The Economist - USA (2020-11-21)

20 BriefingGlobal technopolitics The EconomistNovember 21st 2020

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could end up setting the rules for large

swathes of the world. The result would be a

technosphere engineered for the comfort

and support of autocracies.

A partial catalogue of the past few

months’ disagreements shows the frac-

tiousness that stops the free world coming

together on this—and how many opportu-

nities for dealmaking there would be if it

decided it should. America’s commerce de-

partment told foreign firms they could sell

no more chips made using American tech-

nology to Huawei; its justice department

filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google.

America also pulled out of talks at the Orga-

nisation for Economic Co-operation and

Development (oecd), a club of mostly rich

countries, about how to tax the tech giants.

India blocked dozens of Chinese apps, in-

cluding TikTok, a popular video-sharing

service, which the American government

also wants to ban. The European Court of

Justice (ecj) struck down the “Privacy

Shield” agreement between America and

the European Union (eu), thus throwing

the legal basis on which personal data

flows across the Atlantic into doubt.

Europe has been trying for some time to

carve out its own space in the digital realm

as a protector of the citizenry—a noble goal

made easier by the fact that the companies

from which its citizens are being protected

are mostly based the other side of the

ocean. This has heightened tensions be-

tween Brussels, Washington and Silicon

Valley. The ecj’s ruling on the Privacy

Shield is one example. The European Com-

mission is drafting legislation that would

weaken the power of America’s tech giants.

Its proposed Digital Services Act would

outlaw some of the firms’ business prac-

tices, such as bundling their services to

take over new markets or displaying them

more prominently than competing ones.

We will rock you

Some of the eu’s member states have also

begun defending their right to rule their

own digital roost, something now called

“digital sovereignty”. There is talk of creat-

ing a European cloud within the American

one. gaia-xis a step down that road—a fed-

eration of clouds, launched by Germany

and France in June, whose members agree

to certain rules, such as allowing custom-

ers to choose where their data are stored

and move freely to providers’ competitors

if they wish. There is more to come: a “data

strategy” on the table in Brussels would, if

fully implemented, create “data spaces”

ruled by European law and give people

more rights on how their data are used.

These disputes offer ample space for

mutually beneficial trade-offs. If America

and its allies can reach good enough ac-

commodations on the most contentious

issues—notably privacy and competi-

tion—and find ways to live with the smaller

contradictions and conflicts which re-

main, they can become a force to be reck-

oned with—one that others will need little

encouragement to join. An insular America

can remain a technology superpower. A

connected America cemented into the rest

of the world by means of a grand techno-

political bargain could be the hub of some-

thing truly unsurpassable.

There is a range of ideas about how to do

this. In a recent report for the Council on

Foreign Relations, a think-tank, Robert

Knake imagines such a grand bargain tak-

ing the form of a “digital trade zone”, com-

plete with a treaty organisation. America

would “weaponise its digital trade rela-

tionships” in order to promote such things

as cyber-security, privacy protection and

democratic values on the internet. Only

countries that comply with the organisa-

tion’s rules on such matters would be able

to become members and only members

would be allowed fully to trade with each

other digitally. Violations would be dealt

with by imposing sanctions and tariffs. “If

the digital trade zone grows strong enough,

China might see more benefit to co-opera-

tive engagement than to continued disrup-

tive behaviour,” writes Mr Knake.

Others prefer to imagine something

less formal, rules-based and punitive. In

October three other think-tanks—the Cen-

tre for a New American Security (cnas),

mericsof Germany and the Asia-Pacific

Initiative of Japan—outlined a less exclu-

sive construction. They propose that

democratic countries form a “technology

alliance” not subject to a formal treaty. It

would be like the g7, which consists of

America, Britain, Canada, France, Ger-

many, Italy and Japan, and could one day,

perhaps, include India and other countries

from the Global South. It would hold regu-

lar meetings, as the imfand World Bank do,

and issue consensus opinions, and it

would invite other stakeholders—from

ngos to tech firms—to pitch in.

Let us cling together

Until this month, such ideas seemed pre-

mature. But with Joe Biden soon in the

White House, they have become more real-

istic: itwill be high on the agenda of the

“summit of democracies” he has promised

to convene. Closer co-ordination and some

new institutions to back it up are also more

needed, and not just because of the Chi-

nese threat. The coronavirus, by pushing

much of human activity into the cloud, has

emphasised the importance of the digital

realm and its governance. Left alone, the

world of technology will continue to disin-

tegrate into a splinternet in which digital

protectionism is widespread—much as the

global financial system fell apart before the

second world war.

To make sense of all this, it helps to see

the political world as one in which technol-

ogy is beginning to look ever more like ge-

ography. The geopolitical way of looking at

the world, which was born in the 19th cen-

tury and revolutionised strategic thinking

in the 20th, was based on the idea that the

geographical aspects of the physical world

could be crucially important to the rela-

tions between states. Mountains that

blocked transit and plains that permitted

it; oilfields and coalfields; pinch-points

where maritime traffic could be con-

strained. Where a state’s territory stood in

respect to such geographical facts of life

told it what it should fear and what it might

aspire to, whose interests conflicted with

its own and whose might align with them.

In other words, geography was destiny.

The units of analysis for today’s nascent

technopolitics are platforms: the technol-

ogies on which other technologies are

built—and alongside them, increasingly,

businesses, governments and ways of life.

The platform of all platforms is the inter-

net. Some of the things which stand upon it

are huge and widely known, such as Face-

book, others small and obscure, such as

Kubernetes, a sort of software used in

cloud computing. Like geographical terri-

tories, these platforms have their own poli-

tics. They have their own populations,

US and them

Selected global platforms, market capitalisation*

November17th 2020 orlatest

Sources:Bloomberg;CBInsights

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*Over$3bn

Apple

$2.03trn

North America

China Asia(excl.China)

Europe

Microsoft

$1.62trn

Amazon

$1.57trn

Alphabet

$1.20trn

Facebook

$783.3bn

Netflix

$212.3bn

Airbnb

$30.0bn

Pay Pa l

$225.3bn

Salesforce

$212.3bn

Twitter

$34.1bn

Shopify

$111.2bn

Uber

$86.2bn

Tencent

$718.9bn

Alibaba

$694.8bn

Ant Group

$310.0bn

Samsung

$355.7bn

SAP SE

$144.7bn

Spotify

$47.5bn

Africa

Naspers

$87.1bn

South America

MercadoLibre

$87.1bn

ByteDance

$140.0bn