Brazilian government is to identify the bottlenecks that are generated throughout the value chain and decide what type of AI we want. Initially, the plan was to develop a public cloud, a foundational AI model, and then incentivize startups or any company to build applications, with the public sector as the first client. The reaction from the big tech companies has been very, very strong.
We must overcome the fear of the word “planning.” Another AI is possible, but it must be planned
Q: What has that reaction translated into?
A: They are trying to generate internal tensions within the Brazilian government. From the moment Lula [da Silva, the country’s president] announced the AI plan, both Amazon and Microsoft began saying that they would increase their investments in the country. For example, the Minister of Development, Industry, and Trade celebrated an agreement with Microsoft—already signed during the Bolsonaro era—under which they will dedicate 2.7 billion dollars to developing AI services in public education. The government is finally deciding to build a platform on top of the big tech cloud that, despite my efforts and those of the government itself, will not be completely independent.
Q: Can a country like Brazil withstand these pressures?
A: Yes. The key is to organize a regional response. A truly public cloud requires an enormous investment. Moreover, if several countries participate, the system cannot collapse if a single government, like that of Milei, decides otherwise.
Q: Do you think Brazil’s model is exportable?
A: Yes, and it has a better chance of success in the EU than in Brazil, because there are more resources and a larger critical mass of people. Will Europe achieve an independent AI with its plan for AI factories? No, because the startups that emerge there will end up on the cloud of Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. In fact, in the United Kingdom and Germany, the public cloud is being developed directly in partnership with those companies. Another AI is possible, but it must be planned. It cannot emerge from a private company, whether European or not. We must overcome the fear of the word “planning.” It is not synonymous with something undemocratic; that is what big tech executes with barely any opposition. It is necessary to do it differently. Otherwise, we will simply move toward a more unequal world.
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