e-Con e-News

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‘Before you study the economics, study the economists!’

e-Con e-News 26 October – 01 November 2025

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‘Who will own the data? Who will own the infrastructure?

Who will regulate & govern? &, who has the technological

capabilities to define the development of this technology?’

– Shiran Illanperuma & Vijay Prashad (see ee Focus)

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The US & EU governments seem to be in an awful hurry to digitally scan Sri Lanka. The US-funded economic thinktank Verité’s Sri Lanka Economic Policy Group member Mick Moore is insisting on maps that ‘uniquely identify all properties using aerial imagery… Geographic Information Systems (GISs) [that] collect standardised external data & photographs without entering buildings.’ Moore’s pretext is the ‘weak’ collection of ‘Property Taxes in Sri Lanka’, with such mapping offeringa ‘More Effective ValuationMethod’(see ee Quotes). Moore is apparently an expert on tax evasion, including by multinational corporations (MNCs). But he is yet to map how England’s Unilever, or Ceylon Tobacco Co or ICI-CIC have evaded their duties to Sri Lanka’s treasury for over 100 years, right here. Moore was anointed an ‘Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his services to international development’. As we deduced before, ‘development’ is a euphemism to replace ‘colonialism’ concocted by one of Unilever’s many Public Relations (PR) agencies – so we can well imagine who Officer Moore’s tax expertise is designed to serve.

     Meanwhile, the pretext for the European Union (EU) to demand the mapping of Sri Lanka is that the new EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), ‘prohibits the import & export of goods produced from deforested land’. Really? So, how have all these plantations been set up? By conserving immaculately virgin growth! The EU claims it is funding a Sri Lanka Ministry of Plantations’ ‘national program to survey & map all smallholder rubber lands across Sri Lanka’. Here, the pretext for digital mapping is that ‘all rubber & related products entering the European market must be certified as deforestation-free’ (see ee Quotes).

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Two weeks ago, Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court dismissed 2 fundamental rights petitions filed by former Minister Wimal Weerawansa and others, to annul the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed with India on a controversial digital identity card project. India’s National Institute for Smart Government is about to implement Sri Lanka’s national digital identification system. ‘The bidding for this project was restricted to Indian firms’, observes Shiran Illanperuma & Vijay Prashad (I&P) in their incisive investigation into ‘AI & Digital Sovereignty’ (see ee Focus). Raising concerns ‘over the security of data as well as the neglect of local talent and capabilities,’ they ask, ‘Should local firms be given priority when developing digital infrastructure? If they lack experience or expertise, how best can policy be shaped to address these deficiencies?’

     I&P also point to Elon Musk’s Starlink being granted a license to operate internet services by the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka (TRCSL). Even President AK Dissanayake has ‘raised national security concerns that local authorities have no access to Starlink’s data system’. While the capitalist mass media has fabricated Musk as a brilliant individual entrepreneur, I&P point to his links to military intelligence spooks in the USA (not to mention England & still white-dominated South Africa), and how Starlink ‘operates without authorisation in countries such as Cuba & Venezuela’, which the US keeps threatening to imminently invade. Myanmar’s military recently freed more than 2,000 workers held in ‘scam camps’ near Thailand’s border, and confiscated 30 Starlink terminals. Musk’s SpaceX then belatedly claimed that it cut satellite communication links to more than 2,500 devices ‘illegally being used in Myanmar’. Really! So, someone bought, smuggled & deployed 2,500 devices in Myanmar without Starlink’s prior knowledge? Then how perceptive are they?

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‘Tech companies like Google, Amazon & OpenAI

are pouring billions into nuclear start-ups like

Kairos Power, X-Energy & Oklo to help power

their data centers for artificial intelligence.’

– see ee Security, How China Raced Ahead

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And, lo and behold, Artificial Intelligence (AI) turns out to be not that ‘artificial’ at all, says I&P. There would ‘No AI!’ without the labour (‘blood, flesh & bone’) of millions of workers in Africa, who mine the requisite minerals and label the data of the Large Language Models (LLMs) at minimal wages, and make OpenAI’s ChatGPT & Google’s Gemini possible. I&P point to the ‘3 Global North companies – SubCom, Alcatel Submarine Networks, Nippon Electric Co – [that] produce 87% of the undersea cables through which the internet operates.’

     They also point to the 3 US companies – AWS, Azure, Google Cloud – [that] own 68% of the world’s cloud infrastructure.’ In October, Sri Lanka’s Government Cloud (LGC) services were ‘disrupted’, midst a plethora of expensive conferences and resulting media on cybersecurity. Meanwhile, we are yet to learn how and why the ‘disruption’ really occurred. The LGC services include, ‘the Police Clearance System of the Department of Police’. The vital question, I&P ask, remains: ‘Who will own the technology, how will it be used, and in whose interests?

