Dear Listers,

There is no "angel" or "villain" in the US-China trade war. Both countries have historically relied on (and continue to rely on) gangster tactics to grow and prosper - and they are not the only ones; Russia, France, Britain, Singapore, Switzerland etc are also gangster nations in different ways and to varying extents - if you understand how global economic crime works.. remember the idea of anarchy in international relations? If you pick sides on normative grounds you'll be fooling yourself  because, in reality, you'll be choosing a "favorite gangster".

Americans are exceptional strategists who make very-long-term global scale plans; for example, in tech sphere, they knew - and zealously protected - their foundational technology and core know-how advantage from "day 1", even as they relocated manufacturing to China - and that is why they can strike Chinese tech companies with such precise - yet highly effective moves.

On the other hand, the Chinese, coming from a point of disadvantage that was very similar to where Africa is currently - relied on sheer cunning: effective but unsustainable asymmetric / flanking strategy (e.g. leveraging US corporate greed to play the 3rd world card and gain unbalanced market concessions, focus on cost advantage - and supplementing R&D gaps by stealing IP wherever they can, tolerating inhumane labor conditions - including child labor - and so on). This has worked for China and catapulted it into the global "Number 2".

However China did not have a plan for what to do once they reach a global leadership position; the quick-and-easy wins of stealing IP, as well as belief in their competitive advantage as the world's factory, fooled them into adapting their national education and incentives systems on the basis of status quo, rather than parallel development of "first principles" advantage, and though that would have involved "reinventing the wheel", it would have been much smarter - in terms of creating a robust foundation for economic self-reliance. Even their much touted 5G leadership relied on certain assumptions about US tech and consequently has now been thrown into disarray.

What really triggered the trade war is the BRI. It signaled a maturing China that wants to transition from underdog tactics to global leadership - a direct threat to the dominant power. The US had been distracted by its numerous tactical wars, to the extent that it forgot to keep tabs on the bigger picture - and, now, in panic, has resorted to big moves to compensate and try swing back China's gains. This could backfire because China has essentially been given a free "audit" of their status and weaknesses - and all they need now is time to compensate. We can expect some short-term global turbulence in the next decade or so, because the incumbent (US) is unlikely to cheerfully relinquish its lucrative unilateral advantage - but the future is unlikely to be uni-polar.

CONCLUSIONS:

From an interests perspective, there is too much homogeneity in tech and it needs to be balanced. The world clearly needs geopolitical neutrality in globally pervasive ICTs. That means an open internet, open OS, open core components, open fundamental designs, open formats, open protocols, open architectures and so on. It is clear that core global infrastructure should be owned, managed and developed by multilateral states under treaty arrangements (rather than corporate owned).

The rest of the world has an opportunity to leverage the US-China trade-war as justification for forming what I will term as a "Neutral Basics Tech Consortium", where they pool resources to accelerate the development of universally open core technology alternatives.