Discutindo o colonialismo de dados no Brasil: o caso de Caucaia (CE)

Abstract

This study critically examines the Brazilian digital economy through the case of the data center linked to TikTok/ByteDance in Caucaia (Ceará), within the Pecém Industrial and Port Complex. It argues that the concept of surveillance capitalism, formulated by Zuboff and centered on behavioral surplus and the erosion of individual freedom, is insufficient to grasp the digital economy in peripheral contexts shaped by a historical-colonial legacy and dependent integration. The aim is to examine the limits of this concept and to articulate data colonialism, as proposed by Couldry and Mejias, with the notion of double plunder — the overlap between the informational extraction of data, attention, and behavior and the material appropriation of energy, water, and territory required by digital infrastructure. A qualitative approach is adopted along three axes: a critical literature review that situates the data economy within the materiality of the network society and reinscribes it in the Latin American tradition of neo-extractivism and dependency; a documentary analysis of the policy promoting data centers, notably REDATA (Provisional Measure No.,318/2025, reintroduced as Bill No. 278/2026); and a case study of the Caucaia sociotechnical controversy, reconstructed from news reports, corporate statements, regulatory acts, and the positions of the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office, the Public Defender's Office, and the Indigenous Anacé people. The analysis shows that the physical presence of infrastructure does not amount to sovereignty: designed for a single transnational client, AI training for global workloads, and data export, the project concentrates technical command and value capture outside the country, while the water, energy, territorial, and fiscal costs remain localized in a region of structural drought and on land claimed by the Anacé. It concludes that, without public governance, control over data, and effective socioenvironmental safeguards, the policy of attracting data centers tends to consolidate Brazil as a "backyard for data centers" of the Global North, renewing its peripheral position in the international division of data infrastructure and production.