Forcing the Digital Economy: How will the Structure of Digital Markets Change as a Result of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract: Could the forced digitalization of multiple spheres of human life caused by the coronavirus pandemic lead to radical changes in the global and Russian economies? How and to what extent have ubiquitous lockdowns affected the digital transformation? The new model of the digital economy growth, formed during the ongoing crisis, actually contributes to the accelerated development of secondary digital infrastructure (platforms and artificial intelligence technologies) through the creation of mass markets, the noticeably higher consumption in the field of ICT services, and the redistribution of a significant part of resources from other sectors. However, this digital forcing, within the framework of which traditional industries were placed in a deliberately losing situation due to artificially created circumstances, is taking place during a fundamental structural crisis of the global economy. Therefore, unlike the technological revolutions of the past, this one will have serious objective limitations associated with narrowed opportunities for the development of the primary digital infrastructure, without which extensive development of digital services and markets is impossible. In addition, further implementation of the adopted model of building a digital economy, based on the collection and processing of big data, is fundamentally impossible outside globalization processes and implies a significant imbalance between the new “world technological center” (the United States and China, who, however, are in a state of trade war) and the “world technological periphery.” For most other countries, including Russia, it means the need to “fit” into one of the two currently possible peripheral contours of the global digital transformation