Global AI Governance’s Venezuela Moment
American can no longer be trusted to govern AI; the time for Bandung 2.ai is now
When Donald Trump toured a Ford F‑150 assembly plant in Michigan this week and, caught on video, mouthed “f*ck you” and gave the middle finger to a protesting autoworker, it was not just another signal of his inability to maintain decorum, accept criticism, or remain diplomatic. It was a very clear signal: the United States, once the “shining city on a hill,” no longer even pretends to uphold a baseline of democratic civility or respect. [1]
When I worked on governance and human rights in China nearly two decades ago, we often said that how a government treats its own citizens at home is the best predictor of how it will behave abroad. Today, the signal is unmistakable: we have a president giving his critics the middle finger and a “f*ck you,” masked ICE agents carrying out intimidation, and government agencies weaponised for political retribution.
Just days before that domestic middle finger, he gave one to the world, too.
The American military mounted a military operation deep in Caracas, illegally kidnapping Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and taking him to the United States to stand trial. With no Congressional or UN Security Council mandate, this was an illegal, unilateral action that clearly violated national sovereignty, Maduro’s authoritarianism notwithstanding (though America has had plenty of authoritarian friends throughout history). Trump followed by posting on his own digital platform, Truth Social, that he planned to “run” Venezuela indefinitely even claiming himself the acting president and stealing the country’s oil, reinforcing a narrative of imperial prerogative over international norms.
These two moments — the obscene gesture at a domestic protester and the kidnapping of a foreign head of state — are connected. They are emblematic of a terrifying truth: the United States is rapidly discarding the very values that once underpinned its claims to global democratic leadership — democracy, rule of law, human rights, and international cooperation — and it no longer hesitates to flaunt that shift. It no longer hesitates to be brazen, even vulgar, while doing exactly what it wants, with little regard for who gets hurt at home or abroad.
We must then ask ourselves: if the US can so casually discard rules and norms in pursuit of oil, power and selfish hegemony, what reason do we have to believe it will uphold ethics, rights, and multilateral norms in the governance of artificial intelligence — especially as we approach the possibility of superintelligence?
The stakes are high.
Venezuela
America’s intervention in Venezuela represents perhaps the most controversial projection of overt American power in the Western Hemisphere since its 1989 invasion of Panama. The operation drew global condemnation — including from members of the United Nations Security Council — for violating the UN Charter and basic norms of sovereignty. Meanwhile, Trump’s public declarations about controlling Venezuela’s government and oil resources show a transactional view of power: might makes right.
The president’s Deputy Chief of Staff (and architect of much MAGA madness), Stephen Miller, made it crystal clear: “We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else. But we live in a world, in the real world … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.” He had previously stated emphatically that “[the United States] is a superpower and under President Trump we are going to conduct ourselves as a superpower.”
This is not the language of collaborative global governance, but rather the language of imperial prerogative.
The stakes are very high indeed.
The World’s Greatest Democracy
For years, the United States portrayed itself — and was portrayed by its allies — as a leader in inclusive, democratic governance: from human rights to free markets, from civil society participation to international cooperation. But that narrative started unraveling fast and furious the moment Trump 2.0 got its hands on power.
In tech governance, that façade is already gone:
The U.S. has pulled back from multilateral forums where civil society plays a significant role in shaping tech norms – including the Freedom Online Coalition, Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund, Global Forum on Cyber Expertise, International Development Law Organization, International Institute for Justice and the Rule of Law, UN Democracy Fund, and many more besides.
Funding for global civil society efforts — historically supported through mechanisms like USAID and the US Department of State’s Democracy, Human Rights and Labour bureau — has been eliminated, creating a vacuum where local and regional advocates once participated easily and robustly.
Domestic policies now weaken the ability of advocates and activists to engage internationally — for example, requirements that social media accounts be public under threat of visa consequences, a policy that undermines safety for many.
Private tech firms, meanwhile, enjoy a blank check to scale, extract data, and “innovate” with impunity, with little accountability to human rights or public oversight.
US disengagement from international consensus on climate and digital cooperation means fewer shared frameworks and more ad hoc power plays.
In this context, civil society — what I see as the backbone of both accountability and inspiration in tech governance — has been hollowed out, especially in the Global Majority. Six months ago I sounded this alarm in the Asia Times. I remain just as worried; if not more so.
A few days ago I caught up with an old friend who is a peace mediator with whom I worked on the Aceh Peace Process. He described the collapse of USAID support as akin to suddenly pulling oil out of the global energy mix. Yes, there are alternatives — wind, solar, hydro — but for now, the system still runs on oil. And when it vanishes, everything grinds to a halt. That’s what we’re seeing now with the global civil society ecosystem: once heavily reliant on American development assistance, many aid workers, governments, and advocacy groups are scrambling to adapt — and coming up short. Civil society organisations, especially those critical to shaping AI governance, are increasingly left without the lifeblood they need to function meaningfully.
Civil society was the energy source for meaningful public participation in tech, and now their ability to substantively, equitable and meaningfully participate is quickly being eroded by the United States.
