I wrote this opinion essay on the American tech sector, which the Trump administration conveniently ignores when talking about trade surpluses. As global trade is upended, I argue America's trade partners should more carefully examine the place the American tech monopolies have in their countries.
The prevailing wisdom is that American dominates tech simply because American companies are better. While that's true, I argue that a huge portion of this comes instead from the monopolistic winner-take-all dynamics of tech not found in other industries. Despite the American car manufacturers being significantly worse, they still exist. The European tech industry is significantly worse, and they're almost nowhere to be found in tech. The Chinese tech industry is worse in many ways as well, yet shielded by the Great Firewall, they've found themselves with cloud hyperscalers, frontier AI models, global consumer businesses, etc.
Once upon a time, this mattered less, but as American values diverge from the rest of the liberal democracies, the the effect American tech has on our political discourse and economies are becoming a matter of national security.
This is from the perspective of someone who works in the American tech industry but is not American, and has spent a fair amount of time in China.
As an opinion piece, I'm not sure my arguments are entirely correct, but I think they're worth thinking about.
The prevailing wisdom is that American dominates tech simply because American companies are better. While that's true, I argue that a huge portion of this comes instead from the monopolistic winner-take-all dynamics of tech not found in other industries. Despite the American car manufacturers being significantly worse, they still exist. The European tech industry is significantly worse, and they're almost nowhere to be found in tech. The Chinese tech industry is worse in many ways as well, yet shielded by the Great Firewall, they've found themselves with cloud hyperscalers, frontier AI models, global consumer businesses, etc.
Once upon a time, this mattered less, but as American values diverge from the rest of the liberal democracies, the the effect American tech has on our political discourse and economies are becoming a matter of national security.
This is from the perspective of someone who works in the American tech industry but is not American, and has spent a fair amount of time in China.
As an opinion piece, I'm not sure my arguments are entirely correct, but I think they're worth thinking about.