"Second, to the extent that the public/private distinction is understood, it highlights the capability of private companies to impose sanctions, and their willingness to do so in pursuit of political goals — even if those political goals are to stop an unjust invasion and save lives."
"Start with the latter: India is widely considered the most important long-term growth market for a whole host of tech companies, thanks to its massive population that is only just now coming online, combined with a growing economy that, to the extent it can follow a similar path to China, promises more opportunity than anywhere else in the world. In the economic era it has made perfect sense for India to be a core market for Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc."
"It was India, though, that raised some of the most strident objections to Twitter and Facebook’s decision to take down President Trump’s accounts after January 6, with several politicians pointing out that tech executives in San Francisco could do the same to them; in the case of the Ukraine invasion India is staying neutral, thanks in part to its significantly longer-term relationship with Russia, particularly from a military perspective. That makes it all-the-more likely that the aforementioned private sanctions are being interpreted in terms of capabilities, not intentions, clouding the long-term prospects of those tech companies counting on India for growth."
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Taiwan, China and South Korea “represent a triad of dependency for the entire U.S. digital economy,” said an influential 2019 Pentagon report on national-security considerations regarding the supply chain for microelectronics. “Taiwan, in particular, represents a single point-of-failure for most of the United States’ largest, most important technology companies,”
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A most telling (and often quoted) exchange between [India Prime Minister Inder Kumar] Gujral and Pres. Clinton occurred on 22 September 1997 at the occasion of the U.N. General Assembly session in New York. Gujral later recounted telling Clinton that an old Indian saying holds that Indians have a third eye. “I told President Clinton that when my third eye looks at the door of the Security Council chamber it sees a little sign that says ‘only those with economic power or nuclear weapons allowed.’ I said to him, ‘it is very difficult to achieve economic wealth’.”
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The implication is that nuclear capability was a more attainable route to great nation status than was economic dominance; what, then, to make of an industry that can, via private sanction, destroy economic wealth above and beyond government action? The capability wielded by the tech industry is incredible; it is easy to cheer when it is being used in the service of intentions that are so clearly good. It’s equally easy to understand how much fear that capability may generate in the long run.
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