Surveillance Capitalism Meets State Power
Meanwhile, the global narrative that America is righteous because “we’re not communist China” masks a truth that is much more relevant: American surveillance capitalism rivals the informational extraction of authoritarian states. Data harvested by US tech firms yields insights into behavior, relationships, vulnerabilities, and preferences on a planetary scale.
Because most of this extraction is done by private companies, many feel comfortable (or at least resigned) in the belief that the state does not control these systems. But nevermind, there’s a democracy holding them accountable. Right?
Wrong. And that distinction is already blurred. As America’s federal government entices the cozying up with firms like Palantir and others owned by tech bros, the capacity for the state to access, leverage, or coerce access to private data infrastructures is only growing. Big Tech is feeding off the protection the Trump regime is providing them. These are infrastructures of power, not neutrality. And they are not controlled by us.
If America is willing to discard norms to seize oil, why would it hesitate to repurpose these digital architectures, including hindering effective governance, in pursuit of selfish geopolitical advantage?
Meanwhile, Europe’s commitment to rules, norms, and regulatory frameworks once seemed like a reasonably sound bulwark against an unchecked American libertarian tech unilateralism. But as the continent weighs America’s lust for Greenland and tepid support for Ukraine against Russian authoritarianism (among much else), its ability to exercise power seems brittle at best.
Indeed, as Europe weakens its own AI regulatory frameworks under American tech and government pressure, are we witnessing the 21st century equivalent of Sudetenland appeasement? The EU seems to increasingly resemble a Maginot Line rather than a credible deterrent against American pressure on global AI governance — impressive in form, but strategically weak.
Bandung 2.ai: A New Way
Last week, I joined a private fireside chat (sans fireplace, obvi – it’s hot here!) with a Southeast Asian Foreign Minister. When asked how their country was navigating pressure from both the US and China, the Minister replied that we don’t have to turn right or left. We can chart our own path — among our friends. Then came the warning: Know who your real friends are. A powerful country like the United States will always do — and take — what it wants.
If the United States can only now be counted on to take what it wants, cannot be counted on to lead in ethical, accountable governance or even fully participate in the rules-based, cooperative international order that they themselves built after the Second World War — and if Europe’s rule‑based commitments are unreliable or lack coercive underpinning to deter unilateralism — then the world must consider a third way. A new way.
This is where a Bandung 2.ai moment — an idea I’ve coined and written about in these pages — becomes essential. A non‑aligned, Global South‑led project that:
Challenges the monopoly of Western knowledge systems
Resists the universalisation of Western ways of knowing
Champions human rights and collective agency
Builds sovereign knowledge ecosystems, the infrastructures that produce and validate knowledge on their own terms, instead of under the shadow of Silicon Valley or Washington
If knowledge is the most valuable commodity in the 21st century – from raw materials for AI models to how we understand informed consent to how we benefit from a research to policy interface – then epistemic sovereignty is essential to political sovereignty, human flourishing and people-centred technological future.
This is not rhetorical wordplay and I certainly don’t mean to be overly academicy. It names exactly what’s required for a sovereignty that includes freedom from technocolonialism. The only way to ensure advanced technologies benefit all people of the world.
I think it is the foundation for a new governance architecture that centers local realities, values, and priorities, rather than grafting Western perspectives, frames and explanatory narratives onto diverse societies.
A sovereign knowledge ecosystem means:
Investing in regional research hubs that define problems and metrics for themselves
Building data infrastructures that serve local publics, not global platforms
Incentivising pro-social technology and preventing monopolistic ownership of the technology stack
Creating transparent, participatory governance bodies that include civil society, academia, traditional knowledge holders, and pro‑social enterprises to process knowledge
Making space for different ways of thinking, knowing, and living to shape how AI is built and what it’s used for
This is not being naive. It is a highly pragmatic approach in a world where America has proven unpredictable, transactional, and self‑interested.
Some Practical Steps to Take Now
To operationalise this vision of sovereign knowledge ecosystems rooted in the global south, here are some initial efforts that can be undertaken by governments in our region as part of plans to harness the power of frontier technologies for their citizens:
Fund and scale independent AI researchers, endow Asian think tanks, and invest in universities as integral to public digital transformation and AI readiness investments (it’s not all about the hardware or job training!).
Channel government and philanthropic resources to civil society actors and technical and policy experts and recognise them as a core governance pillar, as partners and co-creators who bring crucial cultural, community, linguistic, moral, and technical expertise to the policy table.
Build data trusts and sovereign repositories accountable to their communities, not corporate interests.
Create crisis response mechanisms across global south governments, academies and civil societies to both determine what individual and collective harms need attention and serve as our own firefighters (and NGO I work for is doing just this!).
Create cross‑regional alliances — Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Indigenous networks — to advance new thinking on the ethics, safety, and public benefit of frontier tech.
Venezuela was the Warning Shot
While at the same time America’s leader was admonishing Thai diplomats to respect the UN Charter and territorial integrity over its violent border clashes with neighbouring Cambodia, America consciously decided to eschew international law and kidnap a nation’s head of state. (Remember that warning that the US will take what it wants?)
If it can abduct a sovereign leader and lay claim to another nation’s resources without even the pretense of a legal rationale — only the blunt force of a 21st-century manifest destiny — then nothing is off the table when geopolitics collides with technology.
