Global Review

The Technological Revolution in China and the USA: What About Europe and Eurasia?

December 8, 2020
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Two articles from the South China Morning Post were really interesting this week:

“US needs a hi-tech revolution to combat China,” says General Mark Milley.

  • Military must adapt to ‘fundamental change’ under way in the character of war
  • Joint Chiefs of Staff head wants smaller, more capable forces which fully embrace robotics and artificial intelligence

The US military will need to fully embrace robotics and artificial intelligence if it is to maintain superiority over China, according to the Pentagon’s top general.

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University of Science and Technology of China

Joint Chiefs Chairman General Mark Milley also said smaller, more capable forces armed with long-range missiles would need to be posted more widely around Asia to hem in the top US adversary.

“We are in the middle of a fundamental change in the character of war,” he told the Defence Forum Washington online symposium at the US Naval Institute on Thursday.

And while the USA is still talking about a technological revolution, China reports another success in quantum computing and AI:

“China claims quantum computing lead with Jiuzhang photon test, creating machine ‘one trillion times faster’ than next best supercomputer”

  • Researchers said their prototype took a little over three minutes to complete a task that would take the world’s fastest conventional machine 600 million years.
  • Results put the country firmly at the forefront of the field, lead scientist says

Chinese physicists say they have built a quantum computer one trillion times faster than the most powerful supercomputer, with potential for some real-life applications.

The times are over to claim that China could only copy technology from the West and would get all its successes from economic espionage. Graham Allison once said that China is not doing Research and Development (R&D),, but RDT (Research &Development &Theft). While this is correct, one should not forget that not only China harmed intellectual property rights, copied technologies and had economic espionage—the West and the USA are also doing this as became last known in the NSA scandal. And scholars and knowledgeable people of economic history know that these are not new symptoms of the last decade. Just a look at the history of the atomic bomb, the Manhattan Project, how Russia and China got their nuclear technology shows this as the most obvious and best-known example. It should also not be forgotten that globalization pushed by the West also made it possible for China to hire engineers, scientists, experts, as advisers and even managers for Chinese companies. As Trump said: I don’t blame the Chinese that they took advantage, but the Western politicians and Davos elites who were giving the Chinese the advantages. In this sense Trump was correct.

But we don’t want to engage in a moral discussion. More important is how the CCP and the West see technological progress. While the Germans and Europeans are complaining that the USA and China would steal their technology, it should be clear that most technologies “stolen” from then become more and more outdated and that Europe and Germany really has a problem if it is about new technologies. The technological gap – civil and militarily- between the Europeans and the USA and China is too obvious. There is not too much to “steal” anymore, just the opposite. Germany and Europe might come in the situation that they have to copy or steal from China or the USA just to get access to the new technologies. And without a military-industrial complex, joint venture capital, a Silicon Valley, or EU hi-tech fonds, nothing will change.

The EU has now at least decided on a new Green deal, but it is questionable whether the EU budget and the ECB-funded grants and loans have a uniform thrust in the direction of new technologies and analog and digital infrastructure construction and not to fill any financial holes in the state budgets. Long story short message.: A European hi-tech investment fund or some sort of industrial policy would be needed that promotes new high-tech technologies and brings them to a breakthrough so that the technological gap between Europe and the United States and China can be closed.

A European investment fund that promotes new industries and start-ups, as well as existing national champions nationally and European, but as a new EU Los Alamos and Apollo project. A kind of Apollo project from cloud computing, quantum computing, AI, blockchain technology, robotics to nano and biotechnology and also such new developments in Silicon Valley as artificial meat. New ecological technologies would have to be also addressed, which can already be part of the current New Green Deal of the EU. ..Trillions of savings are in the bank accounts with zero interest rate policy and are not invested in productive new technologies, but are continuously decreasing. Bringing this dead, unproductive capital to a productive utilization is the idea of Walter Kohl in his book “Which future do we want?”(Welche Zukunft wollen wir?)”.

A European Silk Road Marco Polo 2.0 would be needed, a project that in addition to the systematic development of a high-tech industry in research. Development and production also remove the investment backlog in the analog and digital infrastructure in Europe, which are also prerequisites for the use of these new technologies, leaving the young generation with a well-functioning infrastructure for the future as the legacy of our generation, a common interest project that unites today’s Europe, a vision and concrete material advantages, as well as jobs and economic growth then generated in a multiplier effect. On the one hand as a counterpoint to China’s New Silk Road, a European infrastructure project that renews Europe’s promise of prosperity, makes it concrete and creates optimism again. Especially since every European also wonders: Why are the Chinese building a train route from Budapest to Belgrade and not the Europeans? It is also about getting the Chinese backyard in the form of the 16 plus 1 group back by connecting European non-EU members. The first serious supporters have already appeared. On the one hand, the FAZ already headlined: “Why not a European Silk Road?” The idea is now gaining further supporters from three research institutes, albeit in the still rudimentary form of a high-speed long-distance train network for Europe – here from the Freitag newspaper:

“A recent proposal from the Düsseldorf Institute for Macroeconomics, the Austrian Economic Institute and the French Institute OFCE has shown that there is another way. In view of the EU negotiations on a reconstruction fund to deal with the Corona crisis, they are calling for Europe to build a network of four super-fast train lines that connect east and west, north and south. A route should run from Lisbon via Paris, Berlin, Copenhagen to Helsinki. At an average train speed of 250 to 350 kilometres per hour, the travel time from Berlin to Paris would be reduced to four hours. Those who travel the distance by plane today take longer. The researchers calculated that simply switching passengers from planes to trains would reduce CO2 emissions by four to five percent. Freight traffic would also be shifted to the new rail. The 18,250-kilometer network would cost 1.1 trillion euros – an amount roughly double the 500 billion earmarked for the EU’s reconstruction fund. But it would be worth it. What would a movement from below do to effectively to counter global warming? It would network across Europe to promote such a project. It is so exemplary. The politicians are waving away? This may show that our free elections are not as free as they seem. The movement from below would combine their struggle for an ecologically effective large-scale project with the struggle for an electoral system that does not, of all things, spare the economy – that is, leaves it to capital, on which everything else depends. The chances of getting a lot of approval would be great, also because the institutes propose even more. They consider the superfast train network to be the core of a “European silk road”, which would also include new ports. The continent’s borders, the Balkans, the Caucasus, would be better connected to the industrial regions in the west. The researchers expect 3.5 percent economic growth and two million new jobs.”

Furthermore, in addition to the civil infrastructure, military use for NATO should also be considered, which, like ecological aspects and more, should include the ecological promotion of regional public transport networks to overcome the urban-rural divide in the analog and digital infrastructure, in order to create a holistic concept for the greatest possible benefit. The whole thing should also be thought of with future orientation in matters of Eurasia and the USA. It is also interesting to see that in a joint guest article in the FAZ, the chairman of the Atlantik-Brücke and former Vice-Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel and John B. Emerson. Former American Ambassador to Germany and Chairman of the American Council on Germany propose a future transatlantic agenda, among this some kind of European or even Eurasian Silkroad: as mentioned as “Conception of a transatlantic infrastructure initiative with Africa and the Eurasian area as a democratic, fair and transparent alternative to China’s “New Silk Road.” Would there be any space and connection in a transatlantic Eurasian Silkroad for Russia?

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