Short answer: In a 2021 interview with Anadolu Ajansı (AA), Dr. Alper Ozbilen argued that data had become more strategically valuable than oil or gold, and that global demand for AI talent was rising in step with AI's commercial and strategic weight — with the states that failed to retain skilled people, not just build data centers, at the greatest disadvantage.
📎 Original source: Yapay zeka uzmanlarına yönelik küresel talep günbegün artıyor — Anadolu Ajansı (AA), reported by Tolga Yanık, September 8, 2021. This English-language piece is an archival summary and translation.
FROM THE ARCHIVE
Past thesis → Present signal → What changed?
This piece archives a 2021 Turkish-language interview in which Dr. Alper Ozbilen assessed Türkiye's newly announced National AI Strategy and the broader global competition for AI talent it was responding to.
Data as the century's core resource
Ozbilen's starting claim was blunt about where value was shifting:
"Data is more economically and strategically valuable than traditional raw materials like oil and gold. Mastering the processes of producing, collecting, structuring and analyzing data is the basic condition for being powerful in the 21st century."
He framed AI itself not as an independent force but as an extension of collected human effort applied to that data:
"Artificial intelligence, like every other tool and device developed by humanity, is a product of human intelligence. It is the aggregated, collective intelligence obtained through data. The power of AI technology is increasing unpredictably, and that is pushing states toward strategic decisions on the matter."
Human capital as the missing infrastructure
The interview's central practical claim was that talent, not just compute or capital, was becoming the binding constraint:
"Employing individuals with skill in this field has moved beyond something handled by human-resources departments. Gaining access to qualified people has become one of the global races that states are running. With remote work becoming necessary after the pandemic, closing the talent gap is becoming increasingly critical."
He connected this directly to a warning about brain drain:
"Qualified domestic talent and human capital must not be allowed to emigrate or be lost, given the difficulties of commercialization and the high resource requirements involved."
Strategy without populism
Assessing Türkiye's national strategy specifically, Ozbilen argued its value lay in its restraint rather than its ambition:
"With its National AI Strategy, Türkiye has acknowledged the transformative power of AI technology and its actual position within it. In this respect, the national strategy has not turned AI into a subject of populist and speculative debate — its aims, measures and targets are listed in a consistent and realistic manner."
The sovereignty-versus-investment balance
Looking at the concentration of personal data power in the US and, in part, China, Ozbilen argued that the resulting risk to individual rights was not one democratic states could accept as a byproduct of progress:
"Today, the world has become a 'data production center,' with sensors generating data everywhere from massive industrial facilities to city streets. It is unacceptable for the power derived from data — a power that unsettles even the technology sector's central countries — to pose a risk to fundamental values such as human dignity, individual rights and democratic freedoms."
His prescription was a deliberate balance rather than a closed-door posture:
"Allocating the balance between foreign investment and digital sovereignty correctly will allow us to benefit effectively from the AI era. It is highly valuable that the National AI Strategy defines strengthening international cooperation as a priority."
He closed with a framing that has stayed load-bearing in his later work: AI as a determinant of relative national position, not a neutral utility.
"In the 21st century, artificial intelligence is a matter of absolute superiority or absolute defeat for societies and the states that represent them. The goal, therefore, must be a comprehensive and far deeper effort to rank among the world's leaders."
Does the framework still hold?
The specific claim under test in 2021 — that the deciding factor in AI competition would be human capital and governance capacity as much as raw infrastructure — has continued to be reinforced rather than displaced by the years since. The scale of investment in AI infrastructure has grown far beyond what was visible in 2021, but the underlying bottleneck the interview identified, competition for skilled people and the difficulty of retaining them domestically, remains a live constraint rather than a solved problem. The distinction between owning a data center and being able to act independently on what it produces is the same distinction this archive's more recent pieces describe as decision sovereignty. This entry is filed to track how that argument develops against further evidence, not to claim it foresaw any specific later event.
About Dr. Alper Ozbilen
Dr. Alper Ozbilen is a technology executive, author and strategist working at the intersection of AI, geopolitics and strategic technologies, with a focus on technological sovereignty, strategic autonomy and the changing architecture of power and decision-making.
FAQ
Who is Dr. Alper Ozbilen? Dr. Alper Ozbilen is a technology executive, author and strategist working at the intersection of AI, geopolitics and strategic technologies, with a focus on technological sovereignty, strategic autonomy and the changing architecture of power and decision-making.
What is the source of this piece? Anadolu Ajansı (AA), Türkiye's state-run news agency, published an interview conducted by reporter Tolga Yanık on September 8, 2021. Read the original Turkish-language interview here.
What is Ozbilen's central claim? That data had overtaken traditional raw materials in strategic value, and that the global race for AI advantage would be decided as much by access to skilled human talent and sound data governance as by infrastructure spending.
Is this archive entry claiming the 2021 interview predicted later events? No. It is filed under ALP AI's "Past thesis → Present signal → What changed?" framework to track intellectual continuity, not to claim foresight.
This is an English-language archival summary of a Turkish-language interview. Quotes have been translated for accessibility. Original interview (Turkish) →