By Richard Stone
Plans by the US to establish a large data centre in South Korea (ROK) have provided evidence of a diplomatic operation with spurious agendas. The timing of the operation being just one consideration. The ROK has an important geo-strategic position with US regional defence and security provision, a great deal of which remains highly sensitive. An attempt by former president Yoon Suk-Yeol to stage a coup in late 2024, has also continued to divide and polarise political opinion. The US plan tends to indicate a classic Cold War-type operation, based in similar procedures from the previous Cold War, with numerous associated problems arising.
Last year the US began moves to establish a huge data-centre in the ROK; the Trump administration announced ‘plans to combat China by exporting American technology around the world’. (1) The stated agenda, however, was not straightforward. Almost hidden in carefully edited media releases for the past twelve months, the plan has included raising billions of dollars for the joint US-ROK project with Reflection AI and Nvidia. (2)
The plan to establish the data-centre is all the more spurious when considering it will specialise in the collection of data ‘customised for Korean language and culture’, leaving little to the imagination about who is being placed under surveillance with AI-generated search engines. (3) The data centre would appear part of the military-industrial complex.
The US have been in the forefront for well over a decade in data collection and surveillance programs. In March, 2013, for example, the Boundless Informant program was responsible for collecting 97 billion pieces of intelligence from computer systems world-wide, including thirteen billion from US-based computer networks over a thirty day period ending that month. (4)
Not content with their massive data collection programs, the US National Security Agency has also been responsible for collecting millions of facial images from the internet. (5)
In more recent times a total disregard for personal privacy and civil liberties has become the order of the day with the US responsible for data collection of sensitive personal information including bio-metric information. (6)
The data collection techniques have also coincided with the Pentagon’s Defence Intelligence Agency’s expansion ‘into a spy service focused on emerging threats’. (7) No more the secret department of spies wearing overcoats with the collars obscuring their faces as they follow suspects around; their contemporaries remain seated at computer screens in cyber space.
The use of AI has now also created the perfect tool for the US intelligence agencies to sift through huge stockpiles of data and profile whole populations, with relative ease.
And the ROK would appear well up the NSA agenda for a closer look into a society which, historically, has had close geo-strategic relations with the Pentagon. In fact, the official present position of US-ROK diplomacy from the US State Department is couched in terminology which has included reference to the ROK being a ‘strategic partnership which serves as a linchpin for security and stability in the Indo-Pacific’. (8)
The ROK also hosts nearly 30,000 US military personnel, used in strategic military planning for rapid deployment to regional trouble-spots elsewhere.
The ROK, however, is a society which has evolved a great deal from the open repression of the previous Cold War. An attempt by former President Yoon Suk-Yeol to stage a coup in December, 2024, for example, collapsed through lack of viable support. Sentenced to life in prison for leading the insurrection, Yoon Suk-Yeol has remained a curious throwback to a previous age and time; a Cold War-type figure pushing all manner of conspiracy theories about fifth columnists and North Korean agents.
His main claim, through various legal courts and investigations, was that he was safeguarding the ROK by pursuing an attempt to impose martial law to ‘safeguard freedom and restore constitutional order against what he called an opposition-led legislative dictatorship’. (9) Yoon Suk-yeol, furthermore, stated in his defence that he had ‘invoked emergency powers, arguing the country had fallen vulnerable to North Korean Communist forces’. (10) It did not convince the judiciary.
He, and his fellow conspirators, provided little credible evidence to support their allegations. It was far more likely they used the allegations as a pretext to support a far-right shift to strengthen class and state power over moves by the opposition to use democratic procedures to challenge the existing balance of forces.
It, therefore, came as little surprise to observe Yoon Suk-Yeol supporters waving both US and ROK flags outside the courthouse where he was on trial. (11) They were conspicuous.
The timing of the US-led plan to create a massive data-centre in the ROK, interestingly, coincided with the general investigation of Yoon Suk-Yeol and his conspirators. In fact, the present plan has included the US being able to profile the whole population of the ROK, along similar lines to that during the previous Cold War. Are they merely following Yoon Suk-Yeol agendas? US data collection techniques during that previous period included profiling persons of interest, including whole populations, onto ‘black, grey or white lists … whereby … lists of potential adversaries and in making block-by-block inventories of families and their assets to keep tabs on the population’, were conducted. (12)
It was certainly not coincidental that the US data collection techniques in military training manuals only came to light following the Operation Stay Behind scandal of NATO Secret Armies; the manuals were supposed to have been destroyed, some, however, were not. (13)
The moves by the US and their associates in the ROK to establish the data centre should, therefore, be viewed in the context of the present Cold War; not much has changed since the previous one. And there is little meaningful accountability. A recent US intelligence assessment of the ROK, for example, concluded that like most of Asia, it was moving closer into China’s orbit in what was described as a possible post-America world. (14)
And with that pretext, the ROK is set to become a theatre for US operations; citizens and residents will be subject to endless data-mining and strings of intelligence assessments about the prevailing balance of forces in the society at any one point in time. No less.
1. Start-up’s Korean data centre to take on China, The Australian, 18 March 2026.
2. Ibid., and, Shinsegae to build, Hana Bank, 17 March 2026.
3. Australian, ibid., 18 March 2026.
4. Boundless Informant, The Guardian (U.K.), 11 June 2013.
5. Facial recognition programs, The New York Times, 31 May 2014.
6. ‘US access to EU citizens biometric data’, Statewatch (Denmark), 18 December 2025.
7. Pentagon plays the spy game, The Guardian (U.K.), 7 December 2012.
8. US Security Co-operation with the Republic of Korea, Website: US Department of State, 2026.
9. S Korean former leader gets life, The Australian, 20 February 2026.
10. Ibid.
11. South Korea’s former president Yoon jailed for life, The Guardian (U.K.), 19 February 2026.
12. Army’s Project X had wider audience, The Washington Post, 6 March 1997.
13. Secret army’s war on the left, The Observer (London), 18 November 1990.
14. See: Resist the urge ‘to stick it to America’, The Australian, 18 February 2026.