     The cloud disruption in Sri Lanka occurred midst the US administration issuing another travel warning to tourists visiting Sri Lanka, of an imminent threat of violence, terrorism, & landmines! Landmines, supposedly cleared just months earlier, were then suddenly uncovered in Jaffna (as ee noted, 18 Oct 2025). Many of the cloud services being provided in Sri Lanka are linked to US and their subordinate colonial pitbulls like England and Israel, etc. So, what’s the hurry to map Sri Lanka? Is it in case they wish to reproduce their attempted annihilation of occupied Palestine?

     It is then no surprise to learn from I&P that the 68-page long draft report by the 2024 Committee to Formulate an Artificial Intelligence Strategy (CFSAI) for Sri Lanka, does not dare even mention the words ‘sovereign’ or ‘sovereignty’! I&P declare that, ‘apart from China, the Global South does not have the capital or the technology to develop a sovereign, or even semi-sovereign, digital infrastructure’, and calls for the ‘Global South’ (which ee sees as yet another imprecise misnomer like ‘Third World’ & ‘Western’) to develop a united technological response to this clear and crying necessity. They then detail certain steps that have to be taken by Asian and African and no-Anglo-American organizations to counter this almost monopoly power (see ee Focus).

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This ee Focus also looks at some curious market research by the Indian company 6Wresearch that forecasts Sri Lanka’s industrial machinery & equipment market, for 2025-31. They claim that the dominant players in this market in Sri Lanka are led by the USA and their colonial satrapies Japan & Germany. These include ‘international brands’ like: the USA’s Caterpillar Inc and Deere & Co, Japan’s Komatsu and Hitachi Construction Machinery Co, and Germany’s Liebherr-International AG. The USA’s Caterpillar Inc holds the largest share in the Sri Lankan market. ‘These companies are investing in R&D to produce innovative & efficient machinery & equipment to expand their reach within the market.’ And the 6Wresearch report promises ‘actionable intelligence & reliable forecasts tailored to emerging regional needs’ (see ee Focus). Of course, this research makes no mention of the private vehicles (by Tata & Toyota) imported at great cost to the economy, which have little impact on our productive capabilities. Our question remains: why Sri Lanka cannot demand that these companies ‘make’ these industrial goods here? Instead, we accumulate vast debts (much of which we will have to pay back in 2028 – our moment of reckoning it seems, see ee Quotes), so we need to continue to echo SBD’s lament about a ruling class that refuses to make even a pin: ‘How long can this keep going on?’

     6wResearch shows that Sri Lanka’s core industry has been hijacked. ee has led the way in Sri Lanka in pointing out that our national priority has to be about formulating a plan & program to develop modern industrialization. This can only be achieved by a strong socialist state led by peasants & workers; the private corporations who monopolize the nation’s resources, simply refuse to develop the country. We have also pointed out, in line with Karl Marx’s determinations, that modern capitalism has long (since the 1860s!) been about making machines that make machines…

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‘The economic doctrine [that] no manufacturing industries

should be developed in the colonies, has undoubtedly

continued to influence [the world] division of labour

even after the colonies became independent.’

– SBD de Silva

This ee continues Chapter 3 of SBD de Silva’s classic The Political Economy of Underdevelopment. Last ee’s SBD excerpt pointed to the popularized canard that Sri Lanka’s home market is too small to develop industrialization. He observed that the settler colonies started out with even smaller markets than Sri Lanka has. In this ee Focus, SBD contradicts the widespread notion that European industrialization was a consequence of colonialism. SBD tracked how our countries became providers of raw materials to those countries, but he insisted that certain industries had been developed in Europe long before the Europeans began such large-scale draining of natural resources from our countries. He declared, ‘It is technological developments in the metropolitan countries which created the demand for primary products.’ Their further industrialization then caused a technological disparity with much of Asia & Africa, which SBD believed could only be overcome by a ‘Tokugawa solution’. Tokugawa refers to the ruling shogunate in Japan (1603-1867), during which an industrial bourgeoisie arose in that Asian country, by blocking the entry of foreign merchants and their goods. Yet SBD de Silva also prioritized the changes in the internal social structures that enabled Japan’s accumulation of capital.

     Once the European and their settler colonial governments took a technological lead, policies such as shipping policy & freight rates strengthened the disparities between countries (freight rates were set not just by distance, but also due to monopoly or collusion, navigation laws, differential inward & outward cargoes). He then noted the crucial role that tariffs play in protecting their processing industries, and why, for instance, it became cheaper to export copra rather than coconut oil. Finally, he explained how it is the location of the investor that promotes industrialization. While there is constant call for FDIs (foreign direct investments), SBD would always ask, ‘Investment for what?’ Sri Lanka’s main problem is that it is controlled by absentee investors, who want quick returns and have no interest in the long-term development of the country. He then showed the type of accounting frauds that companies such as England’s Lipton’s were able to practice in Sri Lanka. He also noted, how, due to the labour-intensive nature of the plantation system, even a slight wage increase in the plantations results in a major reduction of profits.

