Description
Both domestic and foreign policies pursued by the governments of the United States and China are increasingly pointing in the direction of great power competition. Within this, technology, and in particular the pursuit of certain emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and 5G wireless networks, plays a key role. In this context of competition, economic and technological interdependence is portrayed as a serious threat to national security. This breaks with a long-established tradition of liberal thought which praises the cooperation-inducing potential of economic interdependence and the socialization potential of embedding illiberal states into international organizations associated with the liberal international order. By contrast, it features a different kind of thinking which portrays global connectivity as something threatening that, at best, should be limited to like-minded partners. The papers in this panel aim to analyze key aspects of these dynamics as they have crystallized in the so-called US-Sino tech war.
