US power to rule a digital world ebbs away

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
> Date: June 10, 2018 at 5:45:14 AM EDT
> To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
> Subject: [Dewayne-Net] US power to rule a digital world ebbs away
> Reply-To: dewayne-net () warpspeed com
>
> US power to rule a digital world ebbs away
> For 30 years the model of a global village dependent on American innovation worked... for the US. Now that illusion 
> is fading fast
> By Evgeny Morozov
> Jun 10 2018
> <https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jun/09/trade-war-trump-technology-internet-protectionism-web-business-morozov-uber>
>
> As Donald Trump’s America gears up for a full-blown trade war with the resurgent China, Washington seems to have 
> forgotten the very mechanisms that assured its dominance in the post-cold war era. Those mechanisms were underpinned 
> not just by America’s military might, but also by its ability to minimise the odds of any anti-systemic dissent.
>
> American policymakers have known perfectly well that the hallmark of effective hegemony is the invisibility of its 
> operations. Getting other people to behave as desired is easier if those others believe that doing so is not only in 
> their interest but also the natural course of history and progress.
>
> Why bother with the messy sale that is colonialism if one could get other countries to surrender through fairytales 
> about the mutual benefits of free trade?
>
> Of all the myths that solidified American hegemony over the past three decades, the myth of technology proved the 
> most potent. It recast technology as a natural, neutral force that could erase power imbalances between countries. 
> Technology was not something to be tinkered with or redirected; one could only adapt to it – much like one would 
> adapt to the vagaries of the market, but with far less resistance.
>
> A global village was in the making, courtesy of networks and bits. “The end of history” sounded tempting in all 
> languages, but no idiom put it quite as eloquently as that of technology. Never had there been a way to be so upbeat 
> about capitalism without ever mentioning it by name. What mattered was not who owned technology, but how one used it.
>
> Such tropes helped conceal many basic truths about the actual relationship between technology and power. First, the 
> global village was global only to the extent that its main patron – the US – needed it to be so. Second, there was 
> nothing natural or neutral about the standards, networks and protocols of the digital universe: emerging from the 
> cold war, most of them aimed at extending US influence.
>
> Third, joining a single, inviolable network was never an easy ticket to national liberation. From cyberweapons to 
> artificial intelligence and surveillance, interconnectivity and digitalisation have, far from eliminating old power 
> imbalances, created many new ones.
>
> Nonetheless, this ideology – that of the internet – served US interests quite well, producing many of the world’s 
> largest technology firms. By 2018, though, it has started running thin.
>
> America’s global village is disintegrating. Just look at digital platforms, which, with their ability to scale 
> everywhere, were supposed to be the apex of US techno-hegemony. The plan worked, but only initially. Then, Silicon 
> Valley discovered that America’s closest allies were successfully funding local challengers to the global expansion 
> of US technology giants.
>
> Consider Uber: its global ambitions have been checked by Ola in India, DiDi in China, 99 in Brazil, Grab in 
> south-east Asia, and Yandex. Taxi in Russia.
>
> And with the exception of Yandex, all of these challengers – including Uber itself – were funded by Japan’s SoftBank 
> and folded into its Vision Fund. The latter pools the money of America’s closest allies, from Saudi Arabia to the 
> United Arab Emirates. When Uber found itself burning cash at astronomical rates, it did a deal with Softbank.
>
> China’s ascent challenged many other myths behind American techno-hegemony. Thus, once-neutral tech standards – such 
> as 5G – were suddenly subject to fierce contestation, with Beijing demanding rules favourable to its own champions. 
> Moreover, the global ambitions of Huawei and ZTE and the tremendous growth of other Chinese players such as Tencent, 
> Baidu and Alibaba, have also forced Washington to do the unthinkable: exercise hard power, rendering its hegemony 
> visible.
>
> So we saw moves such as Trump’s veto of the Qualcomm-Broadcom merger, the nearly lethal disruption to ZTE, and the 
> controversial White House memo about nationalising America’s 5G network: one could, of course, suppose that this is 
> all just an affirmation of Washington’s superiority.
>
> Perhaps. Robbed of the foundational myths, America won’t find it easy to convince other countries to let their 
> industries be disrupted by US tech firms. Or abandon the development of their own AI capabilities. Or accept the 
> provisions, inserted into trade treaties, demanding the free flow of data from local servers to US ones – in the name 
> of a single, global internet.
>
> The limits to US techno-hegemony were evident to Barack Obama, who upped the ante on America’s “internet freedom” 
> mythology while trying to contain China’s expansion within the framework of US-led global trade regime.
>
> [snip]
>
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