DOSSIER

TECH

The United States: birthplace of the big tech lobby playbook

Big Tech’s influence on the US government is long-standing. The companies have often been pushing on an open door, especially under the Obama administration. Only Biden took a different approach, promoting robust antitrust efforts and digital trade policies. Yet whatever limited progress there was has already been undone by the current Trump administration.

Indeed, Trump has gone full tilt in the opposite direction and has embraced Silicon Valley’s biggest names with open arms. The level of entanglement between the president and a specific corporate sector, exemplified by the power initially given to Elon Musk, is unprecedented.

The entanglements are deep, financial, and offer a handful of US Big Tech companies access to political power at the highest level in the world’s largest economy. In a country whose political donation system has been described as legalised corruption, Big Tech’s relationship with the Trump administration has taken political influence to a whole new level.

Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Perplexity, and Uber each donated USD one million to Trump’s inauguration fund, a coordinated show of loyalty from companies seeking continued deregulation and wishing to use US state power to advance their interests abroad. Apple, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and Google also contributed to President Trump’s new White House ballroom.

Meanwhile, regulatory enforcement against the tech sector is collapsing. According to a 2025 report by the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, the current Trump administration has halted or withdrawn one-third of all investigations into alleged misconduct by Big Tech, effectively granting immunity to companies facing mounting antitrust, labour, consumer-protection, and privacy cases.

The stakes increased with the advancement of AI. Corporate lobbying on AI issues in the US skyrocketed in 2024, according to the US non-profit OpenSecrets, which monitors money in American politics. A dominant theme of this lobbying has been to prevent or reduce the regulation of AI developments. And, at least at the federal level, it has worked. The Trump administration’s AI Action Plan, released in July 2025, openly prioritised stripping away what it calls red tape or onerous regulation.

This lobbying success, in the US and elsewhere, has been massively enabled by a narrative framing that ties the economic fortunes of AI companies with those of states or entire regions.

Establishing the narrative: “Keep California leading the AI Race”...In early 2025, members of the California State Assembly introduced AB 1018 Automated Decision Systems, a draft law that would require AI systems used in employment, housing, and other critical areas to be tested for bias and discrimination. The bill was debated during the 2025 legislative session, but voting was delayed(opens in new window)  after a coordinated industry pushback.

We talked to Samantha Gordon, Chief Advocacy Officer at TechEquity, a non-profit based in California, to unpack the lobbying tactics used by Big Tech as AB-1018 was debated.

Big Tech’s opposition to the Automated Decisions Safety Act bill leveraged a geopolitical narrative that the industry has become adept at using to push back on AI regulation. It’s a simple storyline – the US and its companies must dominate in technology, and particularly in AI, if the US is to retain global economic dominance. Often framed as a “race to win”, it pits countries like the US against geopolitical rivals like China. Regulation is then framed as an obstacle. Gordon explains: “We always hear Big Tech companies say: ‘We need to win the AI race’, so any safeguards you might put in place get treated as hurdles”.

The sports metaphor is powerful, as is the framing of Big Tech and AI as crucial for the future economic success of nations. The conversation gets shifted away from the harmful impacts of Big Tech products and how regulations can protect the public. Public interest regulation is recast as an existential threat to US economic hegemony. Moreover, as other articles in this series show, it provides the basis not only for Big Tech’s influence on US regulation but also for the US argument against the regulation of US tech giants worldwide.

Blocking AI safeguards state by state...The narrative that pits regulation against innovation, and innovation as synonymous with national economic success, is one of the main prongs of Big Tech’s lobbying strategy. Opposition to California’s AB 1018 converged on a single message: the bill would stifle innovation and ban useful technologies. In reality, Gordon stressed, “the bill did not prohibit the use of any technology. It simply required developers to test their systems for discrimination and required users to disclose when they were using automated decision tools”.

But the impact of this carefully crafted narrative is made possible by the sheer number of voices amplifying the message. Gordon described the scene in California’s Capitol rotunda during the final days of the 2025 legislative session. “There must have been a hundred people working the floor”, she recalled. “And I counted. Half of them were there just to kill one bill: Automated Decisions Safety Act”.

Lobbyists working directly for the Big Tech companies were augmented by trade associations and other industry-funded bodies, such as TechNet and the Business Software Alliance. Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, and OpenAI are all members of TechNet, while BSA membership includes Microsoft and OpenAI.

The California Chamber of Commerce, representing California employers from a range of sectors, including Big Tech, also mobilised heavily. The Chamber coordinated opposition from the tech sector and industries that use automated decision systems, including insurance, advertising, and finance. The increasingly ubiquitous nature of automated systems across business sectors means that Big Tech’s interests increasingly become those of many other corporations.

As Gordon notes: “Big Tech scares legislators into believing that the legislation will hinder the ability to do business, hinder the ability to provide healthcare, and hinder the ability to provide loans. And it’s frankly very dishonest what they do because there’s no real accountability about how much manipulation goes into these messages and how many lies there are.”

But it works because it amplifies a message and drowns out the alternative views. During the debates over AB 1018, the California Chamber of Commerce launched a public campaign targeting state officials with digital ads and YouTube videos. The campaign asked the officials to “Keep California leading the AI race”.

Trading influence: weaponising US trade policy...Big business has long leveraged trade policy to promote its interests in foreign markets. But Big Tech’s influence on US trade policy is in a league of its own, particularly under the current Trump administration. Silicon Valley firms have blatantly merged their lobbying muscle with the geopolitical power of the US government to export a deregulation agenda.

We talked to Rishabh Bailey, Research Director at Public Citizen for the Digital Trade Alliance, a global collaborative of digital rights and consumer organisations, to unpack how Big Tech leverages US trade policy as a lobbying tool.

While the California legislature and US federal trade policy are very different arenas, the tactics tech companies use to advance their interests are strikingly similar. First, build a self-serving narrative, then ensure it is widely amplified through a network of funded entities, such as trade associations or ostensibly independent think tanks. The main difference lies in how receptive the Trump administration has been to this lobbying.

When Bailey began tracking Big Tech’s influence on trade policy, he saw a pattern that connects Silicon Valley boardrooms, Washington, D.C. agencies, and trade ministries around the world. According to Bailey, executives from Meta, Google and X (formerly Twitter) have direct lines to the Trump White House that have often triggered immediate policy responses, including public tariff threats issued via presidential tweets.

