Data Grab: The New Colonialism | Ulises Mejias

Jan 27, 2026

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Data is the resource, and our lives are the territory. Ulises Mejias, co-author of Data Grab: The New Colonialism of Big Tech and How to Fight Back, reflects on data colonialism as a new social order that extends the extractive logic of historical colonialism into our everyday lives. Highlights include:

How terms of digital service agreements, written in dense legalese, resemble past colonial proclamations to indigenous people intended to dispossess;
How data colonialism, a system of continuous data extraction from our everyday lives, mirrors traditional colonialism in that both generate wealth for the few and enable new forms of social and behavioral control;
Why colonialism was essential for the development of capitalism and remains central in understanding today's data-driven capitalism;
How data colonialism uses the 4 X's of traditional colonialism - explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate - to move into new 'data territories' like education, health, agriculture, policing, and war;
How both traditional and data colonialism use 'civilizing narratives' to justify their extraction and colonize peoples' minds;
How AI amplifies the worst of bureaucratic proceduralism and the costs fall on the least powerful in society;
What resistance to data colonialism can learn from resistance to traditional colonialism: working within the system, against the system, and beyond the system.

See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript:

https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/ulises-mejias

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