I first sensed a disturbance in the force in the early days of the first Trump administration. It wasn’t the president’s antics that got my Spidey senses tingling. Rather, it was a gnawing recognition of a fundamental shift in the way the world worked.
Over time, the contents and contours of this new mindset became clear – to me, at least – and I called it “the new national security economy.” While that administration’s declaration that strategic competition was the defining feature of the geopolitical moment made sense, it wasn’t clear how that concept would be applied. Unlike the Cold War, when the primary battleground was military, the U.S. and the West generally were squaring off against a real economic adversary, one that is deeply embedded in its supply chains and integral to its economic success. The economic dimension transformed strategic – I use that word in its most elemental sense – calculations, particularly since this shifted attention to an arena, technology, where Western leadership has been taken for granted.
Historically, discussions of technology in the strategic sphere zeroed in on its impact on military capabilities. Today, the civilian uses of that technology matter most. That is why David Lee and I titled our new book, which comes out today, “Tech-Gemony”: It explains how and why the future will be written by the companies and countries that lead in this field.
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