Crying “discrimination” to push deregulation worldwide...The narrative Big Tech has used to push the US government to promote its interests abroad is that other countries’ efforts to regulate it are anti-American and discriminatory. And while the US has long treated foreign regulations affecting Big Tech, such as digital services taxes(opens in new window) , as barriers to US tech companies, under the second Trump administration, Big Tech’s “anti-American” line played straight into the Make America Great Again (MAGA) agenda. The result is the weaponisation of tariffs to attack other countries’ digital regulations.

Just after Trump took office, Meta’s founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, signalled that his company would work with the administration to push back against governments that impose rules on American tech firms. In April 2025, when the European Commission fined Meta EUR 200 million for violating the Digital Markets Act (DMA), Meta framed the penalty as a multi-billion-dollar tariff. The Trump administration immediately echoed this framing, declaring that extraterritorial regulations targeting American companies would be treated as trade barriers.

Bailey observed that a key event was Trump’s April 2025 executive order on reciprocal tariffs, which forced countries to the negotiating table, at which point the US could push hard to weaken or remove digital regulations that US tech firms claim disadvantage them. As Bailey put it, “the reciprocal tariffs were being implemented by Trump, his administration has been really clear that they want other countries to deregulate the technology space”.

Public Citizen found that Big Tech-funded trade associations pushed the Trump administration to target anti-monopoly laws, data protection, and taxes across 65 jurisdictions. The impacts of this coercive US approach are already visible. India removed its equalisation levy on digital advertising by non-resident enterprises, a tax the US had repeatedly criticised as discriminatory against US firms. Canada  withdrew its digital services tax to secure broader trade negotiations with the US, a move that Big Tech immediately welcomed.

The US was particularly concerned by European legislation, as were the tech companies, for whom the EU is a highly lucrative market. On the sidelines of official trade negotiations, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick(opens in new window)  told the press that if the EU wanted lower tariffs on steel and aluminium exports, it would have to drop its digital rules.

To take advantage of the heightened receptiveness of the current Trump administration to the narrative of “discrimination against American companies”, Big Tech can rely on a veritable army of voices that agree with them. Many took direct aim at the Digital Markets Act (DMA).

The Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA), whose members include Amazon, Apple, Google, and Meta, described the DMA as a trade tariff that targets US companies. The US Chamber of Commerce called the DMA “de facto discrimination against US-headquartered companies”. The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), supported by companies including Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft, argued that the DMA “explicitly targets large US tech companies (Google, Apple, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft) with selective criteria that protect European firms”. This was echoed by the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), whose members  include Apple, Amazon, Google, and Meta, which called the DMA “deeply flawed” and claimed that it disproportionally targets US tech companies.

In December 2025, the US Congress hosted a hearing titled “Anti-American Antitrust” on the impact of the DMA and other related legislation. In it, two speakers associated with the think-tank International Center for Law & Economics (ICLE) depicted the DMA as a discriminatory, non-tariff attack on US companies. 50 academics and experts in digital markets, law and policy labelled the statements “misleading and, in large parts, factually false”. ICLE is funded by Amazon and Meta, but that was not disclosed in the written testimonies. [See more about them in the India case.]

This “discrimination” logic collapses under examination. As Bailey noted, digital markets worldwide are dominated by US corporations. When regulators target the biggest players, they inevitably target US firms because those firms hold monopolistic power.

But while the logic does not hold up, there is no denying the effectiveness of the lobbying. By capturing US trade policy, Big Tech has acquired an additional tool with which to lobby abroad.

What sets the US apart: unprecedented scale and access...The battles around California’s Automated Decisions Safety Act and the capture of US trade policy expose three core pillars of Big Tech’s lobby playbook: setting the narrative in ways that make corporate interests the same as national – usually economic – interests; dominating policymaking spaces via a network of lobbyists, industry bodies, and think-tanks which create the effect of broad opposition to regulation; leveraging the power of the world’s largest economy, the US, to augment their lobbying positions globally.

Many of these are standard corporate tactics. What sets Big Tech’s US strategy apart is the immense size of its lobbying resources and its unparalleled enmeshment with the Trump administration.

by: Margarida Silva(https://www.linkedin.com/in/margarida-silva-87545645/) and Misa Norigami(https://www.linkedin.com/in/misa-norigami/)

 

TECH

Samsung takes the lead in AI with mass production of HBM4 chips

Samsung Electronics has just marked a historic turning point in the semiconductor industry. In an announcement that is shaking up global technology markets, the South Korean giant confirmed that it is the first company in the world to begin mass production of the sixth generation of high-bandwidth memory, known as HBM4. This advancement is not just a technical upgrade; it represents the brand's triumphant return to the top of a sector where it had recently lost ground to rivals such as SK hynix and Micron.

If you follow the hardware market, you know that artificial intelligence (AI) demands unprecedented data processing speed. HBM4 chips were specifically designed to power the best AI accelerators on the planet, ensuring that the flow of information between the processor and memory does not become an obstacle. As a technology enthusiast, you realize that this step puts Samsung in a privileged position to dominate the supply of critical components for companies developing complex language models and cloud computing infrastructure.

This announcement comes at a crucial time. After a 2025 marked by some production challenges and competitive pressure, Samsung decided to go all-in on radical innovation. The company didn't just follow industry standards; it decided to raise the bar and set new performance metrics that, until now, seemed unattainable for direct competitors in the short term.

To achieve these impressive results, Samsung turned to its most advanced 1c DRAM technology, which uses a sixth-generation 10-nanometer class. This is currently the most sophisticated manufacturing technique on the market. By combining this with a 4-nanometer manufacturing process from its foundry division, you get a chip that is not only extremely fast but also much more energy-efficient.

The issue of efficiency is vital if you think about the colossal power consumption of modern data centers. Samsung managed to ensure stable production yields, meaning it can manufacture these units in large quantities without compromising quality or reliability. This stability is what allows the brand to start shipping the first consignments to customers immediately, gaining a precious time advantage over its competitors.

The integration between Samsung's memory division and its foundry division was key to success. By controlling the entire production ecosystem, engineers were able to optimize the design of the HBM4 chips in a way that companies relying on third parties for manufacturing have difficulty replicating. This is the kind of vertical integration that allows the South Korean brand to dictate the pace of the semiconductor market.

