From two leading geopolitics experts and public policy executives, an urgent analysis of the relationship between technology, geopolitics and the role private companies play.

Are US and China headed toward a Technology Cold War? Founded on a belief of uninterrupted globalisation, Silicon Valley and global technology companies built their business on the assumption that technology supersede national borders and state power. But the geopolitical reality has caught up, and instead technology is now being weaponised in the geopolitical competition between US and China - with companies caught in between.

How geopolitics discovered technology

Over the last decade, technology has become a key concern for foreign policy-makers. It is not so much about old questions of how technology could trigger economic growth. It is about tech and geopolitical power - a concept so alien to the tech world itself. Silicon Valley believes that technology itself flattens the world. But geopolitical reality caught up with the tech industry and digital utopianism. As we write this book, the “weaponization” of tech value chains made daily headlines around the globe: The United States in particular is pursuing a strategy of achieving geopolitical goals by trying to leverage supposed “choke points” in tech value chain. For corporations who actually own a piece of technology that is supposed to be “weaponized”, these are challenging times.

“I never thought I would see the day when semiconductor companies are as crucial to geopolitics as oil companies were in the last century”, an executive of a global semiconductor company told us in an interview. In the past year, more than 97% of CEO’s have adapted business plans and strategies to geopolitics, according to a survey by EY.

The weaponization of tech value chains is linked to an increasing geopolitical contest between the US and China. Tech is front and center in this competition. Both sides invent new policy tools with a high frequency, leveraging tech value chains and market access barriers for geopolitical purposes.

This book will explore the relationship between geopolitics and technology over the last 25 years, with a particular focus on the US and China. We trace how these formerly separate domains are now intertwined and what that in turn means for politics and business. We will describe how the perception of a changing balance of power between the US and China has influenced economic statecraft, how new policy tools have been developed to achieve geopolitical goals, how these new tools are shaping digital technologies and how companies react.