Big Tech’s material contributions to digital authoritarianism in the GCC countries

Abstract

Digital authoritarianism has been on the rise in the Gulf since the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011. Through practices such as surveillance, censorship, and social manipulation and disinformation, the Gulf governments have routinely deployed digital tools in order to repress dissidents, sway public discourse and control online content. Over the past decade, all six of the GCC countries’ governments have adopted national vision frameworks, including objectives of sweeping digital transformations and (neo)liberalization programs which will see relationships between the governments and its citizens be transformed in various ways. In order to build the necessary infrastructure for said digital transformations the GCC governments have attracted investments from foreign Big Tech companies. This paper analyzes these investments and the foreign Big Tech companies support of the relevant governments’ objectives for digitalization of society, economy and government. Through this analysis, it seeks to assess to what extent these investments will increase the governments’ capacity to carry out digital authoritarian practices. Arguing that the Big Tech investments will give the governments legal control over larger quantities of personal data and that they will incorporate surveillance capitalist technologies into their state apparatus, the paper concludes that said investments will further increase the GCC governments’ capacity for digital authoritarianism.