The “Great Fracture” between US and China is Widening
The USA is gearing up for an intense, prolonged technological competition with China in key emerging technologies. Both the Economist and Foreign Policy magazines have called this “the new Cold War”, vastly different from the older one, where technology leadership and economics will play a central role.
Policymakers and Politicians across party lines in Washington are preparing for this prolonged race for technological superiority. President Trump has repeatedly spoken about building American dominance in the “industries of the future”. This phrase comes from technology policy expert Alex Ross’s pioneering book that predicts the geopolitical, economic and social changes driven by emerging technologies. The American government is doubling down on four key technologies: AI, Quantum, 5G, and Advanced Manufacturing.
Last week, Republicans and Democrats introduced a bipartisan bill to increase government spending on “industries of the future” to $10 billion by 2025. Recently, the Senate unanimously passed the National Quantum Initiative Act to increase federal support for quantum computing. The Act commits to spending $1.275 billion dollars for Quantum research over the next five years, including setting up 5 national quantum research centers and 5 interdisciplinary centers.
It's not only the government that is gearing up. The tech industry has been asked to play its part in this race as well. Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo made some blunt statements during his recent interaction with Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. He reminded them of China’s “civil-military fusion” that forces Chinese companies to share technology with the military. Tellingly, Pompeo recalled the “arsenal of democracy”, the role played by American manufacturing in WW2 efforts and sought support for “patriotic causes”.
These moves come at a time when the UN Secretary-General António Guterres has been repeatedly warning about the “the Great Fracture”, where the world could split into two regions led by the USA and China. He spells out the implications:
“there is a risk of a decoupling in which all of a sudden each of these two areas will have its own market, its own currency, its own rules, its own internet, its own strategy in artificial intelligence. And that inevitably, when that happens, its own military and geostrategic strategies. And then the risks of confrontation increase dramatically.”
What this means for the rest of the world, including India, is that technology choices have become deeply geopolitical. For example. choosing between Ericcson and Huawei’s 5G network is no longer just economic and technological. It is becoming a geopolitical act of choosing one side or the other. We caught up with foreign policy analyst Kamal Madishetty on how India should respond. According to him,
“The immediate challenge for India is to balance our developmental need for greater technology access with the larger geopolitical questions. In the longer term, however, it is imperative that India augments its own technological capabilities, perhaps by leveraging the ongoing rivalry between the US and China”
Preparing for this changing world, the Indian foreign policy establishment has set up the New Emerging and Strategic Technologies division in the Ministry of External Affairs. Read more about it in our previous issue’s SevenStories.
The UN General-Secretary thinks that the uncertainty and unpredictability of this decoupling are greater than the Cold War days. Confrontations would now be cyber-first, with attacks on civilian infrastructure like electric grids, internet access, water supply, etc. This is already happening. Security experts recently issued a warning on Iran sponsored hacker collectives targetting American electricity grids.
There is no clear International Law governing such acts in cyberspace and the traditional forms of international treaty-making can take years. António Guterres argues for the compelling need to create agile, flexible methods for global technology governance, to prevent the fracturing of cyberspace. Read his deeply insightful interview on the fracturing of the internet and global technology governance here.
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