If international aid is to help advance the United States’ national interests, then it’s encouraging that the new Digital Policy released last week by the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, explicitly frames digital development as an instrument for countering China. After all, digital infrastructure is critical for promoting Washington’s vision for the world order, so supporting digital transformations and the development of digital markets should be a U.S. foreign policy priority.
But while USAID’s new policy strikes the right notes and reflects a strong understanding of the context and stakes of global technology, it remains somewhat limited in its scope and, critically, in its funding. For all its stated commitment to more proactively shaping global technology policy, Washington continues to underestimate the importance of investing in digital development as a tool of foreign policy.
Digital development is a critical and underappreciated global frontline. Despite gains in connectivity worldwide, some 2.7 billion people still lack internet access. These gaps, which used to be called “the digital divide,” are only likely to worsen with the rise of artificial intelligence, or AI, and the increasingly stark geographic concentrations of computational and data power.