I was recently asked a simple question: “Is technology really neutral?”
The answer is no. And that illusion has cost us dearly.

Ophélie Coelho, a researcher in geopolitics, explained it clearly on RTS: for decades, governments treated technology as “someone else’s problem.”

“Many political leaders were trained to believe that technology is not their subject -that it belongs to engineers. But we now realize we must engage with it, and we are starting from very far behind.”

And she adds, without hesitation:

“The idea that technology is neutral -that globalization and the ‘information highway’ would naturally produce peace and open societies -was a myth. Digital companies presented themselves as neutral actors, but they are companies whose purpose is profit”.

Here’s the thing: this is not just a public governance issue. It’s a leadership issue -everywhere.

How many times have you heard, “Tech is IT’s responsibility”? Or worse: “It’s mainly a cost issue”? Meanwhile, you delegate your resilience to a vendor, your independence to a cloud architecture, and your competitive advantage to… well, to hope.

The uncomfortable truth: technology is never neutral. Markets are never neutral. Platforms are never neutral.

So what do we do?

The shift that is emerging -in governments and in companies -is the same: technology is gradually becoming a shared leadership responsibility, not a specialty to be delegated away.

Which means that for leaders, at every level, the real question is no longer, “Does technology matter?”

It is: “How do we integrate this understanding into our collective strategy?” Because understanding it together is already a start. And that is exactly what this era demands.

#Leadership #Tech #Geopolitics #CIO #Strategy

In French !! #RTS