This session explores how societies can reclaim digital infrastructure from corporate concentration and reimagine it as a public good. Michelle Nie examines the monopoly of global cloud computing and proposes regulatory and cooperative strategies to treat compute power as a public utility—building community-owned, democratic alternatives to Big Tech’s dominance. Ganesh Gopal discusses India’s emerging national platform cooperative for ride hailing and related initiatives that link labor unions and platform cooperatives to public digital systems. Ali Ercan Özgür complements these perspectives by reflecting on sovereign, community-based infrastructure models that anchor technological innovation in collective ownership.
Speakers
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Michelle Nie Visiting Fellow, Technology and National Security Program, Center for a New American Security
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Evren Aydoğan Global CEO, Needs Map
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Ganesh Gopal Ph.D. student, Gandhigram Rural Institute
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Ali Ercan Özgür Co-founder of Needs Map