DIGITAL ELITE AS A NEW STRATUM OF THE GLOBAL ECONOMIC SYSTEM: ESSENCE, ARCHITECTURE AND PRINCIPLES OF FORMATION

The article is devoted to a comprehensive analysis of the process of formation and establishment of the digital elite, determining the patterns of its emergence as a fundamentally new stratum of the modern global economic system in the context of its digital transformation. The proposed work demonstrates that the study of the process of formation of the digital elite, scaling and strengthening of its power potential is increasingly relevant and, at the same time, is complex and such that there are no unified and clearly formed judgments in the modern scientific space, requiring increased attention from national states to the problems of information security, information and digital sovereignty. Conducting the research, the authors relied on the concept of a global information society, as well as a systemic analysis of the digital society and its strata. The authors identify and consider the general trends of the genesis of the global digital society as the current stage of human development, determine the nature and main features of a fundamentally new stratum that is being formed within this society – the transnational digital elite, its role and impact on the development of the global economic system. The article substantiates the thesis that through digital management of society and the economy, transnational elites have a potentially high opportunity to establish a fundamentally new global world governance in the long term. At the same time, in the opinion of the authors, the outlined prospect is not deterministic, being only one of the alternatives for the future scenario of human development. Based on the results of the study, it was concluded that the formation and further development of the digital elite occurs because of the gradual transformation of both national and transnational ruling elites, and their practical implementation of digital mechanisms and management technologies. The authors identified and analyzed the key trends in the development of this phenomenon – the formation of fundamentally new structures of power relations and sociopolitical actors – the so-called “power alliances”.