The United States and China lead the world in artificial intelligence (AI) innovation and dominance. Both nations are expanding their spheres of influence by encouraging other countries to align with their respective technological and strategic blocs. For Bangladesh, once part of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) during the Cold War, the challenge now lies in determining its position within this evolving landscape of AI power competition.

This article reviews the AI Action Plans of the U.S. and China and examines their implications for Bangladesh.

The America’s AI Action Plan (2025), issued under President Donald J. Trump’s administration, presents an ambitious and nationalist roadmap to achieve “global AI dominance” through three pillars: accelerating AI innovation, building AI infrastructure, and leading in international AI diplomacy and security. The plan positions AI as both an economic driver and a matter of national security and geopolitical power, emphasizing deregulation, open-source innovation, and U.S. technological supremacy over strategic competitors.

In contrast, China released its Global AI Governance Action Plan in July 2025 at the World AI Conference in Shanghai. It outlines six core principles for global AI governance, focusing on international cooperation, infrastructure development, data sharing, and ethical standards to ensure that AI benefits all nations. Key initiatives include developing digital infrastructure, safeguarding data privacy, and enhancing AI capacity, particularly in developing countries to bridge the digital divide.

The first pillar of America’s plan seeks to unleash private-sector-led innovation by removing regulatory barriers, promoting open-weight AI models, and ensuring ideological neutrality in AI systems. It links AI to industrial rejuvenation, scientific advancement, and job creation, portraying it as the engine of a “new American industrial and information revolution.”

Similarly, China’s Global AI Governance Action Plan emphasizes promoting AI across various sectors through international cooperation. While the U.S. prioritizes deregulation and free-market innovation, China’s model relies on state coordination and public-private partnerships to integrate AI into its real economy. Bangladesh can learn from both approaches. Following these strategies, the country should encourage collaboration between the public and private sectors to develop AI applications in key areas such as healthcare, education, and agriculture, sectors vital to national development and social well-being.

The second pillar of America’s plan focuses on physical and digital infrastructure– data centers, semiconductors, energy grids, and cybersecurity systems to sustain large-scale AI operations. It promises to expand energy production, restore semiconductor manufacturing on U.S. soil, and train a skilled technical workforce. The plan emphasizes American-made hardware, secure data centers, and control over the AI supply chain.

Following this vision, Google announced plans to build a USD 15 billion AI data center in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh. China, too, emphasizes building AI infrastructure in industrial and manufacturing sectors. Bangladesh should build strong AI infrastructure through international cooperation. Google’s investment in India may serve as a useful example, and Bangladesh should consider collaborating with major tech companies to attract investment in its own AI sector.

The third and most important pillar of America’s plan extends into global geopolitics, calling for the export of U.S. AI technologies to allies, strict controls on semiconductors, and countermeasures against Chinese influence. The U.S. envisions an “AI alliance” that promotes American standards globally while restricting rivals’ access to advanced models. China’s plan, meanwhile, stresses international cooperation and the idea that “the Global South should truly access and utilize AI.” Whether framed as competition or collaboration, both powers recognize AI as a strategic instrument of diplomacy and influence.

For Bangladesh, this global race offers both opportunities and risks. The country’s economic success built on textiles and remittances, must now be strengthened by technology-driven pillars. Building intelligent computing power, data centers, and next-generation networks should be national priorities. At the same time, Bangladesh must ensure AI safety, data privacy, and sound governance. Strengthening data protection laws, establishing a risk evaluation framework, and addressing algorithmic bias are essential to build public trust.

To move forward with an AI plan, Bangladesh should consider several key steps. It should be strategic about which AI bloc it aligns with, as the U.S. has already indicated that they will share American AI technologies, standards, and governance models to their allies, not rival countries. Bangladesh should participate in international capacity-building programs through joint laboratories, AI education initiatives, and collaborative research platforms.

AI development cannot be a top-down government initiative alone. It requires collaboration among industry leaders, universities, policymakers, and civil society. Establishing a national AI council or forum would allow diverse voices to shape an AI strategy that reflects Bangladesh’s social and economic priorities. The government should also prioritize key sectors– agriculture, education, and healthcare, for AI-based transformation, as these will drive future infrastructure development.

