Why have Big Tech companies become actors in national and international security, and what is platform power?
Conflicts in cyberspace are fought on their platforms and infrastructure, so they act as intermediaries and sometimes as parties in their own right. Platform power is the privileged position their size gives them: access to authorities and international forums, and the ability to set norms and build coalitions.
Why they are involved:
- States meddle in elections through social media, and threats are made on Twitter, so the platforms are the nearly invisible infrastructure of conflict.
- Sometimes they are themselves the subject of the conflict, e.g. bans on Huawei's 5G, TikTok or Meta.
- They are usually treated as "ambassadors" of their home country, whose innovations add to its power.
- But they also make their own security policy alongside the state's, e.g. the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (founded in 2017 by YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Microsoft).
Why platform power is a problem: their central place in the digital economy turns into a central place in security policy. They can use that position to fend off antitrust cases, which consolidates their market power and draws them further into high politics. That raises concerns about legitimacy, accountability and sovereignty. None of these companies was elected.
Go deeper:
Wikipedia: Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism — how the platforms built their own counter-terrorism body.