Speeds that surpass all industry standards... When we look at the pure numbers, the performance of these new chips is astonishing, to say the least. Samsung's HBM4 memory operates at a speed of 11.7 Gbps. If you compare that to the JEDEC industry standard, which sets it at 8 Gbps, you'll see a performance increase of about 46%. It's a generational leap that ensures the total bandwidth of a single memory stack can reach 3.3 TB/s, exceeding even the most stringent demands of hardware manufacturers.

Even when compared to the brand's own previous generation, HBM3E, the new HBM4 manages to be 22% faster. You can find these memories in capacities ranging from 24GB to 36GB, but the company has already confirmed that it won't stop there. To meet the memory hunger of the most demanding AI applications, Samsung plans to produce 16-layer versions with capacities reaching 48GB, something that until recently seemed like science fiction.

Samsung's vice president of memory development, Hwang Sang-joon, highlighted that the company decided to break with the tradition of using only already tested processes. By taking risks with cutting-edge technologies like 1c and 4nm DRAM right from the start, they managed to create room for maneuver for future expansion. This means that the HBM4 platform still has room to grow and evolve in the coming months, adapting to the volatile needs of customers.

The roadmap to total dominance by 2027...Samsung's strategy for the coming years is already mapped out and seems unstoppable. In addition to the mass production of HBM4 that is now beginning, the technology company has already confirmed that the HBM4E variant will arrive in the second half of 2026. This will be an even more optimized version, focused on specific niches that require the maximum possible bandwidth. You will probably see these chips in the most powerful supercomputers of the next decade.

But the brand's vision goes further. By 2027, the goal is to introduce customized HBM chips. This will allow specific clients, such as large technology companies that design their own processors, to have memories tailored to their architectures. It's a level of customization that could change how AI devices are built, integrating memory even more deeply into the heart of the system.

While the current focus is on mass production, Samsung is already working behind the scenes on the successor HBM5. This cycle of continuous innovation serves to ensure that the now-regained leadership is not lost again. For you, who follow these developments, it's clear that the battle for semiconductors has entered a phase of maximum acceleration, and Samsung has just stepped on the accelerator with a force that its rivals will have difficulty matching.

mundophone

DOSSIER

DIGITAL LIFE

Big tech, military power, and the new digital-industrial complex

This is not just a curious piece of news. It is a sign of the times. Executives at the core of digital capitalism – leaders of companies that control platforms, data, and algorithms – are beginning to receive military patents and formally integrate into the United States Army. The announcement of Detachment 201 – Executive Innovation Corps, in 2025, makes this movement explicit: to bring together, within the military institution, the corporate culture of Big Tech and the routines of armed power1.

At first glance, the episode can be read as an administrative update. But the central point is another. When platform executives become part of the military structure – with patents and all – the relationship ceases to be merely contractual. The boundary between the civilian and military spheres becomes blurred. Innovation is not only applied to war: it becomes part of its very architecture.

In 1961, Eisenhower warned of the risk of the “acquisition of unjustified influence” by the military-industrial complex2. His target was the alliance between the arms industry, public contracts, and armed power. Today, this warning requires updating. What was once the arms industry and contracts has come to include cloud computing, artificial intelligence, digital surveillance, and global platforms. A military-industrial-digital complex is emerging, in which data and informational infrastructure become central components of strategic power.

This reconfiguration is based on a broader transformation: the conversion of social life into data. Zuboff described this process as surveillance capitalism, based on the extraction of behavioral signals and their transformation into predictive models capable of guiding conduct. Politically, the effect is decisive: platforms begin to operate as the cognitive infrastructure of society and, by extension, as an asset for intelligence, control, and coercion systems.

Snowden's revelations showed that the global digital communication infrastructure was already deeply penetrated by large-scale state surveillance programs, such as PRISM. The integration between civilian platforms and security apparatus does not depend on military symbols. It occurs at the structural level, in chains of technical cooperation and in zones of secrecy legitimized by “national security.”

In this context, contemporary warfare becomes less dependent on firepower and more on informational power. The battlefield is organized as an operational chain: detect, identify, track, prioritize, engage, evaluate – the so-called kill chain. When algorithms accelerate this chain, they shorten the time for human deliberation and shift critical decisions to opaque, often proprietary, systems. Violence becomes faster, more automatable, and less traceable in terms of accountability.

In 2024, reports revealed the use of the Lavender system, employed by Israel to select human targets in Gaza, through the automated cross-referencing of data and probabilistic classifications [5]. The central issue is not only the use of AI, but its logic: people converted into statistical categories; suspicion transformed into scores; prioritization done by models that are difficult to audit. In this arrangement, error ceases to be marginal and becomes structural.

If Lavender represents the top of the chain, Project Nimbus represents the base: the computing infrastructure. In 2021, Israel signed a billion-dollar contract with Google and Amazon for cloud services intended for the government and security forces.5 Without massive storage, database integration, and large-scale processing, algorithmic warfare cannot be sustained. When this infrastructure belongs to transnational corporations, state secrets and industrial secrets combine, making auditing and public control difficult.

In the United States, Project Maven provided a precedent. Created to apply AI to image analysis and drone surveillance, it involved Google and generated internal protests and resignations in 2018.6 Even when there is ethical resistance, the incentive structure remains. Furthermore, Maven highlights the dual-use nature of the technology: civilian systems easily converted into military applications.

Integration has been institutionalized since the last decade. In 2016, the Department of Defense introduced DIUx as a bridge between the military apparatus and the innovation ecosystem.7 Detachment 201 signals a step further: less bridging, more incorporation. The capabilities of digital capitalism cease to be peripheral and become part of the institutional engineering of the armed state.

After the owners of big tech companies were given prominent positions at Donald Trump's inauguration, the heads of Meta (owner of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp), Apple, Microsoft, and OpenAI had dinner with the US president at the White House in early September. "Thank you for your incredible leadership, including bringing this group together," said Bill Gates, the billionaire owner of Microsoft, to President Donald Trump.

"Big tech companies are geopolitical machines. Let's not kid ourselves. Technology is not just a means to an end. Technology is one of the main instruments of global political, economic, and military power. Trump himself says that big tech companies are the front line of American power," explained Sérgio Amadeu da Silveira—sociologist and professor at UFABC.

