The Geopolitics of Surveillance Capitalism

Abstract

Surveillance capitalism is a new form of capitalism that turns human behavior into data to be tracked, analyzed, and monetized. However, this narrow framing obscures the deeper architecture that allows surveillance capitalism to thrive. Surveillance capitalism is not just a business model. It is a geopolitical system with institutional scaffolding. It is grounded in regulation (or lack of), legitimized by economic theory, promoted by trade rules, and protected by powerful countries. Its sustainability depends on more than market incentives; it is built on a distributed architecture of norms, institutions, actors, and governance failures. At its core, surveillance capitalism is an extractive political economy built on the systematic capture and monetization of human experience. As Shoshana Zuboff argues, this system represents an “epistemic coup,” in which corporations unilaterally assert ownership over behavioral data, undermining both privacy and democratic legitimacy. This is not only the privatization of information, it is also the expropriation of the very condition of self-knowledge and collective autonomy. This coup did not occur by accident. It was made possible by deliberate political choices, neoliberal market ideologies, legal loopholes, and the strategic retreat of the democratic state (Zuboff 2022a). The surveillance capitalist order extends far beyond tech companies. It is built on a set of foundational assumptions about markets, innovation, and governance. It draws on economic theories that treat data as a neutral input and surveillance as the price of personalization. It is reinforced by legal doctrines, from trade secret protections to arbitration rules, that prioritize corporate control over democratic oversight. And it is institutionalized through international organizations, development finance institutions, and standard-setting bodies that diffuse and normalize extractive data practices as a form of modernity and progress. While the United States is often seen as the chief architect and promoter of surveillance capitalism, the system it anchors is far from national. Regional and bilateral trade agreements protect cross-border data flows while restricting the ability of other governments to regulate. Development institutions promote digital infrastructure projects that deepen surveillance logics in the Global South, often under the banner of inclusion. Multilateral forums and technical standards bodies entrench the norms of “trustworthy AI” and “data free flows with trust,” offering legitimacy without transparency. All these are geopolitical strategies embedded in regulation, code, and economics. This paper takes a bird’s-eye view of the global surveillance eco- system. It maps the institutional foundations and geopolitical dy- namics that sustain it. It traces the actors, alliances, and narratives that normalize mass corporate surveillance and promote the glob- al surveillance capitalist economy. It goes beyond a Big Tech cri- tique and traces how power is produced, distributed, and enforced across this global order. Surveillance capitalism is a geopolitical system, and dismantling it requires more than privacy reforms or antitrust action. It requires structural transformation of the polit- ical, legal, and epistemic arrangements that have enabled it. This paper aims to lay the groundwork for coordinated action.