The U.S.-China battle for supremacy in high technology.
John R. Allen, president of the Brookings Institution and a retired U.S. Marine Corps four-star general, recently said that science and technology innovation is at the heart of global politics and that the United States needs to conduct a comprehensive strategic deployment to meet the Chinese Communist Party‘s challenge in cutting-edge technology.
In a recent article in The Hill, Allen said the U.S.-China tech war has been underway since the Trump administration. Currently, the Chinese Communist Party is seeking to develop “frontier technology” research in an attempt to compete with the United States for the top spot in cutting-edge technology. The Trump Administration is acutely aware of the technological challenge from the CCP and the stakes of global competition. The Biden administration also needs to act quickly to develop solutions to this challenge. He believes that a comprehensive strategy should be built on four major levels.
(1) Manufacturing, which is the lowest level of the technology alliance. China (CCP) dominates the manufacturing supply chain for electronic devices such as smartphones and laptops. But despite its manufacturing prowess, China (CCP) is unable to design the most advanced chips or produce the specialized equipment needed on its own, and has to sustain itself by importing more than $300 billion in semiconductor chips each year. Allen noted that the UDAR strategy should take advantage of this.
(2) Infrastructure, which is the advantage of democracies. By successively controlling the global telecommunications infrastructure, Britain and the United States have maintained a continuous flow of vital information consistent with democratic values and prevented geopolitical hostile forces from accessing sensitive information. But China (Communist Party of China) denies companies from democratic countries access to the Chinese market, cultivating infrastructure providers such as huawei through subsidies to gain market share globally. Allen said that for the sake of U.S. and international security, the future should ensure that Chinese hardware does not become the default infrastructure device.
(3) Application level, which is still dominated by U.S. companies at the moment. Facebook and Instagram alone have billions of users worldwide. But TikTok and others, owned by Chinese investors and using Chinese technology, are also gradually competing globally for users and dominating at the App level. Allen suggests that to win public trust, the U.S. needs to adhere to a robust and attractive management model.
(4) Trust, a key factor in the need for U.S. leadership in the area of standards and rulemaking. The Chinese Communist Party has been quietly expanding its influence in developing 5G standards and technologies such as facial recognition in an attempt to get the best application and standardize them globally. This is an infringement on democracies that advocate standards that protect individual privacy and freedom. Allen argues that the Biden Administration cannot target the technology manufacturing chain by considering just one point to set norms and policies individually, but has to respond to the overall layout of technology to ensure that democracies with shared values and a commitment to the public good can maintain an edge in every dimension of technology.
Science and technology innovation is at the heart of global politics, Allen said. For the U.S. to compete ahead of the Chinese Communist Party in science and technology, it must join forces with its allies and build a technology alliance. Fortunately, the new administration can build on the many international tech alliances that Trump has joined or nurtured, such as the Global Partnership for Artificial Intelligence and the Clean Networks Initiative,” he said. Through these tech alliances, the new administration can seek top-to-bottom technology collaboration at every level – a set of interdependent technology integrations.”
Allen argues that the Biden administration should redouble its efforts to develop partnerships between public institutions or organizations and private industry, especially multinational corporations in the technology sector, stronger than ever in the overall geopolitical landscape. He analyzed that U.S.-China relations will continue to be tense in the future as a result of the ongoing competition. In this technological competition for global leadership, the United States has the ability to garner the support of its allies and partner nations.
Allen concluded that the U.S. government can bring global democracies together to form an “emerging high-tech development and competition alliance” for the common good by reassessing Chinese Communist human rights abuses, multilateralism, and the U.S. “One China” policy. The U.S. government can lead the research and development of science and technology, and compete against the Chinese Communist Party in order to surpass it.
Recent Comments