This week, the news was focused on the US-China tech and trade wars, and its impact on economic powers of the future.
I was on an hour-long BBC World show discussing the issues with a tech reporter from Beijing, a feminist running for Congress, a cybersecurity expert from Sweden and a former British intelligence officer. So you can imagine there were divergent views.
But we all agreed that the friction between these two superpowers, the U.S. and China, could result in a separation of tech spheres. This is already beginning as Chinese tech companies such as Huawei and Xiaomi look to alternative sources for semiconductor chips and other high-design supplies. It is also happening as U.S. companies are turning away from selling to Chinese companies and into China. As this occurs, the risk is that the world will have varying standards and operating systems for products we use every day. It wasn't called the world wide web without reason.
These currents have been building for a while as China has risen as an innovation nation that could challenge Silicon Valley for tech leadership. This rise has come as China has gone from copying Western technologies to investing in frontier tech startups, to tweaking products for the local Chinese culture to bringing the Sand Hill Road system of venture capital to China, and building upon it.
The result is that many business models in China are more advanced than in the U.S. -- superapps, virtual goods, mini-shops, on-demand services, mobile payments, social commerce are just a few examples. And with Chinese government support for high-speed rail, artificial intelligence and facial recognition, technologies are being implemented faster in China than in the U.S. Now the U.S. is pushing back.
China has said its technology is strong enough to withstand American pressure, and would become the most advanced in the world within years. Our panel discussed: does China have the necessary expertise and investment backing to make the transition? And how much of that transformation will be affected by China's approach to governance, privacy, and human rights?
At the end of the show, I was asked if there is a positive from this tech cold war. I answered that emotions were so high right now, that a pause is needed before any positive steps could be taken.
What I wished I would have said is that the only positive I could foresee from the current frictions is that both nations would work harder to strengthen their fundamental R&D and technologies, and that global innovation would then happen faster and benefit everyone.
