The US-China competition has both sides leverage supply chain chokepoints in a technological race, while middle powers have expressed growing concern about their exposure in this rivalry.  Geopolitical contest over data is underexplored. High-quality training data is increasingly scarce, making access to domain-specific and demographically heterogeneous datasets a geopolitical asset. China is pursuing a state-led effort to unlock the value of data as a production factor, which led the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission to warn of China’s data dominance strategy. Internationally, both powers are pursuing access to data. The US sought access to Kenya’s health data in exchange for development funding, a deal suspended by Kenya’s High Court; Zimbabwe rejected a similar offer. China is advocating for ‘secure and orderly’ cross-border data flows and proposing a World Data Organization for global data governance.Literature on the weaponization of interdependence, introduced by Farrell and Newman, describes how states that control hubs in networks can exploit that position through the panopticon effect (intelligence gathering) and a chokepoint effect (access denial). This paper argues that the AI competition has produced a third effect: ‘data mining’ as the access to and control over data to extract value as a strategic resource. It proposes a conceptual framework unpacking the data mining effect, offering conceptual typologies of state behaviour along a spectrum from coercive to incentive-based strategies as a basis for future research on global data governance. 

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