Bangladesh must integrate national security and ethical safeguards into all AI strategies. As the country accelerates digital transformation, data protection laws and institutional capacities must be strengthened in parallel.

The AI Action Plans of the United States and China are timely and comprehensive documents that mirror Bangladesh’s own opportunities and challenges. They show that the race for AI is not only about technology but also about governance, infrastructure, and inclusivity. For Bangladesh, the message is clear: the future is not something to wait for, it must be built.

By developing its own AI roadmap, one that prioritizes inclusive growth, strong ethics, smart infrastructure, and international cooperation– Bangladesh can ensure that the AI revolution becomes the engine driving its journey toward becoming a developed nation, rather than a source of a new digital divide.

About the Author

Zahed Arman, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication, Media and Theatre at Mississippi State University, United States. He can be reached at armanzahed@gmail.com.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect The Insighta’s editorial stance. However, any errors in the stated facts or figures may be corrected if supported by verifiable evidence.

The scariest thing about artificial intelligence (AI) isn’t a robot uprising, but a balance sheet. When AI is built to replace human work rather than amplify it, the rewards flow to those who own the data, chips, and algorithms. The losses fall on workers whose wages, bargaining power, and dignity erode. Stanford economist Erik Brynjolfsson framed this dynamic as the “Turing Trap”: societies that celebrate clever machines but forget the people they displace.

Augmentation vs. substitution

We have lived the virtuous version of technological change. Tractors helped farmers cultivate more food. X-rays helped doctors see what the eyes could not. Software helps teachers prepare lessons more efficiently. In each case, humans became more productive and indispensable. Life standards improved because technology amplified human contribution.

But when machines are designed as direct substitutes, “do what the human does, just cheaper,” the story changes. Prosperity narrows, and power concentrates in fewer hands. In that world, the public doesn’t negotiate with millions of employers; it negotiates with a handful of firms.

Why the trap is tempting

Three groups make the Turing Trap appealing: engineers chase benchmarks that mimic humans, pass the test, and beat the demo. Managers prefer quick cost-cutting through automation over the harder work of redesigning organizations. And policymakers tilt the field: wages are taxed every pay period, while capital income is favored, and “scaling without workers” is rewarded. In effect, our tax code penalizes hiring people and subsidizes replacing them.

This isn’t destiny, it’s a choice, and it can be reversed.

A progressive agenda for AI

A progressive agenda for AI should follow a simple principle: make augmentation the default and make concentration the exception. That begins with rebalancing the tax code. Labor and capital should be treated equally, ending the perverse incentives that make it cheaper to buy a robot than hire a person. Expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and creating a Learning EITC that workers can draw on for reskilling throughout their careers would put real money and flexibility in the hands of workers. Incentives should tilt toward AI systems that demonstrably raise frontline productivity, while tax breaks for technologies whose only ‘innovation’ is headcount reduction should be phased out.

Equally important is investing in people at the scale of the hype. For every dollar firms spend on machine learning, they need multiples in training, redesign, and process change. Public policy should match that reality: regional reskilling guarantees tied to local employers, sectoral training funds run by labor and industry, and wage insurance that cushions transitions without locking people out of growth sectors. If governments can subsidize semiconductor fabs, they can underwrite human skills.

The agenda must also confront monopoly power. AI advantages cluster where data, compute, and distribution intersect. Antitrust enforcement should adapt by scrutinizing exclusive data deals, predatory pricing, and acquisitions of emerging competitors. Downstream, workers should gain bargaining rights over algorithmic scheduling, pay-setting, and monitoring. If models work, workers must shape models.

Finally, democratic guardrails are essential. Any AI system used in hiring, lending, healthcare, education, or criminal justice should undergo independent audits, publishing its purpose, testing for bias, explaining error trade-offs, and guaranteeing a right to human review. Transparency is not anti-innovation; it is how democracies govern powerful systems. And suppose communities provide the behavioral raw material that fuels AI. In that case, they deserve returns through data cooperatives or public trusts, with revenues invested in public goods like childcare, broadband, and local colleges.

