With all eyes on the Indo-Pacific, a burgeoning tech alliance is taking shape in the Euro-Atlantic – Yahoo Canada Finance
The TechCrunch Global Affairs Project examines the increasingly intertwined relationship between the tech sector and global politics.
On September 29-30, in a converted steel mill in Pittsburgh now serving as a startup accelerator, three top Biden cabinet members and two top EU officials hu…….
The TechCrunch Global Affairs Project examines the increasingly intertwined relationship between the tech sector and global politics.
On September 29-30, in a converted steel mill in Pittsburgh now serving as a startup accelerator, three top Biden cabinet members and two top EU officials huddled to launch the U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council (TTC). The TTC — if it takes root — could be a Euro-Atlantic answer to the Quad in the Indo-Pacific: an embryonic tech alliance and a building block for a new democratic tech arrangement.
When looking at the tech-foreign policy nexus in political Washington, all eyes seem to be on the Indo-Pacific — particularly China. But in data, software and hardware, the U.S.-EU relationship remains an equally if not more important tech corridor. For a sense of proportion, Euro-Atlantic data transfers are 55% greater than those between the U.S. and Asia.
With the TTC, the Euro-Atlantic partnership now has a strategic venue to take advantage of this massive democratic, digital corridor, particularly in light of the global geotech race in which the U.S., China and the EU are the three primary actors.
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The 17-page Pittsburgh TTC statement outlines a roadmap for future work and a phalanx of working groups tackling critical issues like technical standards, secure supply chains, data governance, foreign direct investment (FDI) screening, green technology, misuse of technology in human rights abuses and open economies. While the word China does not appear once, the joint statement is riddled with language about “non-market economies,” “civil-military fusion” and use of “social scoring” by “authoritarian governments,” all of which are code for China.
Three immediate areas stand out. First, the U.S. and EU are rethinking their approach to technical standards. A saying that has been kicking around in China holds that “third-tier companies make products, second-tier companies make technology, first-tier companies make standards.” In September, the Chinese government released its Standards Strategy focused on greater internationalization of Chinese technical standards, acceleration of standards adoption and more private sector effort in standard development.
The U.S. and EU have both taken note of how standards can be instrumentalized for geopolitical purposes. The U.S. and EU increasingly recognize that their model of letting the private sector set standards has meant losing ground as companies adjacent to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) colonized standard-setting bodies like the International Standards Organization (ISO) and the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). In light of China’…….
Source: https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/eyes-indo-pacific-burgeoning-tech-180701221.html
