The Strategic Landscape of Global Digital Geopolitical Competition and Its Implications

Lu Chuanying

The return of geostrategic thinking has brought about profound impact on major country relations in digital space, accelerating the advent of the era of global digital geopolitics.As humans created digital technologies and proposed digital sovereignty to regulate their development, global digital geopolitics has further elevated the competition on digital technology to a more strategic position.There is an intense interaction between global digital geopolitical dynamics, the digital geostrategies of major countries and the adjustment of the international landscape, which will bring new changes to the international relations.

THE EMERGENCE OF GLOBAL DIGITAL GEOPOLITICAL COMPETITION

Geostrategic thinking is reshaping the future of digital space.The game between major countries on digital geostrategy has already kicked off.As the world’s most important digital power, the United States has basically completed its digital geostrategic layout.It is the established and hegemonic power in global digital geopolitics.Its geopolitical thinking has a profound bearing on both the international policies and domestic policies of various countries on digital technology.The rise of Asia is a major change in digital geopolitics compared to traditional geopolitics as China, Japan, the ROK, India and ASEAN all have pivotal positions in the global digital technology system.On top of this, digital powers such as the European Union and Russia,as well as some regional digital powers, are gradually forming their own geostrategies, contributing to the establishment of a global digital geopolitical system.

First, the US is speeding up its digital geostrategy layout, triggering shocks in the global digital space.The geostrategic thinking is particularly evident in the Biden administration’s digital strategy.The Biden administration has repeatedly emphasized the importance of digital technology for US national security and global leadership in a series of strategic documents, laws and regulations,explicitly identifying its dominance in digital technology fields such as artificial intelligence, quantum technology and block chain as strategic pillars of digital geopolitics.

At present, the US’s international digital geostrategic layout has been basically completed, which mainly includes three aspects.First, China,Russia, the DPRK and Iran are listed as its clear digital geostrategic competitors, among which China is the only country capable of shaking the US digital hegemony.Therefore,the US attempts to use whole-ofgovernment and society-wide means to suppress China in the field of digital technology.Second, a system of digital technology-related allies has been widely established.Focusing on ideology and national security, the US has established several digital ally systems involving different digital technologies and different strategic objectives in the areas of chips, artificial intelligence, cyber security, digital economy, and cross-border data.Third, in order to maintain the absolute security of its own digital geography, the US attempts to reshape the supply chain system of global digital technology with it as the center.

Second, Asia has developed into an essential arena for competition in global digital geopolitics.On the one hand, Asia as a whole already has all the important elements of the digital space.In the digital space, computility, algorithms, and data are the core indicators of digital technology.Japan, the ROK, and China’s Taiwan have complete chip manufacturing technologies and control more than half of the global chip supply chain.China has a large number of Internet platform companies that have accumulated certain algorithmic advantages.China, India and ASEAN have a large user base that generates massive amounts of data.At the same time, Europe, which occupies a central position in traditional geopolitics,is gradually declining in importance in the field of digital technology.Asa result, Asia is gradually replacing Europe as the center of the global digital geopolitical landscape.

Therefore, digital geopolitics in Asia is inevitably influenced by the traditional geopolitical landscape.The US is increasingly competing for digital geopolitical power in Asia.First, in the field of computility, the US is vigorously promoting the establishment of the Chip 4 between the US, Japan, the ROK and China’s Taiwan, with the intention of severing the supply chain system of chips in Asia.As the US continues to exert pressure, the Japanese government announced that it would stop exporting high-end photoresists to China.Second, the US continues to enhance its cooperation with India in the digital space, instigating India’s “ban”on Chinese Internet companies and thus blocking the road to future cooperation between the two digital powers.With the advancement of the“Indo-Pacific Strategy”, India’s ban on Chinese Internet companies basically cuts off the path of future cooperation between China and India in the fields of computility, algorithms,and data.Third, it is encircling China in terms of cyber security and data security.The US continues to tarnish China’s international image in the field of cyber security, and deepen its cooperation with India, Japan, the ROK and China’s Taiwan in cyber security, which directly targets China.In this way, cyber security and data security have become a priority in the field of digital geopolitics in countries and regions in Asia, and interregional digital economic cooperation has given way to confrontation in cyber security.In short, with the intervention of the US digital geostrategy and the coordination of some countries and regions, digital geopolitics in Asia is on the verge of“Balkanization”.