Why this matters

The stakes are larger than jobs. When know-how resides in millions of human heads, power is decentralized. When it is codified into a few proprietary models, power can be owned, traded, and concentrated. Justice Louis Brandeis’s century-old warning feels fresh today: “We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”

This doesn’t mean freezing technology. It means steering it. In health care, the goal shouldn’t be replacing the radiologist; it should be building tools that detect more cancers while giving doctors more time with patients. In schools, the aim shouldn’t be chatbot teachers; it should be diagnostic tools and support that free teachers to focus on mentoring.

The difference is subtle but profound. One pathway erases professions; the other renews them.

A choice, not a fate

AI’s future is not predestined. It will be shaped by the rules we write and the incentives we set. We can continue subsidizing displacement and watch power concentrate, or we can demand augmentation and build an economy where technology makes people matter more.

AI doesn’t have to take our jobs or our democracy. But without deliberate policy, it could do both.

About the Author:

Shahin Hossain is a researcher on artificial intelligence and education at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. His work explores the intersection of technology, labor, and democratic governance. He can be reached at shahinh1@umbc.edu

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect The Insighta’s editorial stance. However, any errors in the stated facts or figures may be corrected if supported by verifiable evidence.

ইন্টারনেট বন্ধ করে বিরোধী মত দমনের একটা বৈশ্বিক প্রবণতা বেড়েই চলেছে । বাংলাদেশের জুলাই বিপ্লবকালীন কর্তৃত্ববাদী হাসিনা সরকারের মত ইন্টারনেট বন্ধ করে গণহত্যা, গ্রেফতার ও নির্যাতন চালানোর অভিযোগ বিভিন্ন দেশের বিরুদ্ধে। ইন্টারনেট বন্ধ করে মানবাধিকার লঙ্ঘনকারী দেশের তালিকায় এখন শীর্ষে রয়েছে ভারত। ২০১৬ সাল থেকে বিশ্বে ১৮০১টি ইন্টারনেট বন্ধের ঘটনার ৮৬৩টিই ঘটেছে ভারতে।

Internet shutdowns have become a growing trend around the world to silence dissent. This practice undermines the fundamental rights of citizens under international law. Governments often justify these actions as necessary for “security” or to “control unrest.” In reality, shutdowns are frequently used to block protests, hide state violence, and shape public opinion. Bangladesh and India are two of the most prominent examples of this global problem.

During the July 2024 uprising in Bangladesh, the government blocked internet access for days. Protesters, journalists, and ordinary citizens were cut off from communication. This blackout allowed the regime to carry out mass arrests and violence with little outside scrutiny. India, meanwhile, has the world’s highest number of internet shutdowns—over 860 between 2016 and 2025. Most targeted regions like Jammu and Kashmir, often during times of political tension.

This article examines how governments use internet shutdowns as a political tool. Drawing on data from rights organizations, global case studies, and community experiences, it shows how these blackouts violate digital rights, silence citizens, and weaken democracy.

Internet Shutdowns - A Growing Global Concern

In the age of cyber citizenship, internet use is not a luxury, it is a right. It is the heart of democratic expression and civic life. However, in many countries, mainly in Asia and Africa, this right often gets suspended for political benefits. Governments shut down the internet just as a political tool to stop mass protests and civil disobedience, commonly at times of elections, uprisings, or other crises.

The Access Now, an Internet research organization, recorded 1801 cases of internet shutdowns worldwide since 2016 and said no less than 296 internet shutdowns occurred in 54 countries during 2024, which was 35% higher than the previous year. The most hit nations, India, Myanmar, Russia, and Pakistan, are not necessarily all autocracies or democracies. They all have one thing in common: mounting reliance on network disruptions to control political affairs. As the Internet Society (2023) warns, "shutdowns are extremely disruptive to economic activity. Moreover, they silence dissent at the moment it matters most."

The same report shows Bangladesh and India are among the top countries of internet shutdowns. With more than 863 shutdowns between 2016 and early 2025, India topped the list, while Jammu and Kashmir was the most targeted zone. During the July 2024 student-mass revolution in Bangladesh, the Hasina regime enforced a total communication blackout and carried out mass killing and indiscriminate arrests of protesters, journalists, and ordinary citizens.

