State Platform Capitalism

In this episode with Dr. Steve Rolf, we explore the deepening connections between states and platforms in the two heartlands of the digital economy, China and the US.

In a recent paper, Steve Rolf and Seth Schindler develop the notion of State Platform Capitalism (SPC) as an emergent logic of competition for both states and firms, in which platforms are increasingly mobilized by the US and Chinese states as geopolitical-economic agents. Far from simply undermining state authority in a zero-sum power struggle, they look at the ways in which Beijing and Washington instrumentalize domestic platform firms in pursuit of geopolitical–economic objectives, while platforms become increasingly interdependent with their home state institutions. Competition in the global political economy is increasingly centered on the recruitment of users and nations to these rival state-platform nexuses (national ‘stacks’) as a means of establishing and exercising extraterritorial economic and political power. Our conversation explores variations between American and Chinese modes of SPC. Dr. Rolf explains two main domestic varieties of SPC -- in China, state venture capital and tough regulation are driving platforms toward compliance with state goals. In the US, the 'hidden developmental state' based on the military-industrial complex uses contracts as carrots to enlist platforms for geopolitical-economic ends. We also discuss the paper's examination of three spheres of SPC competition in the global political economy: digital currencies, technical standards, and cybersecurity.

Dr. Steven Rolf is an ESRC Research Fellow at the Digital Futures at Work Research Centre at the University of Sussex. He is a political economist and examines the digitalisation of economies, transformations of work, the rise of platforms, and the territorial and political implications of these changes. He recently concluded an interdisciplinary project entitled ‘China and the transformation of global capitalism.’

Related Links:

• The US–China rivalry and the emergence of state platform capitalism in Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space.
• Big Tech Sells War: https://bigtechsellswar.com/
• America's Frontier Fund: https://americasfrontier.org/
• State of Innovation The U.S. Government's Role in Technology Development, by Fred L. Block, Matthew R. Keller