The development economists Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson urge the world's citizens to keep tech policy out of the hands of “hubristic technologists” in their 2023 book, Power and Progress. The two MIT professors were among three (along with Yale professor James Robinson) economists who won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 2024, for historical, cross-cultural studies in how institutions are formed and affect the economic growth (and decline) of states and societies over time.

Their viewpoint and work is prescient at this particular moment. AI optimism and the consequent, dramatic projections of data hub growth it will drive are topic number one in the tech industry and among the top worldwide issues today.

This moment in time presents another potential inflection point for developing nations to close the gap between themselves and the developing world. Economically, this gap runs to 10X between the lowest income countries and the world average. Technologically, the gap expands logarithmically to 10,000X when looking at data center footprints among the nations of the world versus the world average. The gap continues to widen, of course, when looking at the least-developed nations compared to the most highly developed.

Thus, another potential outcome from this inflection point shows the developed world increasing its distance from less-developed nations and the 21st century becoming notable for exacerbating, rather than addressing, digital divides, income inequality, and worldwide social unrest and disruption.

Acemoglu and Johnson make note of how great ideas from people such as Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, and Lebiniz at the dawn of the scientific age in the 16th and 17th centuries took years or decades to spread, be read and built upon during those pre-electric, slow-moving days. Today's world of near-instantaneous communications and facile transportation amps things up, spreads information and misinformation more quickly than human brains can adequately process it, and can reinforce the global financial status quo more easily than effect real change.

IDCA studies digital infrastructure and all that goes with it, across nations, regions and income tiers, with a unique approach that takes into consideration the relative conditions found in each nation, and what specific ideas, plans, and programs are needed to achieve socioeconomic progress in a fair-minded way.

Data creates powerful tools, which in turn leverage insights gleaned from data into powerful programs. But there must be a willingness by investors, governments, and global organizations to see the big picture, and to cooperate when it's in everyone's interest to do so.

Adam Smith, in his foundational Wealth of Nations (written in the propitious year of 1776), refers to a person's rational self-interest in seeking to do in business what works best for that person, albeit tempered by open markets that create Smith's famous “invisible hand.”

It is in one's rational self-interest to create a monopoly, too, and this is something hubristic technologists do well. But this does not create healthy business environments or societies, but rather, a metastatic, Randian form of self-interest that obscures the view of all eight billion people on the planet and the need to create functioning, peaceful societies.

Thus, we must advocate that our latest AI-infused shiny toys be developed as widely as possible. Widely distributed AI hubs can indeed be a key part of addressing tech and economic disparities.

It is not wrong for any particular nation – say, the United States – to pursue a strong tech policy and to build as many new AI centers and hubs as possible. It is also not wrong for investors, governments, and businesses to seek success in all global markets and work to improve economic conditions and lives in as many of those markets as possible.