Shutdowns as Political Choreography

Bangladesh witnessed state-enforced internet shutdown during the July Revolution by cutting internet access and limiting cellular connection. The state actors played a cat-mouse game regarding who was responsible and why the Internet was shut down. At one point, the then-sitting Minister of State for Information and Communication Technology Zunaid Ahmed Palak claimed that the internet was shut down due to a fire incident on data centers in Dhaka and the damage of the telecommunication infrastructure carried out by some miscreants.

The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) denied any official shutdown. However, users nationwide were experiencing throttled speeds that effectively turned off live streams, photo uploads, and protest coordination attempts. There is a much-circulated joke about Bangladesh's Internet shutdown: "The government did not switch off the Internet—they strangled it quietly." However, Palak later confessed to the inquiry commission that he actually obeyed Sheikh Hasina’s order to shut down the Internet.

It became clear later that the country’s internet shutdowns were premeditated and coercive and applied as tools to restrict freedom of assembly, speech, and online freedom. In early July 2024, Bangladeshi students mobilized in large numbers, demanding quota system reforms in government recruitment like earlier protests for the same issue in 2018.

India holds the dubious record of being the world's leading enforcer of government-imposed internet shutdowns. Between 2016 and early 2025, the country witnessed over 863 internet shutdowns, more than any other democracy worldwide. The most widely witnessed instance is the Jammu and Kashmir shutdown following the abrogation of Article 370 by the Indian government on August 5, 2019. In what would be the most extended internet shutdown in a democracy, mobile and broadband services were shut down for 213 consecutive days, affecting more than 12 million inhabitants. The shutdown was preceded by curfews, military presence, and communication blockades, effectively severing Kashmir from the rest of the world.

In Myanmar, the junta implemented nationwide blackouts in 2021 to silence opposition after ‍a coup. Early on the morning of February 1, 2021, while the rest of the world woke up to learn of the military coup in Myanmar, activists and reporters in Yangon were already in the dark—literally and digitally. According to Access Now (2023), these shutdowns were employed simultaneously with mass arrest, extrajudicial killings, and military intrusion, actually maintaining both local coordination and international visibility in line. A protester in Mandalay told journalists that when the internet went down, the soldiers came up.

In Pakistan, internet shutdowns have become a regular feature of the State's response to political dissent and public protest. One of the most high-profile recent shutdowns occurred in 2023, with the arrest of former Prime Minister Imran Khan. The arrest triggered nationwide protests, which were met not only by abusive police action but also by a direct mobile internet and social media shutdown for over four days. Access to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok was also blocked, and mobile internet services were suspended in main cities like Islamabad, Lahore, and Karachi. This was not a one-time occurrence. Pakistan has a long history of digital censorship, often in periods of political tension, religious processions, or opposition mobilization. The digital blackout in Pakistan happened during the recent conflict with India as well.

Many African and South American countries also frequently shut down the Internet. For instance, Cuba shut down messaging services during the 2021 July protests, disrupting communication between protestors and the outside world. They are not technology breakdowns but "deliberate, targeted acts of political suppression".

Statistics and Internet Shutdown Scenario

The growing trend of Internet shutdowns shows that the number of countries and incidences of shutdowns have significantly risen. In 2016, there were 78 occurrences in 27 countries, reaching 296 in 2024, spread through 54 countries. This is an almost 264% rise in the incidence rate. The number of incidents was 111 in 2017, 202 in 2018, 221 in 2019, 168 in 2020, 194 in 2021, 201 in 2022, and 283 in 2023 respectively. Until April 2025, around 47 shutdowns continued from the previous year, with 35 of which had already been ongoing for over a year.

Global Media Narratives on Digital Silencing

In India, shutdowns are employed regularly in states like Kashmir and Manipur for vaguely defined reasons such as "public safety." The presence of colonial laws, such as the Telegraph Act of 1885, gives shutdowns a veil of legitimacy while allowing for blanket usage. A Politics and Rights Review article, 226 of India's shutdowns between 2012 and 2022 were linked to protests. The 2021 farmers' protest against new legislation saw their Internet shut down as they encircled Delhi, effectively cutting them off from organizing or fighting disinformation. Cuban protesters in the 2021 protests called the blackout a "digital curfew," one set to begin the very instant anti-government cries echoed onto the streets. According to one protester, they could feel the silence descending, as if their voices had been stolen from them.

