Techno-Nationalism

Chapter 26The Innovation Horse Race

Never has there been a greater misconception than the belief that governments should leave the business of innovation to corporations and market forces.

We have already discussed how the technology feedback loop, which links together governments, private industry, academia, the defence establishment and markets, has determined history’s winners and losers. From the rise of the Dutch East India Company, in the seventeenth century, to the creation of the first computers during the Second World War, to NASA’s original Moonshot in the 1960s and 1970s, enlightened techno-nationalism has determined the international status quo.

It was the primacy of neoliberal thought during the early post-Cold War era and America’s brief ‘unipolar moment’ in the 1990s and early 2000s, that the idea of ‘passive government’ took root. But the rapid rise of China—and how it accomplished its rise—put an end to this thinking.

Today, as nations pursue their innovation edge and look to support homegrown enterprises, corporations are pivoting towards closer partnerships with governments. Indeed, they are actively seeking government collaboration.

In 2020, Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google and Executive Chairman of its parent company, Alphabet, wrote an op-ed for The New York Times (NYT) in which he stated:

‘…Silicon Valley leaders have put too much faith in the private sector… . The government needs to get back in the game in a serious way’.¹

This is an important ...