The Military-Digital Complex and the New World (Dis)order...At the dawn of the internet, digitalisation was heralded as the key to unlocking the emancipatory virtues of the free market — spreading knowledge and economic opportunity, but above all ensuring peace and strengthening democracy. Today, it seems instead to be reviving old contradictions. Digitalisation has not only revolutionised how we communicate, produce, and consume; it has also fostered an unprecedented concentration of economic and technological power. Consider the market capitalisation, revenues, and profits of the US-based Big Tech firms in 2024 and 2025. In March 2025, their combined market capitalisation was three times the GDP of Germany and not far from that of the entire Euro Area ($16 trillion). In 2024, their share of profits over revenues was at 27 percent, a very high value for US companies. R&D expenditure was 13 percent of revenue.

This concentration of techno-economic power breathes new life into the theses of thinkers like Hobson and Lenin, who revealed the imperialist nature of capitalism by linking war to the expansionist strategies of the great industrial monopolies of the early twentieth century. Old contradictions — inequality, instability, and the fractures within political and institutional systems that find in war their ‘natural’ outlet — now wear a new technological mask. The clash is between two military-digital complexes, the United States and China, locked in an increasingly violent struggle for control of markets, technologies, and critical raw materials. The digital sphere has become their privileged battleground: a vast panopticon where the profit-maximising strategies of digital oligopolies (which depend on constant surveillance and the extraction of data from those — ourselves included — who rely on their services) converge with the security, geopolitical, and military objectives of their respective states.

It is a perverse alliance. Private capital monopolises infrastructures (data centres, undersea cables), technologies (cloud and AI), and knowledge — codified in the patents they accumulate or embodied tacitly within organisations, and thus inaccessible to outsiders — now indispensable for conducting virtually any social or economic activity.

The state facilitates this process and seldom resists it (though tensions and contradictions abound), caught as it is in a relationship of mutual dependency. It cannot do without the technological and infrastructural capacities of Big Tech; without them, many of its objectives — both civilian and military — would be unattainable. Nor is it eager to curb the economic power of those who control the (social) platforms where public opinion and political consensus are shaped.

Through their respective Big Tech firms, the US and Chinese governments can maintain other nations within their spheres of digital subordination — possessing ‘eyes and ears’ that deliver a constant and invaluable stream of information.

Yet, dependence runs in the opposite direction as well. For Big Tech, cultivating a stable alliance with the state is not optional — it is a matter of survival. Their profits depend on their ability to monopolise network infrastructures and the data flowing through them. Hostile regulation or moves to bring these infrastructures under state control could severely limit, or even destroy, their capacity for accumulation. The same would be true of any serious increase in taxation.

And if the global economy slows — crippled by commercial, technological, and military wars, and by pervasive uncertainty — then the state, and particularly military spending, becomes an essential lifeline for preserving profit margins.

War, moreover, offers technological opportunity. It channels massive funding into military research in fields where Big Tech already holds dominance — automated command and control systems, artificial intelligence, and autonomous weapons. Active participation in conflicts also provides an unparalleled testing ground, where new applications can be refined under extreme conditions, free from oversight or ethical constraint.

This transformation is not limited to major powers. It would be a mistake to treat this scenario as something distant. Brazil is already experiencing, on its own scale, the advancement of surveillance technologies associated with urban security. Totems and cameras are spreading throughout large cities. In São Paulo, Smart Sampa is presented as a modernization of monitoring with facial recognition and artificial intelligence.8 The problem is not the stated objective of combating crime, but the infrastructure itself: once installed, it tends to expand, accumulate data, and migrate to a different purpose, especially in contexts of low governance and weak independent auditing.

The risk increases when these technologies are politically captured. The case of the “parallel ABIN” serves as a warning: intelligence apparatuses can be instrumentalized to monitor opponents, civil servants, journalists, and authorities.9 With digitization and automation, reach and capacity grow rapidly.

There is also the dimension of connectivity. Public records indicate the use of the Starlink satellite network in a military context in Brazil.10 The operational gain is real in remote areas. But the strategic precedent is unequivocal: critical communication infrastructure can become dependent on a foreign private provider, subject to corporate decisions and external pressures.

According to a consolidation of public data11, the regional distribution of the total of approximately 313,700 Starlink accesses in Brazil, in November 2024, reveals a strong concentration in the North (~30.7%) and Southeast (~29.5%) regions, followed by the Central-West (~20.4%), South (~10.9%) and Northeast (~5.3%). A hybrid pattern: high penetration in remote areas and significant presence in economically central regions.

This contrast helps to understand why some central states have begun to explicitly politicize technological dependence. In 2026, France prohibited public servants from using American videoconferencing tools such as Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams, imposing migration to a state platform developed by its interministerial digital authority and hosted on national infrastructure. The measure is not administrative: it is a gesture of sovereignty. This is part of a deliberate movement to reduce structural dependence on services based in the United States and to reclaim control of the basic layers of communication by the state.

The same horizon guides the social regulation of platforms. French parliamentarians approved a bill prohibiting the use of social networks by minors under 15 and expanding restrictions on the use of cell phones in schools. The political message is clear: platforms are not treated merely as companies, but as infrastructures capable of affecting subjective formation, the public sphere, and democracy.

Recent episodes make this dimension politically unavoidable. In Iran, during near-total internet blackouts, Starlink terminals were used clandestinely to circumvent the state blockade and maintain external communication. A private infrastructure, controlled by a corporation based outside the country, came to play a functionally decisive role in a context of internal instability. Systems of this type can acquire direct strategic weight.

For countries like Brazil, this international experience serves as a warning. By incorporating similar solutions into military, intelligence, or public security communications, the State assumes a structural dependence on infrastructure over which it does not have full sovereign control. In scenarios of institutional crisis, conflict, or international pressure, this dependence is not neutral: it can become a strategic vulnerability, not only due to a deliberate decision by the provider, but also due to the existence of an external point capable of conditioning, degrading, or interrupting critical communications. In this sense, connectivity ceases to be a technical issue and becomes part of the core of sovereignty and national security problems.

This set of issues reveals a frequently underestimated weakness: the Brazilian State's systemic dependence on proprietary software, closed platforms, and poorly auditable networks. When sensitive communications and government operations rely on ecosystems controlled by transnational corporations, sovereignty ceases to be merely a geopolitical concept and becomes an operational condition. Infrastructure dependence is power, as it defines the limits of what is possible even before the political decision.

This is where the idea of ​​a tutelary democracy gains traction. Elections and democratic rites are maintained, but the center of gravity of strategic decisions shifts to a hybrid, technocratic, and corporate sphere, protected by algorithmic secrecy and opacity. The language of efficiency tends to naturalize political choices as if they were technical. But neutrality is impossible when systems define suspects, prioritize threats, select targets, or expand surveillance.

