Tools: Latest Escaping The Trap Of Us Tech Dependence

Canada needs real digital sovereignty, not our own digital colonizers

Paris Marx is a Canadian tech critic and host of the award-winning Tech Won’t Save Us podcast. He writes the Disconnect newsletter and is the author of Road to Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong about the Future of Transportation.

The recent US invasion of Venezuela and the saber-rattling toward many other countries, including Greenland and Denmark, have given new energy to concern about dependence on the United States and how governments should react. Given that I am Canadian, I’ve been thinking a lot about what this means for my country over the past year, given its close proximity and deep ties to our neighbour to the south. Now, more than ever, it’s time to take bold action — especially on the tech front.

I’ve already written about the wider implications of what we saw from the United States in the opening days of 2026, but I also prepared this piece last year making an argument not only for why Canada needs to pursue digital sovereignty, but also why it doesn’t benefit from the current arrangement. It’s not just how dependence on the US constraints sovereignty and the Canadian government’s ability to make decisions about what happens within its own territory, but also how it sends the bulk of the economic gains south of the border too.

I wrote this piece for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, and they’ve been kind enough to let me share it with you. Enjoy!

In February, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order sanctioning the International Criminal Court (ICC) and its chief prosecutor, British lawyer Karim Khan. The move came in response to the court’s decision to issue an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the crimes against humanity he committed in the ongoing Gaza genocide.

The move was outrageous for many reasons, and not even the first time the United States had sanctioned an ICC chief prosecutor. Khan’s predecessor was also in Trump’s crosshairs when she opened an investigation into crimes in Afghanistan, where the actions of the United States would not be excluded.

The withdrawal of service showed European lawmakers how vulnerable their access to the technologies they rely on not just in their personal lives, but to run governments and key institutions. They were also facing escalating pressure from the Trump administration and the billionaires of Silicon Valley to roll back their world-leading tech regulations,

Source: HackerNews