Presentation: Technological Decoupling - How to lose the race for pre-eminence

Technological
Decoupling
How to lose the race
for pre-eminence
Simon Lacey

Five reasons why
it won’t work
01 Too little – too late
02 Only delays the inevitable
03
04
05
Cuts US Tech off at the knees
More red meat for the hawks
Cedes the moral high ground

01 Too little – too late
Concerns about Chinese ambitions in the
technology sector go back decades.
If the U.S. and the West had got serious about
policing some of China’s more discriminatory
practices in this area when China’s Indigenous
Innovation policies were launched, it is likely more
could have been achieved to keep the Chinese
market open to Western technology firms.

02
Only delays the inevitable
Because technological advancement is incumbent
upon the diffusion of knowledge, and because
knowledge flows without regard to artificially
erected borders or restrictions, efforts at
decoupling will only slow but cannot prevent
China from mastering these technologies.

03
Cuts U.S. Tech off at the knees
China is extremely important to U.S. technology
companies both as a market, a manufacturing
location and a place to do cutting-edge R&D. China
also has the biggest pools of data, and data is
critical for all kinds of technologies from IoT to AI.

04
More red meat for the hawks
Calls for technological decoupling feed China’s
fears that the West wishes it to remain weak and
backward and in doing so just strengthens antireformers
and those that encourage greater
confrontation with the West. By the same token, it
strengthens the Hawks and other elements in the
U.S. seeking a military solution to what is
essentially a political and economic challenge.

05
Cedes the moral high ground
If the goal of technological decoupling is to hobble
a potential competitor and contain China for the
sake of maintaining U.S. hegemony then the U.S.
has already ceded the moral high ground.

Keep in touch …
Simon
Lacey
Disclaimer
Views expressed are those of the author and in no way reflect the official positions of
either Trends Research and Advisory or the University of Adelaide