Eisenhower did not foresee algorithms, but he anticipated the mechanism: a circuit of interests fueled by war, fear, and exceptionality.12 The new complex produces not only weapons but also operational categories: risk, suspicion, priority, target. When these categories become code, democratic control loses its capacity for intervention: it no longer debates means and ends transparently; it begins to debate outputs, effects, and consequences.

In the end, the decisive point is not technological, but political. The expansion of surveillance, automation, and data integration systems – increasingly dependent on private infrastructure and opaque platforms – shifts the center of gravity of strategic decisions to opaque circuits where corporate interests and military logics converge. For democratic societies, this creates a new challenge: it is not enough to control the use of force; it is also necessary to control the informational means that make this force possible and operational. Without clear rules of governance, auditing, transparency, and technological sovereignty, the risk is that democracy will remain formally intact, but materially limited by infrastructures that it does not fully understand, control, or oversee.

by: Celso P. de Melo is a retired Full Professor at UFPE, a CNPq 1A Researcher, and a member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences.

 

TECH

Building a self-playing chess board robot

As popular as the game of chess is, it has one massive flaw. This being that it requires two participants, which can be a challenge. Although playing chess on a computer against an AI has been a thing for many decades, it’s hard to beat physical chess boards that give you all the tactile pleasure of handling and moving pieces, yet merging the two is tricky. You can either tell the player to also move the opponent’s pieces, or use a mechanism to do so yourself, which [Joshua Stanley] recently demonstrated in a video.

There are a few ways that you can go about having the computer move and detect the pieces. Here [Joshua] chose to use Hall magnetic sensors to detect the magnets that are embedded in the 3D printed chess pieces as well as their absence. These sensors are mounted to the back side of a PCB which is also the playing field, thus using the silkscreen for the board markings.

For the electromagnet that moves the chess pieces core x/y kinematics were used to move it underneath the PCB, engaging when moving pieces but otherwise deactivated. This is all controlled by an ESP32 MCU, while the computer runs the open-source Stockfish chess engine. As the human player changes piece positions this is detected by the magnet’s presence, with the change input into Stockfish.

As the demonstration at the end of the video shows, it definitely works, yet some issues remain. Ignoring the mistake with making the near-right corners black instead of white, the pieces are large enough that e.g. moving a knight piece between others pushes them to the side, requiring these to be put back in place.

There is also no way for the computer to detect which piece is placed where, which can be incredibly helpful on some commercial self-playing chess boards like this for new players, as well as to detect invalid moves, but this might be on the list for a potential V2 of this build.

Best part of this build is probably the use of a PCB for the playing field, which would allow you to go pretty crazy with custom designs and colors, especially now that some PCB places are offering multi-color silkscreens that allow for custom graphics.

by: Maya Posch

DOSSIER

DIGITAL LIFE

Is big tech trying to shut down democracy?

ver the last two decades, Brazil has become something of an emblem of the global battle for digital sovereignty. It is often referred to internationally as one of the few positive examples proving that countries in the Global South can and will fight back when provided with the necessary political will. For example, in 2024, Brazil was one of the few countries that strongly confronted Elon Musk’s extreme editorial decision to give free rein to many far-right accounts that had been banned before he took over Twitter and rebranded it X. Musk attacked the president of the country’s Supreme Court, Alexandre de Morais, but was ultimately forced to backtrack. That incident took place ten years after what remains the main exemplar of Brazil’s firmness on digital sovereignty, the Marco Civil da Internet (a civil rights framework for the internet), which was democratically established through open popular consultation and aimed to protect and regulate the internet market while promoting digital inclusion. At that time, while Dilma Rousseff’s administration still leaned left and the local far-right was virtually non-existent, it did indeed feel like Brazil would illuminate the global path to a more democratic digital environment.  

But sovereignty is a tricky business — and even more so when one’s claims for it lead to a coup d’état, such as the one that took place in 2016, ousting the very president who had presented our digital sovereign legislation just two years beforehand. Beyond the coup, putschist president Michel Temer’s ‘Bridge to the Future’ and constitutional cap on public investment, Bolsonaro’s tragic handling of the pandemic, of diplomacy, of the economy, of human rights and pretty much all his presidential attributions; and Lula’s shy, liberal, US-aligned third term, Brazil’s drive towards digital sovereignty looks like a pale blue dot lost in the outer space of more contemporary problems — many of them also involving sovereignty.   

In 2025, for instance, as Brazil’s traditional primary export commodities, such as coffee and meat, were struck by Donald Trump’s tariff war, under the stated grounds of retaliation against the so-called ‘persecution’ of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, Brasília appears to have sidelined digital sovereignty even more, in the name of securing ‘broader’ economic sovereignty. Finance minister Fernando Haddad’s pet project that offers Brazilian land — and fresh water — for big tech companies to build highly polluting data centres (in exchange for virtually nothing, as even gathered user data will remain in the possession of the Silicon Valley giants) moved out of the spotlight of criticism as Brazil fought to keep its primary export goods afloat. The struggle to mitigate the impact of Trump’s tariff war also provided Brazil with the perfect excuse to abdicate from its regional leadership regarding Washington’s belligerence towards Venezuela, Colombia, and even Mexico. Amid Trump’s economic war, Brazil’s stance as an agrarian-exporting powerhouse became synonymous with ‘sovereignty’, relegating other areas of national defence concerns, such as the digital and diplomatic aspects, to secondary positions.   

But even if we disregard the recent events that led to Brazil partially sidelining its commitment to digital sovereignty, can we really consider this country to be a successful case of struggle against the ever-growing big tech appetite for monopoly building and deregulation? According to a study produced in a joint venture by the Universities of São Paulo and Brasília, local and federal administrations in Brazil have paid over R$ 23 billion (Brazilian Reais) in big tech software licenses (nearly half of that money spent in the twelve months between June 2024 and June 2025). Such an amount would be enough not only to develop Brazil’s own national software landscape, but also to power it with eighty-six high-end locally built data centres 5MW Tier 3, raising in fifty percent, with public infrastructure, the current number of such facilities — which, by the way, are all private. Unfortunately, as already mentioned, Lula’s government chose the opposite path and instead of creating a national infrastructure that could potentially secure Brazilian people’s data sovereignty, signed a bill that will grant fiscal advantages for big techs to build, operate and own their own data centres on Brazilian soil, while keeping their ownership of the data. 