Shutdowns are often in legal limbo. Courts sometimes intervene, such as the Indian Supreme Court ruling in Anuradha Bhasin v. Union of India (2020), declaring indefinite shutdowns unconstitutional. However, implementation is fleeting. The state cycles off disconnections or alters legal reasons. As Feldstein (2022) argues, "Governments invoke emergency logic without fulfilling the procedural or substantive burdens such a logic demands." According to Ryng et al. (2022), authoritarian actors increasingly transform legal codes to retroactively legitimate repression, giving shutdowns the illusion of legality. This aligns with Buzan et al.'s (1998) point that the "securitization" of information allows states to avoid democratic control by moving governance into the realm of exception. Despite such challenges, resistance is transforming. Civil society forces use mesh networks, VPNs, satellite internet, and various backup apps to resist shutdowns.

Internet Shutdown: Digital Rights and Just Securitization

The central points of digital rights are freedoms of expression, association, and information access. As life turns digital, being offline begins to equal being disenfranchised. On this conception, internet shutdowns are censorship—and more: denials of dignity and democratic expression. Second, Just Securitization Theory (JST), created by Thumfart (2024), analyzes the justice of state action framed as security needs. For a shutdown to be "just," it must be proportionate, necessary, specific, and directed against an immediate threat. Shutdowns are typically broad, long, and forward-looking, failing JST's moral test. Thumfart also indicates that shutdowns applied for preemptive censorship or to impede political protest are not warranted. That is precisely how shutdowns are applied, though, in cases like Iran's 2019 "Bloody November”, where a week-long shutdown masked mass killings, or the 61-hour blackout in Belarus during election protests in 2020. Bangladesh is a more recent bloody example of how the Sheikh Hasina regime carried out a mass killing during the July uprising in 2024, which killed around 1400 protesters.

Legal and Human Rights Perspectives of Internet Shutdown

Internet shutdowns are increasingly viewed as policy decisions and a significant breach of international human rights norms. Globally, the freedom of expression and right to seek, receive, and impart information are guaranteed under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). However, these rights are continually violated when states impose internet shutdowns, particularly in the face of civil unrest and protest.

The United Nations Human Rights Council (2021) reiterated once more that the same rights that people have offline must also be protected online. Nevertheless, as highlighted by Thumfart (2024), from the perspective of Just Securitization Theory, governments increasingly use internet outages as exceptional measures, sidestepping the obligatory requirements of proportionality, specificity, and necessity. In effect, such an action creates a legal gray area, "state of exception," whereby fundamental rights are suspended in the guise of national security.

Banihashemi (2023) argues that when shutdowns are used to silence political opponents or hide regime brutality, then they constitute collective punishment and may even be viewed as crimes against humanity. This is particularly the case in countries like India, Bangladesh, Iran, and Myanmar, which have experienced shutdowns followed by massacres and mass arrests.

Legally, issues are both norm diffusion and enforcement. While some national-level courts—India's Supreme Court in Anuradha Bhasin v. Union of India, for example—have declared that indefinite shutdowns are unconstitutional, enforcement does not exist. The gap between soft law (UN resolutions, rights charters) and complex law (binding treaties and enforceable judgments) allows governments to escape accountability. Shutdowns will remain tools of repression with a veneer of legality as long as binding frameworks do not exist. The international community must move beyond rhetoric and into actual enforcement, including international litigation, economic sanctions, and the codification of digital rights into enforceable legal frameworks.

A Call to Rewire Power

Shutoffs are not temporary disconnections—they are sponsors of state power and performances of digital authoritarianism masquerading as neutral governance. The response to this shutdown has to be multimodal, incorporating litigation, infrastructure resilience, media coverage, and tech activism. The fight against internet shutdowns is more than just preserving access—it is about upholding the terms of democratic life itself.

About the Author:

Shah Jahan Shuvo is former Bangladesh based journalist. Currently, he serves as a Social Media Editor at The Insighta. He can be reached at jahanshuvo15@gmail.com.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect The Insighta's editorial stance. However, any errors in the stated facts or figures may be corrected if supported by verifiable evidence.