DailyPost 988
PROTECTIONISM TO TECHNOLOGY WAR
However much the capitalist world would like us to believe that we live in a free market, modern economic and international trade history has proven it to be otherwise. Nations have created barriers above and beyond free market for goods, products, services, technology know how transfer and the like. Capitalism as practiced today is a nation centric free trade or at best a group of nations with common interest like the European Union. Pre digital age days was ideal, even the first phase of digital technology was fine, the world economic order today is at cusp of change, courtesy disruptive technologies and innovation.
Our tryst with protectionism is supposed have stunted our growth and liberalisation was ushered in, but US and other developed countries have practiced the same, camouflaged in free trade and capitalism. The unequal trade relations to the world economic order are all oriented to serve that objective and so are the international financial and other organisations broadly. The history unfolds without astounding similarity from protectionism to free trade with its various variants and now the full bloom technology war.
The US China war on Huawei 5G has been the watershed moment in modern technology history, US desperately trying to wrest control of a technology, the race for which is taken over by China. China has bore the brunt of technology trade barriers from processors to AI, having decided to write its own fate and reached this far, is not ready to take it lying down. Disruptive technologies have a tendency to get the best out trade bans. Huawei will follow suit. Critical mass is important and all leading US IT companies have gained out of it.
Huawei as per current reports has obtained 46 commercial 5G contracts despite from 30 countries despite US ban. 5G is indispensable. The benefits are transformational in every field. Most of the world would just be users. America or China is immaterial, the services have to happen. The 5G way seems to be going the China way, the world is witnessing a full bloom technology war. These are wars of the present and the future.
HE WHO CONTROLS TECHNOLOGY, CONTROLS THE WORLD.
Sanjay Sahay