[If the future of the ‘tech-war(s)’ is of more than passing interest I recommend you commit the 30-minutes or so a reading of the full text requires. The link is at the end.]
Anu Bradford, Matthew C. Waxman and Eileen Li, all at the Law School of the Columbia University, in a pre-print for the Harvard National Security Journal, take a unique approach to analysis of the global tech war.
Why doesn’t America just ban imports of tech from China? Why do they allow Intel to receive subsidies from the U.S. government whilst that company, at the same time, invests in tech start ups in China?
Why doesn’t China choke off rare earths and strangle the global chip complex? Why permit Microsoft and Apple (and others) to so deeply penetrate their domestic consumer market?
Why doesn’t the E.U. stop ASML from sending its machines, say, anywhere outside of Europe and the U.S.? Why can’t the E.U. subsidize bloc-wide supra-sovereign development of advanced technology?
The answer, in all cases, has to do with domestic legal, regulatory, societal and organizational challenges.
Analysis of the tech-war issue usually focuses on some version of desirable end-game for one or another of the parties without taking into account domestic dynamics. Viz.?
The U.S. has a deeply ingrained suspicion of state control. Woven into it’s policy making is an effective lobbyist complex and so it’s more likely to seek export/import control solutions than industrial-policy answers.
China is different. The state leads ALL investment and tech is this policy on steroids. This leads to corruption and inappropriate directives promulgated by slow-to-pivot high-ups with limited industry grasp.
The E.U. needs to replace national level solutions with a unified bloc-wide policy, but its struggling. In this regard it’s relationship with ASML and the Dutch government was recently put on public and muddled display.
The net result of this thicket, the researchers conclude, is there’s more to be hopeful about in the current state of affairs than to fear. Howzat?
Some have argued a further escalation of tension in this area implies, inevitably, some sort of armed conflict. The authors of the paper though conclude that’s less likely than a fudge, nudge and muddle through future.
The global economy, particularly the economies of the three biggest trading groups, are integrated in a way that pulling them apart is impossible. This was not the case during the Cold-War so to invoke examples from then and seek relevance today is flawed analysis.
Tension will be a leitmotiv of this sector for the rest of all our lives but something that’ll never break out into a full conflagration. All parties know, whether they want to admit it to their citizens or not, there would be no winners in such an event, just losers on all sides.
You can access the full article here How Domestic Institutions Shape the Global Tech War.
Happy Sunday.