Intermediation platforms and geopolitical asymmetries: lessons from a pandemic

To a large extent, and particularly before vaccines became available, human societies owed their resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic to non-pharmaceutical interventions (i.e. social distancing combined with more invasive digital systems). This chapter considers the digital applications developed during 2020–2021, the first two years of the pandemic. It introduces a typology based on the services offered and the data flows they require, between both public and private actors. A detailed timeline of these developments shows that countries’ strategies have evolved in strong coherence with their overall digital policy. This study demonstrates that this exogenous crisis has reinforced the critical role of intermediation platforms for maintaining society's essential functions. Their increased centrality has contributed to intensifying information asymmetries and power imbalances, already at stake before the pandemic, both between platforms and states, as well as between countries, leading to new geopolitical equilibria.