Digital Geopolitics in 2020
2020 has been a disastrous year and has caused an emergence of "new normal" for all the sections of the society. While Covid - 19 has taken a centre stage in the world politics in 2020, it would be unwise to ignore the powerplay between the states and, issues that have plagued the world along with Covid-19 pandemic. The hypothesis that humankind would come together to face a common enemy was also tested during this year and it failed to hold up. Divisions amongst various nations deepened and the world seems to be moving away from multilateralism and globalization back to the realist model of anarchic self-help world. The primary focus in this article would be the competition between major superpowers i.e. USA and China, in the technological domain also dubbed as a digital great game. The relevance of this game expands beyond the realm in which it is being played and therefore makes it an important focus area. Some argue that future wars will be won or lost in this domain.
Life in the twenty-first century depends a great deal on the virtual world. This is where humans communicate, learn, play, shop, bank, make friends and groups. It underpins the ‘critical national infrastructure’ of states — their agriculture, energy distribution, banking, healthcare, transport, water supply — and their interactions with their citizens. Whilst being a fundamental necessity for states around the world, it is also used by criminals to defraud, terrorists to radicalise, and by states to spy and to seek strategic advantage over their adversaries. While each of these activities has a parallel real-world dimension, activities in the virtual world add a revolutionary degree of speed, scale and geographic reach.
This virtual world rests upon physical hardware i.e. computers, microchips, phones, servers, switches, data centres, fibre-optic cables, cellular radio towers and antennae, and communications satellites. Across this hardware run coded software applications (such as Facebook or TikTok). Both hardware and software are categorised as ‘digital technology’. Some have argued that a ‘fourth industrial revolution’ is already underway, characterised by the use of digital technology to enable the growing automation of human activities. Thus establishing dominance in this domain would effectively give an upper hand to the state in exerting economic and geographic influence.
The US and China appear justified in identifying digital technology as a crucial battleground for global economic and strategic dominance, and in identifying each other as their primary digital adversary. USA’s current digital dominance has greatly benefitted from the globally entangled nature of digital technology. USA's tactics of advocating a ban on Chinese firms, employed against Huawei and TikTok will deprive US firms of large Chinese markets and add momentum to Xi’s Made in China 2025 ambition, ‘Digital Long March’. This would, in turn, incentivise increased exports of China’s technology and its model of cyber sovereignty to the developing world in an effort to compensate for lost Western markets, potentially narrowing US market share there too and globally undermining liberal values of unrestricted information exchange. While China may currently be intent on pursuing digital autarky, it could be strategically unwise for the USA to reinforce that belief. The states and firms caught up in the US–Chinese competition in the Digital Great Game may try to persuade any future US administration of the merits of changing tactics to increase their own room for manoeuvre. This might include incentivising the development of greater diversity in the supply chain for digital technology through targeted national investments. Japanese tax breaks for any of its companies building 5G technology are one example of this; British proposals to use an alliance of ten nations — the so-called ‘D10’, composed of the G7 plus Australia, India and South Korea — to build future digital technology are another. More generally, better use might be made of international technical standards and patents to ensure that future generations of digital technology — such as 6G mobile networks or artificial intelligence — are designed and built with security and privacy as integral features. This process could include standards for the quality and transparency of coding, algorithms and data storage, allowing for ease of auditing, with the aim of reducing the technology provider’s nationality as a direct security factor.
Currently, long-term lead of the USA in this area is being diminished by Chinese innovation and capacity to penetrate other markets effectively. China’s Digital Silk Road remains the most intriguing element of its Belt and Road Initiative, and the one that could bring it the greatest long-term benefits as it aspires to data-superpower status. The security and data-privacy implications of China’s technological gains trouble the US. It has gone to great lengths both to prevent Chinese access to US technologies and to persuade other states, especially in Europe, that adoption of Chinese technology would endanger their relationship with Washington. For its part, China is keen to accelerate its capabilities and deepen the reliance of other regions on its products. In essence, a Digital Great Game is being played, and the competitors are playing rough.
US is trying to maintain its leading position in information and communications technology (ICT) by controlling the microchip and semiconductor industry. Its policy of sanctions, however, carries risks. China has an internal market of one billion internet users — greater than the US and European Union combined — and will in time be able to create its own products. Chinese technology is attractive to states in the developing world that appreciate both its low cost and high surveillance characteristics. Eventual US exclusion from the Chinese internal market will also carry costs for American firms. Qualcomm is, after Huawei, the second-largest customer of China’s Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, which is targeted by the US Department of Commerce. The inability of any Chinese company to operate in US markets will force those same companies to embrace all the more firmly their Chinese government sponsors. China’s progress will be slowed, but US ICT dominance will suffer from self-inflicted wounds, and most other parts of the world will become ‘battleground states’ in this technological rivalry. The course and outcome of this Digital Great Game will be hugely consequential and escalate competition across a wide range of issues. USA’s use of economic sanctions to pursue its interests in digital sphere intensifies an emerging trend of ‘economic statecraft’, has dissolved the barriers between security and business. Companies have had to extend their political awareness and become sensitive to foreign-policies. States can adopt new attitudes that suddenly compromise well-prepared commercial plans.
