The practice of health data sharing has long been the cornerstone of global pandemic preparedness, early warning systems and vaccine production. But as US-PRC rivalry intensifies, this practice relying on cooperation is increasingly driven by the expansion of strategic interests based on data’s political, economic and technological value. This trend further weakens the ability of multilateral institutions to establish binding international rules on the practice of data sharing.
This snapshot aims to analyse how great power competition is reshaping the political, economic and technological landscapes of health governance and what are the implications of this for Small and Middle Powers (SMPs), which are structurally dependent on the functioning of the multilateral systems. Drawing on the cases of the Covid-19 pandemic and the more recent 2026 Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the paper identifies three principal categories of risks facing SMPs:
- Informational risks arising from diverging data ecosystems and reduced WHO credibility and capacity.
- Technological risks steaming from digital infrastructure dependencies and Big tech’s role in global health.
- Distributional risks linked to the conditionality of vaccines, aid, and benefit sharing arrangements.
As negotiations continue over the Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing (PABS) mechanism of the new WHO Pandemic treaty, governance gaps widen at a moment it precisely needs to close. The establishment of rules to close these gaps are effectively needed to ensure some fairness in the practice of data sharing in global health and pandemics. The snapshot aims to offer a strategic assessment of the risks ahead, posed by the use of data as a strategic asset in the great power competition rather than as a foundation of collective global security.
Author: Noemie Jacq
Editor: Benedetta Girardi
Cover photo: Canva
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