The dog that does not bark – Weaponised interdependence and digital trade at the World Trade Organization

As home to the world’s largest digital companies and competing for global technological leadership, the United States (US) and China can leverage their centrality to global digital networks to gain control over vast amounts of data. In line with the theory of ‘weaponized interdependence’ (WI), this allows them to economically coerce each other and third countries by gathering strategic information or restricting network access. In this paper, I take up these risks of digital WI and analyse whether they are being addressed in the course of the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) negotiations on e-commerce. To examine whether members securitise (digital) trade beyond the increasing invocation of Article XXI on ‘national security’ grounds, I combine quantitative (n = 1,428) with qualitative (n = 100) textual analysis of statements made in the Work Programme on Electronic Commerce (WPEC) and the Joint Statement Initiative on Electronic Commerce (JSI-EC), respectively, between 2015 and 2024. I find that considerations of ‘WI’ are largely absent from the debate. When members securitise digital trade, they do so to justify their own cyber policies and regulations, but not to express concern about those of others. Instead, they criticise the market-distorting effects of each other’s practices. Traditional trade issues feature more prominently in these negotiations and are rarely linked to security issues, pointing to the WTO’s tendency to approach trade in technocratic silos.