Mark Kennedy on Strategic Autonomy in the 6G Era
This brief summarizes the strategic analysis by Mark Kennedy, member of the Boston Global Forum (BGF) Board of Thinkers and former Congressman, regarding the geopolitical necessity of secure digital infrastructure.
The Thesis: Digital Infrastructure as the New Sovereignty
Kennedy argues that digital infrastructure—undersea cables, cloud storage, and communication platforms—now functions as the “digital arteries” of global civilization. Control over these arteries determines who sees the world’s signals, who holds political leverage, and who sets the standards for future innovation.
Key Strategic Pillars
- Intelligence and “Signal” Visibility: Even with encryption, metadata patterns reveal financial shifts, diplomatic alignments, and military mobilizations. Under Chinese national intelligence laws, Beijing gains a “continuous picture” of global activity, using this data to train the next generation of AI and gain unprecedented leverage.
- The Trap of “Captive” Channels: Nations running on a Chinese tech stack face “political gravity.” The cost of dissent rises because service can be slowed, upgrades delayed, or financing withdrawn at inconvenient moments, effectively eroding a nation’s sovereignty.
- Path Dependence and Standards: Whoever builds the base layer (the pipes and platforms) sets the defaults for identity authentication, data governance, and payment routing. Once these standards take root, they are prohibitively expensive and politically difficult to reverse.
- The Lesson of 5G: Kennedy points out a strategic failure in the 5G rollout: while the US restricted Huawei at home, Huawei became the default provider for the Global South. Today, nearly 85% of the world’s population lives in areas where Huawei equipment is embedded. Kennedy warns that the US cannot afford a repeat of this in the 6G era.
The Competitive Strategy: Resilience vs. Reliance
Kennedy distinguishes between the Chinese and American models of partnership:
- China builds reliance: Using subsidies and turnkey packages to create dependency and geopolitical leverage.
- America builds resilience: The US should focus on sharing risk, helping nations develop their own regulatory capacity, and respecting their autonomy.
The Strategic Bottom Line
The contest for the next generation of digital growth will be won or lost in the Global South. If the US does not provide a credible, easy-to-adopt alternative for 6G, cloud, and AI infrastructure, it cedes the ability to protect global autonomy and shape world narratives. Kennedy concludes that in a digital world, freedom is the most valuable infrastructure of all.
Link: https://nyudri.org/securing-the-worlds-digital-arteries/