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‘A garment sector worker in the US earns approximately

$15.5/ hour (US Bureau of Labor Statistics 2023),

whereas a worker in Sri Lanka performing

the same task would receive $0.73/hour’

– Dhanusha Pathirana

The wages paid in the labour-intensive clothing trade in Sri Lanka provide a ‘stark & concrete’ illustration of unequal exchange in the world, writes Dhanusha Pathirana in this ee Focus. He points out how the sustained prosperity of the imperialist world is ‘predicated on the vast systematic appropriation of labour & resources from the Global South’. While, economists like to talk about theories about ‘comparative advantage’ and getting better prices for our products, he squarely locates this suppurating ‘drain’ of surplus through the unequal wages paid to workers in our world. Unlike many analysts, he seeks to provide a ‘path’ to break dependency by targeting certain sectors like the garment trade. While Pathirana ignores SBD de Silva’s declaration that, even if the ‘drain’ is blocked and the surplus is retained in Sri Lanka, there is no class in Sri Lanka dedicated to accumulation; even while being optimistic that this ‘government placed into power by the masses against the established political & economic order’ is ‘uniquely positioned’ to gather a regional coalition to pursue justice for the Global South, harnessing its rising economic power. But what would justice entail? Equal exploitation?

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‘The CIABOC (Commission to Investigate Allegations

of Bribery or Corruption)… is mulling over a proposal

by some of those arraigned, or to be arraigned before

it on charges of bribery or corruption, that they simply

pay back the pocketed loot and carry on.’

– Sunday Times Editorial

ee found a curious editorial in last week’s Sunday Times of how the ‘pay & commute’ system that exists for traffic fines, relate to corrupt practices inherited from England’s colonial Establishment Code, where its FR (Financial Regulations) provide for certain public servants to pay their way through serious offences. There is also no benefit, apparently, only expense, for the state to prosecute certain criminal practices.

     Talking about the ‘corruption’ of politicians alone is a big ‘beeg’ business for media and for envoys of certain countries. Not a week goes by without a lecture from the US or German or EU gaggle about how corrupt & black we are, and how pure & green & white they are. Corruption is apparently pigmented. Not a week goes by without them threatening some Asian or African or non-Anglo-American country, or the whole world, with annihilation. How green & carbon-conscious & eco-friendly are their wars? Or how clean, the continued underdevelopment & impoverishment of our countries? They feel they do not need to tell us.

     This ee Focus therefore continues Gustavus Myers’ 1917 History of Tammany Hall. This excerpt describes the workings of the USA’s main municipality, where a city boss had the direct power to appoint and supervise many departments with expenditures of many millions of dollars annually. Myers described the rise of the ‘procurement’ business, where supplies were purchased without tender, contracts inflated by fictitious valuations, documents falsified, and payrolls padded with ‘names’ who never do any work, nor are qualified to do so, and, where despite the proving of ‘maladministration, remissness and grave abuses’, politicians kept being reinstalled and re-elected. Defective supplies and streets and transportation lines were laid on irregular routes to profit real-estate schemes, blocking court trials, with criminal officials declared incompetent rather than corrupt. Despite officials being declared ‘reformers’, amidst miles of headlines about the evils of corruption, no high officials were ever indicted and convicted.

     Yet, as the Canadian Communist Stanley Brehaut Ryerson noted: Myers’ major problem was his empiricist focus on corruption (naming names & the crimes behind their fortunes) as the root of all evil, to the exclusion of deeper analyses, of the ‘collective capitalist’. ‘Corruption and the suborning of the state for the private enrichment of elites has been the constant corollary of ‘free enterprise’ since its inception.’ It is not only the who & where but how the nation’s wealth is produced socially by millions and hijacked for private enrichment through public misery. To maintain their private power, capitalists have to concentrate & centralize their monopolies, not only in ‘transport but also production itself enables an alliance between government and the stock-exchange,’ which formed the ‘basis for the state monopoly capitalism that was to emerge’ in the 20^th century. Ryerson concluded: ‘Myers’s handling of the workings of this process is marked by both the enthralling ‘detective-story’ quality of the exposures – & a theoretical weakness. Capitalism is not corruption alone…’ (see ee 17 May 2025)

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Contents:

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Why is The US & EU in a Mighty Hurry to Digitally Map Sri Lanka?