CONCEPT
Data Sovereignty (Chang reading)
The principle that data generated by a population belongs, at least in part, to that population — and the contemporary form of the broader sovereignty argument that successful developers have always asserted against the rules written by the powerful for the powerful.
Data sovereignty in Chang's framework is the contemporary expression of the broader developmental sovereignty argument. Just as nineteenth-century developers asserted the right to shape their industrial trajectories against British free-trade pressure, contemporary developing nations are increasingly asserting the right to govern the data resources generated by their populations against the extractive practices of foreign AI platforms. The framework recognizes that data is not neutral raw material but a strategic resource — the foundation on which AI capabilities are built, the medium through which value is captured, and the substrate through which cultural and political influence operates. A nation that surrenders unrestricted extraction of its data to foreign AI platforms has surrendered a form of sovereignty more consequential than control over physical resources, because the data extraction shapes the capabilities of the systems that will subsequently govern much of the nation's economic and cultural life.
