Commentary What’s the most powerful commodity in the world? Gold? Tesla electric vehicle technology? Bitcoin? Oil? Actually, it’s none of these things. As we’re now discovering, care of the Big Tech gang in Silicon Valley, the most valuable commodity in the world today—and for the foreseeable future—is data. In fact, Wired magazine has declared that, “data is the new oil of the digital economy.” It seems as if they’re right about that. From a Digital World to a Data-Driven One A brief look back in time provides some context for where—and why—the global economy is headed where it’s headed, and very, very soon. In the late 1990s, the emergence of the Internet began the digital transformation of the analog economy. That transformation has been proceeding apace, including the debut of Facebook and Amazon, Google, Twitter, and all the rest. Today, with the digital transformation well established in everything from banking …