Big Tech is the West’s formidable weapon in its competition with Russia and China.

Big tech companies face intense criticism at home because of their influence in the marketplace and public square. But at the same time, their role in Ukraine shows how they can be a key asset in the West’s competition with Russia and China.

Ukraine shares none of its Western allies’ ambivalence toward big technology. Google awarded the Peace Prize in exchange for protecting Ukraine’s computer systems from Russian cyberattacks and cutting some business ties with Russia. Later, AWS and Microsoft gave similar awards.

In an interview last May in Davos, Switzerland, Mr. Fedorov said that technology exists in two ideological paradigms. First, through an interpreter, “Information belongs to citizens themselves. Another example is treating those data as government property. This second example, you can find in Russia, China. Ukraine is throwing its lot with the first example, and this is reflected in their business companies.

Technology is often considered political: semiconductors operate the same way in the democratic US and autocratic China. However, technology companies, especially in services such as social media and cloud computing, can reflect the values ​​and laws of their home countries in how they operate abroad.

For example, social media companies like Google, YouTube, Meta Platforms Inc

Facebook and Twitter Inc.

You are routinely pressured to download or give up some content, but are often not required to do so by the US government. When foreign governments do, they are often opposed.

Last year, the Indian government asked Twitter to take down posts criticizing its agriculture policy. Twitter fought the order; The government responded by encouraging users to switch to Ku, an Indian microblogging platform that competes with Twitter. The Ku co-founder said he believes governments and regulators should cooperate to bring down requests.

Google has been fined by Russia for not being able to take down its content, such as how it refers to the war in Ukraine. In contrast, Yandex, a Russian competitor, does not include content from unapproved sources in its news aggregator.

Google displays the queries in regular reports when downloading content. Such transparency is rare outside the US, said Shreya Tewari of the Lumen Project, a Harvard University-based nonprofit that promotes transparency about removing content online. The Internet, she said, “is growing in America in an environment of the First Amendment and the commitment to free speech.”

The US is not flawless when it comes to data protection. The revelations by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden that U.S. officials can sometimes access foreign nationals’ data on U.S. companies is one reason China is nurturing its own cloud industry. However, the companies have made little inroads outside of China: online giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd

For example, it controls 34% of the cloud market in China, but only 4% in the rest of the world, according to Synergy Research, which tracks the industry.

John Dinsdale, Synergy’s director of research, said in an email that China “doesn’t have a level of privacy and individuality.” [or corporate] The security we expect in the rest of the world. It is also clear that the Chinese government will intervene in markets or private companies if it deems it necessary to do so. That, he said, is not comforting to cloud customers for whom “privacy and data protection are very basic table stakes.”

In the days after the Russian invasion, AWS used several suitcase-sized storage devices to quickly download and save Ukrainian government data from land registry to tax records, transport it to security, and then upload it to the cloud. Liam Maxwell, who worked on the effort for AWS, said he doesn’t know where the data is now. “where is. [Ukraine] He wants People who need to know do.

AWS further protects customer data from outsiders, including Amazon employees, through microchips that physically separate the functions and customers used by AWS, Mr. Maxwell said. But one of AWS’s biggest competitive advantages isn’t the technology side: it’s the US rule of law and the clear legal framework that US providers are dealing with, Mr Maxwell said. They are “a very powerful asset for any American company operating in this space.”

This presents U.S. policymakers with conflicting pressures: Big tech companies see competition and content moderation as a bulwark at home, but abroad as a buffer against Russian and Chinese influence. A group of former Trump administration officials recently warned congressional leaders of proposals that would force those companies to open up their app stores and platforms to outsiders. “Our adversaries—particularly China—will welcome any federal government action that undermines the strength of the U.S. technology industry,” they wrote.

“How data is collected, used, analyzed, we want American companies in third markets to help us implement and standardize the process,” Adam Segal said. The Council on Foreign Relations has prepared a report on foreign policy regarding cyberspace.

These priorities are finding their way into trade policy. The Trump administration has negotiated the free flow of information across borders in its trade deals with Mexico, Canada and Japan, and the Biden administration wants the same in the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework with 13 Asian countries.

Cost, features and reliability will be the main determinants of whose technology will win the competition for global influence. But values ​​also play a role. China’s Huawei Technologies has provided Ukraine with a lot of telecommunications equipment. But Mr Fedorov said Ukraine was in talks with Sweden’s Ericsson AB and Finland’s Nokia. Corporation

About building a 5G network. Sweden and Finland support Ukraine in the war, while China supports Russia. “We are working in partnership with companies and countries that share the same values,” he said.

Write Greg Ip at greg.ip@wsj.com