Brazil’s digital sovereignty is not merely given away willingly, though. Strong pressure is behind a decision such as the aforementioned, through which the State ends up effectively sponsoring big tech to extract data from its own people, while polluting its own land. In any dependent capitalist economy, US digital firms have been able to proliferate and thrive — with different levels of success; under a multitude of legislative/economic configurations — through exerting systematic and widespread communicational and political pressure on policymakers, media and societies as a whole. In Brazil’s particular case, Big Techs have consistently invested resources in both lobbying to water down the regulation of any activities they might find profitable, no matter how harmful or immoral they can get, and sustaining their own image as a beacon of economic opportunities for workers and enterprises alike. 

Uber is one such company. Through a mix of lobbying operations and sustained disinformation campaigns, the big tech who’s very brand became synonymous with contemporary precarity has managed to colonize Brazilian transportation landscape, severely reducing wages and crippling the labor movement’s traditional levers — all while sustaining an image of ‘entrepreneurial freedom’ haven, effective even among many of the workers whose exploitation it has taken to new levels. In this article, we’ll analyse the company’s lobbying and miscommunication strategies through the conceptual lens of digital sovereignty, as well as the consequential impact it had over Brazilian economy and society. And the broader guiding question we put forward, with no real pretension for a definitive answer, is: how willing and capable are both the Brazilian government and society to sovereignly face off the big tech juggernauts, eventually protecting its economy, environment and society? And more broadly, can digital sovereignty co-exist with these companies, or must they be expelled altogether for sovereignty to thrive in a dependent capitalist country such as Brazil?  

Digital predators...In the last decade, people and goods transportation applications invaded the whole capitalist world with promises of flexible work, high individual profit margins, and the realisation of the dream of being ‘one’s own boss’. Seduced by these promises — and the perspective of quickly lowering unemployment rates without actually having to create new jobs or invest new money — the administrations of several major Latin American cities clashed with traditional taxi drivers and opened the door for these foreign companies to operate with little or no regulation. A decade later, these societies are hooked and can no longer live without Uber, iFood, and similar services. 

Like other ‘sharing economy’ firms, ride-hailing companies such as Uber are famous for employing scorched-earth tactics: they kick off by promoting dumping in the target market, quickly rendering competition unviable, and then, with their monopoly established, they subject all actors — from workers themselves to government agents, including users and the legislative branch — to their own rules and market practices. When governments approach them with a tolerant mindset, they simply dominate the workspace, rendering later capping regulation virtually impossible. For example, statistical evolution shows how ineffective the São Paulo city government’s late effort at balance was: in 2015, the number of app drivers exceeded taxi drivers by 12,000, and by 2023, the number of rides in app-based cars surpassed those in public transportation in Greater São Paulo.

The consequences for taxi workers in Brazil have been harsh. A dossier published in May 2024 by IPEA (Institute of Applied Economic Research) shows that from 2012 to 2015, the passenger transport sector employed about 400,000 drivers, with an average monthly income of around R$3,100. By 2022, when the sector employed nearly a million workers, the average income fell below R$2,400. Workers who engaged in collective struggles for greater dignity at work were also penalised in the most arbitrary ways, from termination or suspension to death threats, including online smear campaigns against their struggles.. Even the ’well-behaved’ were punished: contrary to labour laws, the hourly earnings of drivers and motorcycle couriers consistently declined over time.  

Pension coverage was also affected: in 2015, 47.8 percent of passenger drivers contributed. Seven years later, this percentage was nearly halved to 24.8 percent. As IPEA’sresearch concludes, beyond the ’growing precarity of working conditions’, there is ’a situation in which workers subjected to a real condition of subordinate (and precarious) work reproduce the narrative (or ideology) that has been widely disseminated and assume they are ‘entrepreneurs of themselves.’ All in all, the much-celebrated arrival of these ride-hailing firms to Brazil has resulted in a worsening of the conditions of work for taxi drivers, while political authorities have offered very little resistance to these changes. If the effects have been so negative, why has there been so little resistance to the influence of Uber and other firms?

Uberpropaganda...An important piece of the answer to this apparent enigma has to do with the way in which ride-hailing firms and other big tech firms operating in the sharing economy wage systematic ‘influence’ campaigns, which involve lobbying of politicians and disinformation to steer the public in their favour. Brazilian independent investigative agency Agência Pública revealed a scheme of co-optation and disinformation targeting iFood app workers, coordinated by advertising agencies hired by the platform. The goal was to dissuade workers from joining protests organised by groups like Entregadores Antifascistas (Antifascist Delivery Workers) and the Associação dos Motofretistas de Aplicativos e Autônomos do Brasil (AMA-BR, Association of Application and Independent Motorcycle Couriers of Brazil), which fought for higher delivery fees, Covid-19 prevention measures, and better working conditions.

The disinformation project included infiltrators in protests and political Instagram pages like ’Garfo na caveira’ (‘Fork in the skull’) and ’Não breca meu trampo’ (‘don’t stop my hustle’) created eight days after the mobilisation that paralysed over ten Brazilian states and became known as  ‘Breque nos apps’ (A Break on the Apps). The monitoring of activists and anti-protest propaganda lasted at least a year, according to the report. In one of the meetings disclosed by Pública, coordinators from Benjamim Comunicação, hired by iFood, celebrated how the campaign ’killed’ one of the movement’s leaders, motoboy Paulo Lima, known as Galo, from Entregadores Antifascistas. The strategy corresponds to a practice known as ‘marketing 4.0’, which involves promoting an idea or product without revealing who is behind it.

A few months after this campaign, in September 2022, The Intercept brought to light a draft bill written by iFood itself, aimed at preventing the recognition of an employment relationship by creating a new worker category: the ‘independent service provider’  The idea was to replace the employer-employee relationship with a ‘commercial partnership’, which would guarantee social security contributions for workers — and nothing else. The bill was to be presented by Deputy Luiza Canziani of the PSD (the Social-Democratic Party, which is right-wing, despite the name), president since 2021 of the Digital Front, a group of lawmakers backed by companies like Google and iFood. The content generator for this legislative bloc is the Instituto Cidadania Digital (Digital Citizenship Institute), a think tank co-owned by João Sabino, who also serves as iFood’s director of public policy. The group of lawmakers, which does not hide its preference for legislating in favour of apps and big tech, was dubbed the ‘Like Caucus’ by The Intercept.

