Why I’m Digging Into Data Colonialism
I’ve spent the last couple of weeks recovering — from having cyclospora, from getting briefly trapped under a car that rolled off the jack while I was trying to help change a tire, and from melting down a bit about the state of our world.
But that gave me a lot of time to think and to read. I’ve been covering institutional capture and authoritarian playbook moves as I see them across ICE/CBP (BORTAC, Border Patrol), detention centers, the data-center buildout, regulatory capture, cryptocurrency as economic capture, and more.
These may seem like separate lanes. But there is serious academic research — language the Pope himself clearly draws on, whether he names it or not, in Magnifica Humanitas — that gives this whole system a name.
Data colonialism.
I want to try something a little different from my everyday reporting today, and walk through the reasoning behind it. What am I actually thinking about when I decide which leads to follow, which stories to cover?
