Russia-Ukraine war: Big Tech's role poses strategic questions for countries

American tech giants choosing to side with the US in the Russia-Ukraine war pose important strategic questions

As the Russia-Ukraine war rages, geopolitical and technology experts are raising questions about a seemingly lopsided narrative on internet platforms like Twitter, Meta (formerly Facebook) and Google.

“In the US, Big Tech blocked free and open discussion on issues from the political to the scientific,” tweeted Brahma Chellaney, a strategic affairs analyst. “Now, to enforce a single narrative on Russia’s invasion, its censorship has gone global. Big Tech has aligned itself fully with the White House on this war.” 

If Big Tech is pushing a single, pro-US narrative, Moscow, too, has hit back in equal measure — and not just through its misinformation campaigns. Russia’s communications regulator on Friday said that it had blocked Meta’s Facebook in response to what it said were restrictions on access to Russian media on its platform.

The regulator, Roskomnadzor, said there had been 26 cases of discrimination against Russian media by Facebook since October 2020, with access restricted to state-backed channels like RT and the RIA news agency.

“It is not surprising that the tech giants end up serving the US interest in a conflict situation. Perhaps now, more countries will realise that these platforms, with their massive networks of users, also perform quasi-government functions like moderation,” says Arindrajit Basu, a researcher at the Bengaluru-based Centre for Internet and Society.

Last week, Moscow had partially restricted Facebook, a move Meta said came after it refused a government request to stop independent fact-checking of several Russian state media outlets. Twitter also said its service was being restricted for some Russian users.

According to a Reuters report, even before the ban, images and videos on Facebook in Russia were loading slowly, while there were long periods of Facebook Messenger not loading at all. On mobile devices, Twitter, too, has remained slow. Many state websites, including the Kremlin site kremlin.ru, have also suffered outages in recent days.

The apparent strength of one set of views over another is just one part of the problem. The bigger worry is that the likes of Google, Apple, Amazon and others have a disproportionately large grip on matters like e-commerce, navigation and digital payments, say experts.

Vishnu Prakash, a veteran diplomat and formerly India’s High Commissioner to Canada, reckons that conflicts of the future will be entirely non-contact, and will be waged on technological terrain. India needs to prepare itself for such an eventuality, he says.

“The US had flexed its muscles against India in the 1971 war with Pakistan. While it was just military power at the time, the dimensions of power have undergone a sea-change today,” says Prakash.

Vivek Wadhwa, a Harvard scholar and technology entrepreneur, believes that countries have to move fast to protect their strategic interest in a conflict where the major tech companies might be at the opposite end.

“I have been warning for the longest time that these platforms cannot be trusted. It is just a matter of time when they will flick the switch. For example, almost all communication in India will come to a grinding halt if WhatsApp shuts down tomorrow in the country,” he cautions. 

To be sure, India has made some efforts to protect its sovereignty in the tech domain. One of its first measures in this area was the Reserve Bank of India’s diktat that payments companies must store all data in the country. Although the move saw initial resistance from the tech giants, they eventually complied.

Last year, the law governing technology platforms was amended, making it mandatory for them to set up expansive grievance redress systems and take down certain kinds of content on the government’s orders.

However, experts also argue that there is a thin line between protecting sovereignty and making life so hard for foreign tech platforms that they are forced to leave.

“India does not need to enact a tech firewall like China to protect its interests. We are a democratic country where dissent and free speech have to be preserved,” says Basu. “Data is quite different from oil or money despite frequent comparisons. It does not make sense to become protectionist in terms of technology, since that will impede everything from academics to commerce. What the government must do is regulate the tech giants cautiously.” 

Experts also ask how things would have been different if the West were to be the aggressor, or support the aggressor, in an armed conflict.

For instance, as Russian forces bombed and drove into one Ukrainian city after another, a retired US Army major posted a series of tweets which laid out detailed tactics on how civilians could push back against the invader. The tweets went viral, generating thousands of reactions and over 10 million users’ views within days.

“If this person tweeted this thread in reaction to Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza in 2014 or America’s invasion of Iraq in 2003, he would be on a terror watch list,” says Yonah Lieberman, a Palestinian activist.

According to a Human Rights Watch report last year, Facebook suppressed content by Palestinians and their supporters, including those about human rights abuses in Israel and Palestine during the May 2021 hostilities. 

“The company’s acknowledgment of errors and attempts to correct some of them are insufficient and do not address the scale and scope of reported content restrictions, or adequately explain why they occurred in the first place,” the New York-based NGO said.