These pressure campaigns have been immensely successful in either completely blocking or at least limiting the scope of regulatory initiatives which would have interfered with the interests of big tech. Despite promises by the new government of Lula to finally make progress in terms of regulating digital platforms, big tech firms are still managing to get their way.  During the 2022 presidential election campaign — a year that began with the number of platform workers surpassing 1.5 million — then-candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva promised to promote extensive debate for drafting new labour legislation, with special attention to entrepreneurs, platform workers, domestic workers, and home-based workers. On the first day of his government, former metalworker Luiz Marinho, during his inauguration as Minister of Labour and Employment, advocated for the regulation of app-based work. That same January, the federal government created a Forum with about fifty researchers to discuss not only the regulation of app-based work but also the platforms themselves. 

Countering the blackmail of big tech...The sluggish progress and blockage of the legislation are certainly influenced by corporate lobbying, which, although unregulated in Brazil, happens openly. And thanks to aforementioned smearing and disinformation campaigns did not need to rely on mass media campaigns: they legally participated in drafting the proposal itself. ‘We had lobbying that blocked the approval of Bill 2630, and now we’ve had lobbying that, instead of blocking a bill in Congress, influenced the very construction of this proposal’ , declared Fairwork researcher Jonas Valente in March 2024.

Watered down, Bill 12/2024 establishes a minimum wage of R$32.10 per hour for workers, proportionally equivalent to the national minimum wage — but only applicable between accepting a trip and reaching the destination. It also mandates social security contributions, with workers paying 7.5 percent and companies 20 percent. While there are modest advances, a fundamental impasse remains: the only measure that would truly guarantee labour dignity for platform work is recognising an employment relationship. On this front, the proposed legislation did little more than update iFood’s ‘independent service provider’ under the label of ‘platform-based self-employed worker’, a new category that, like its predecessor, avoids recognising any actual labour relationship between workers and platforms.

The stagnation of the legislation and the ineffectiveness of dialogue between workers and platforms led delivery workers to organise a new ‘Breque dos apps’ in March 2025. The strike occurred in about twenty state capitals between March 31 and April 1, demanding higher minimum delivery fees and pay per kilometre driven. In São Paulo, iFood met with some representatives after protests at the company’s headquarters in Osasco, a city in the metropolitan region. In an hour-long meeting, they reiterated their demands to João Sabino, the same iFood director of government and public relations, who said he would take the discussion to the board — without setting a date for another meeting.

In a statement, the Brazilian Association of Mobility and Technology (Amobitec), active in the working group that led to Bill 12/2024, said it respects the right to protest and that its member companies maintain open dialogue with workers. The same association expanded its government engagement in early 2025, partnering with the Ministry of Racial Equality to create anti-racism awareness content for drivers, delivery partners, and service users. The partnership is little more than a typical liberal diversity gesture — a placebo. After all, demands for employment recognition, class status, and other labour measures that would actually improve work quality and curb precarity remain ignored.

This pro-business watering down was predictable, given the lack of parity among stakeholders in Brazil’s working group. Even under traditional negotiation conditions between two class entities, parity would be unlikely. But in this case, the disparity was extreme, as workers are not even a formal category, let alone capable of bargaining power. However much it’s said that the ‘uberised’ worker ‘has no boss’, the boss is the app, which knows more about consumers and workers than either party knows about themselves — knowledge deep and broad enough to pit them against each other. This was the tactic that allowed iFood and others to completely water down not only Brazil’s regulatory proposal but also the organisation of its precariat workers as a class.

In this bleak scenario of government hesitation, compounded by class disorganisation and societal dependence, platforms have essentially taken the three previous spheres hostage. Some pressing questions then arise: how can conscious users, researchers, and other political actors oxygenate the existing resistance from the ground up, both in daily life and in movements like the ‘Breque dos apps’? How can a communications front counter the lobbying — both legislative and media — promoted by platform capitalists? How can lawmakers be convinced to measure precarity as such, not as employment? And finally, how can the social value of labour rights be reclaimed in an increasingly liberalised society? 

Brazil, a country that has in recent years demonstrated its desire — sometimes proudly, sometimes discreetly — to assert its national sovereignty vis-à-vis the interference of the US, and which has pursued a long-term agenda to move closer to the ambitious goal of digital sovereignty, offers us some food for thought about the difficulty of the contemporary technological terrain. Furthermore, it alerts us to the fact that any politician or activist who wants to achieve even limited elements of digital sovereignty needs to prepare for a major communication and legal pushback from US big tech companies. Yet, paradoxically, the volume and intensity of lobbying and disinformation campaigns also suggest that these very companies start to fear more and more the fact that in the near future, countries in regions like Latin America and Europe that have very limited digital capacity may grow ever more restless about the fact of having become technological colonies. The battle will be hard, but not everything is lost.

Brazil, a country that has in recent years demonstrated its desire — sometimes proudly, sometimes discreetly — to assert its national sovereignty vis-à-vis the interference of the US, and which has pursued a long-term agenda to move closer to the ambitious goal of digital sovereignty, offers us some food for thought about the difficulty of the contemporary technological terrain. Furthermore, it alerts us to the fact that any politician or activist who wants to achieve even limited elements of digital sovereignty needs to prepare for a major communication and legal pushback from US big tech companies. Yet, paradoxically, the volume and intensity of lobbying and disinformation campaigns also suggest that these very companies start to fear more and more the fact that in the near future, countries in regions like Latin America and Europe that have very limited digital capacity may grow ever more restless about the fact of having become technological colonies. The battle will be hard, but not everything is lost.

by Vanessa Oliveira...Vanessa Oliveira is a professor of journalism at Mackenzie Presbyterian University and PUC-SP, and a researcher at the Alameda Institute

TECH

New 3D-printing and manufacturing techniques grant more control over energetic material behavior

Much like baking the perfect cake involves following a list of ingredients and instructions, manufacturing energetic materials—explosives, pyrotechnics and propellants—requires precise formulations, conditions and procedures to ensure they are safe and perform as intended.

Because any small tweaks or environmental changes can dramatically alter how energetic materials function, Purdue University engineer Monique McClain is developing state-of-the-art tools and methods to control these materials' behavior throughout the manufacturing process and down to the particle level.

