Latin America is becoming a laboratory for tech-supremacism

Latin America is becoming the political and ideological laboratory for tech-supremacism. With Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel recently relocating to Argentina, and the explicit influence of Trumpism shaping the discourse of the region’s latest presidential elections, we are witnessing a dangerous transition. This new model combines extreme corporate deregulation, biometric surveillance and unconditional geopolitical alignment with Washington. Traditional elites are embracing this far-right blueprint because it allows them to weaponise racial profiling under the guise of “law and order”, aiming to restore colonial hierarchies and roll back the gains achieved by social movements.

On July 6, Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro denounced alleged cyber-interference in the country’s presidential run-off. In Peru, candidate Roberto Sanchez also alleged fraud following Keiko Fujimori’s victory. While neither of these claims has been judicially corroborated, the victors in both electoral processes fit a common pattern: they are far-right candidates who champion “tough-on-crime” narratives, align themselves closely with the United States, and push for the incorporation of artificial intelligence into law enforcement and security management.

Donald Trump has reinvigorated the Monroe Doctrine with the “Trump Corollary”. The National Security Strategy of the United States explicitly outlines the goal of expanding its list of regional allies “by cultivating and strengthening new partners while bolstering our own nation’s appeal as the Hemisphere’s economic and security partner of choice”. Where there were once military coups, lawfare and the coercive leverage of multilateral credit organisations, a new pincer movement now operates, combining Trumpist financing with Silicon Valley’s surveillance infrastructure. The novelty lies in the degree of structural dependency these tech corporations manage to embed within the state apparatus itself. This is evident even within the United States, given the Department of Defense’s transfer of crucial military functions to Palantir Technologies, the company co-founded by Peter Thiel and Alex Karp.

Within this architecture, Argentina has consolidated its position as the Global South’s primary experimental station. Peter Thiel, cofounder of PayPal and Palantir, has taken up residence in Buenos Aires. Coincidentally, Javier Milei’s anarcho-capitalist administration recently introduced a legislative incentive framework for artificial intelligence investments, based on deregulation, limited liability and a competitive tax environment (known locally as the Super RIGI). In other words, it offers extreme corporate benefits of a distinctly extractivist nature: cheap energy, customs exemptions and the exploitation of critical resources like water and land to cool and sustain global data-processing infrastructure. Tech-supremacists share Milei’s belief in the supposed superiority of the West, rooted in its defence of capitalism, which they equate with freedom, understood strictly as a free market economy, free from all government control and dilution. In fact, Milei introduced the Super RIGI project in an op-ed for The Financial Times, opening with praise for the Dutch East India Company (VOC), a corporation that fused corporate and governmental power. It was granted a commercial monopoly, its own army, currency and legal system, and the power to declare war. It built its wealth on colonial exploitation and the enslavement of hundreds of thousands of people. In this sense, the Super RIGI is the legal framework for a foreign-flagged VOC to operate on Argentine soil. Milei celebrates the VOC as the birthplace of limited liability, “the invention that allowed capitalism to develop its full potential”, a supposed gift from the West to the world, upon which Western superiority rests.

Shortly before Thiel’s arrival, Argentina’s Ministry of Human Capital announced on social media the creation of a social information integration platform called the “Social Digital Twin” (Gemelo Digital Social), designed to detect patterns, simulate scenarios, and project potential outcomes of various public policies. Although Palantir offers a “Digital Twin” service, the government’s announcement provided no details regarding the providers. There was also no information on operational mechanisms, algorithm training, profiling, personal data protection, bias mitigation or human oversight. A formal request for information submitted to the ministry by members of the National Congress remains unanswered.

What is thoroughly documented, however, is the expansion of the country’s biometric surveillance apparatus and its associated risks. These technologies are deployed asymmetrically against racialised populations; as experts note, predictive policing tools that rely on arrest records and crime data encode racial bias because they are based on over-policing in Black and Brown neighbourhoods. In May, Argentina’s Ministry of Security signed an agreement with the FBI to use the CODIS genetic profiling software and issued a resolution expanding mandatory genetic registration to any indicted citizen, not just those convicted. Concurrently, Buenos Aires Mayor Jorge Macri triumphantly announced the city’s participation in the “new DNA Bank for criminals”. Using “law and order” rhetoric, he also launched a selective system governing movement, residency and access to rights within the city, based on territorial, social and racial criteria. This was coupled with urban segregation initiatives such as “Operation Wall” (Operacion Muro) at the city limits, described as a barrier against the “barbarism” of the suburban outskirts.

The Trump Corollary relies on its own intellectual infrastructure, formulating discourses on Western supremacy, “borders and order” and the criminalisation of racialised populations and social protest, which local allies then implement in their own territories. In think tanks like the Adam Smith Center for Economic Freedom at Florida International University, former presidents and leaders of the Latin American right, from Fujimori to Macri, including the former OAS secretary-general who legitimised the 2019 Bolivian coup, share both refuge and a political playbook. The internal justification lies in the restoration of cultural supremacism, as local oligarchies construct an internal enemy that conveniently overlaps with historically marginalised sectors, a legacy of ancient colonial structures.

Ultimately, the real threat of Trumpism and tech-supremacism in Latin America lies not in their capacity for technological modernisation but in their function as technologies of oppression. The submission of regional elites to Silicon Valley giants is a surrender of sovereignty, driven by their rejection of the democratic advancement of racialised majorities. By privatising social control, implementing biological databases of innocent citizens, relinquishing sovereignty and handing over natural resources to power foreign servers, local oligarchies prove they are willing to transform their own countries into algorithmic protectorates in order to preserve their colonial privileges.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.