McClain, a Purdue assistant professor of mechanical engineering, specializes in the "upstream" or earlier manufacturing stages, such as selecting binders with unique properties to hold energetic particles together and determining how they are mixed to create the final formulation. She focuses on how manufacturing alters the structure and mechanical properties of an energetic material and, in turn, how those changes affect performance and sensitivity.

"An energetic material's manufacturing history, from beginning to end, strongly determines how it behaves during combustion or detonation," McClain said. "We want to ensure that each step is catered toward the material and its intended use so that we're getting a final product that functions in the way we expect."

Much of McClain's body of work focuses on additive manufacturing or 3D printing of energetics. Traditionally, energetic materials have been manufactured using processes such as casting or milling, which prioritize efficiency and scalability. But while these methods are ideal for large batch production, customization is difficult, thereby limiting innovation and compromising on optimal performance.

Additive manufacturing, on the other hand, gives researchers the freedom to experiment with complex geometries and tune specific properties such as burn rate and blast shape.

For instance, McClain and her research team design intentional defects—referred to as pores—to either increase or decrease the likelihood of ignition when materials are subjected to various conditions such as friction, impact or extreme temperatures. Additive manufacturing makes this possible because researchers can customize a 3D printer's nozzles and program it to print specific shapes and patterns.

"Pores and defects are often inevitable, but we can control how and where they show up," McClain said. "When we focus on the microstructure of these materials, we can deliberately select particle sizes or compaction schemes to produce preferred pore distributions that enable the behaviors that we want to see."

Additive manufacturing also makes it easier to experiment with multiple types of materials. In addition to her work with pores, McClain explores how energetic particles adhere to various binders through the 3D-printing process and how to print propellant materials made of multiple materials with disparate characteristics.

            Profilometry of PVDF thermoplastic layers. Credit: npj Advanced Manufacturing (2025)

In a study published last spring in npj Advanced Manufacturing, McClain and her team looked at adhesion between two polymers with different mechanical properties—a stiff thermoplastic and a soft elastomer—that have been combined into one structure. They found that the 3D-printed surface texture and type of thermoplastic greatly affected how well the two materials blended and held together.

"This study provides a framework and method for studying adhesion of dissimilar materials. This is important because no such guide—and, in turn, little data—on this topic previously existed," McClain said. "The ability to print energetics made of multiple materials gives us even more options for controlling behavior and improving safety."

Although 3D printing is a major part of McClain's work, she also explores how to improve more traditional manufacturing methods.

McClain developed a patent-pending method for manufacturing a polymer-bonded explosive (PBX) molding powder that saves time, eliminates potential hazards and reduces manufacturing waste. McClain disclosed this technology to the Purdue Innovates Office of Technology Commercialization, which has been applied for a patent through the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to protect the intellectual property.

The method involves mixing energetics with a binder that's been partially cured or hardened prior to compaction within a mold. McClain found a sweet spot of time—approximately eight hours—where the binder becomes solid enough to prevent leakage during compaction, but not so hardened that it becomes brittle and prone to cracking.

"We aimed to provide a repeatable, tunable method for fabricating solid energetic composites, like PBX, with uniform mechanical and chemical properties," McClain said. "We succeeded in developing a streamlined set of steps where researchers can make slight adjustments based on their goals for the final product."

While following the proper steps of the energetics manufacturing process helps to ensure a safe, well-designed final product, external conditions also influence its performance.

According to McClain, factors such as room temperature can dramatically affect a material's printability and behavior.

"Environmental control matters much more than many people expect," McClain said. "You could print the same mixture twice in the same day and they might behave in completely different ways if something like the temperature or humidity level in the room changed."

Ultimately, McClain advocates for a holistic approach to manufacturing rather than one driven by technology advancement. She wants researchers to avoid "force fitting" materials into a particular machine or method and instead consider which geometries and properties are required to create the desired effect.

"If you need a complex internal structure, additive wins. If you need a highly dense mixture or a large batch of material, conventional methods are often more appropriate. To get the best of both worlds, we can also incorporate molding and milling alongside 3D printing," McClain said. "As long as we understand every aspect of the process, from selecting material all the way to packaging and storing them, we'll be able to make the best and safest choice."

Provided by Purdue University

HMD

HMD Terra M: The ‘Tank’ phone

In a market dominated by fragile glass screens and sleek designs, HMD Global has decided to launch the opposite. The company, known for being the home of Nokia phones, has now made the HMD Terra M available in select European markets, a robust device that doesn't aim to be a smartphone for the masses, but rather a survival tool for professionals.

HMD describes it not just as a mobile phone, but as a “fully managed communications ecosystem.” The goal is clear: to serve those who work in environments where an iPhone or Galaxy wouldn't survive five minutes, from dusty construction sites to busy hospitals and airport runways.

The Terra M's design is utilitarian and brutalist. The device boasts a trinity of resistance certifications that command respect:

IP68: Resistance to immersion in water and dust.

IP69K: The highest possible rating, guaranteeing protection against high-pressure and high-temperature water jets.

MIL-STD-810H: Military-grade resistance to shocks, drops, and extreme temperatures.

Unlike modern smartphones, the Terra M relies on large physical keys, designed for use with gloves, and a 2.8-inch touchscreen that also responds to touch with gloves. The 2,510 mAh battery, while seemingly small by 2026 standards, is sufficient to power this efficient hardware during long work shifts.

"Push-to-Talk" Ecosystem...What distinguishes the Terra M from an old "brick" is its software and connectivity. The phone is designed to replace traditional radios, integrating Push-to-Talk (PTT) capabilities over cellular networks.

Through partnerships with Zello and Mobile Tornado, the device offers instant and secure group communication, with dedicated and programmable hardware keys (including an emergency button). Connectivity is managed by Lyfo, which ensures intelligent network switching between carriers to guarantee that the signal never fails, even in border or remote areas.

For businesses, data security is as important as physical resilience. HMD promises five years of quarterly security updates, a rare commitment in this segment.

The pre-installed software reflects this "no distractions" philosophy:

Threema: For end-to-end encrypted messaging, ensuring that corporate communications remain private.

Joplin: For secure note and knowledge management.

OsmAnd: Offline and privacy-focused browsing, essential for operations in network-free locations.

The HMD Terra M is the antithesis of the consumer smartphone. It's not for watching TikTok or playing games, but it promises to be the best friend of those who need to communicate in situations where failure is not an option.

by mundophone