Third, the formation of global digital geopolitics is picking up pace,and the game between global powers and regional countries will further intensify in the future.In the global digital geopolitical landscape, North America and East Asia are one step ahead in the development of digitalgeostrategy, and the EU and Russia have strong influence on the rule system and security of digital space respectively.However, other regional powers are also accelerating the pace of digital economy development,driving the Middle East, Africa, and the Latin America region into the global digital geopolitical landscape.At the technological level, these regions are more reliant on digital technology powerhouses.In the foreseeable future, the reliance of regional countries on North America and East Asia in computility, algorithms and data will further increase.At the political level, digital geopolitics is the main way for regional countries to fight for power in digital space.On the one hand, regional countries safeguard their own interests by actively participating in digital space rule-making.On the other hand,they also skillfully use the geostrategic competition between major countries to gain a more favorable position and obtain more support from major countries in digital infrastructure construction, digital technology transfer and talent training.At the level of international rules,major regional countries have emphasized the importance of Internet sovereignty and data sovereignty as a way to balance their technological dependence on digital powers and the maintenance of their political,economic, and security independence and autonomy.

People touring artificial intelligence voice recognition software at the Artificial Intelligence Summit at the Javits Convention Center on December 7, 2022 in New York, United States.

THE MAIN MANIFESTATION OF GLOBAL DIGITAL GEOPOLITICAL CONFLICTS

In traditional geopolitics, countries, mainly considering the influence of geographic factors, strive to gain the initiative through controlling strategic locations.Geostrategic ideas such as air and sea supremacy are hence derived.Conflicts betweencountries also focus on the competition for land, sea and sky.Digital space is an artificial virtual space,whose forms and features of conflict that have been demonstrated are more complex than those of traditional geopolitics.However, the inherent mechanism of digital geopolitics is still a product of the combination of traditional geopolitical ideas and digital technology.Digital technology is the foundation of digital space and the main object of contention in digital geopolitics.Having said that, digital technologies are extremely widespread, many of which have become the infrastructure of our daily life,and only those with critical roles are the focus of digital geostrategy.In the era of artificial intelligence, computility, algorithms and data are the core parts of digital technology.Computility, algorithms and data have a mutually reinforcing and complementary relationship.The improvement of data quality and quantity can make up for the weaknesses of algorithms,and the optimization of algorithms can significantly improve the efficiency of computility.The unfolding digital geopolitical game in terms of the three key elements shows the following dynamics.

First, the computility competition revolves around chip manufacturing.The computility is directly reflected in the number of supercomputing centers and data centers, but the focus of the geopolitical game underneath is the manufacturing capacity of high-end chips, of which the photolithography machine is the key part.By banning the sale of photolithography machines, the control of the entire high-end chip manufacturing industry chain can be achieved.Whether it is the so-called Chip 4 or the consensus reached by the US, the Netherlands and Japan on joint restrictions on the export of chips to China, the aim is to prevent China from acquiring high-end chips through digital geopolitical means, thereby stalling China’s breakthrough in computility.The conflicts created by the US in the chip sector demonstrate the complexity and intensity of global digital geopolitical competition.The chip is a masterpiece of human industrial civilization.Technological development and the market’s belief in Moore’s Law have driven the formation of anefficient, high-quality global industrial chain.With the interference of the US government’s digital geostrategy,the chip global supply chain system began to split and disintegrate.With hegemonic logic defeating Moore’s Law, the pace of global chip technology development will be significantly slowed down, and the era of high-rate growth will be long gone.

On January 3, 2023, South Korea’s Deputy Prime Minister for Economy and Minister of Planning and Finance, Chew Kyung-ho, unveiled a proposal on strengthening tax incentives to support semiconductor investment in Seoul.

Second, algorithm is the brain of artificial intelligence, and is also the key area of concern for the digital geostrategy of major countries.The US, on the one hand, with its traditional geopolitical layout, actively promotes its exclusive cooperation in the field of artificial intelligence within the framework of its Five Eyes Alliance, Indo-Pacific Economic Framework and G7.On the other hand, it attempts to establish a geostrategy in the field of AI algorithms through means including ideology,national security and technology sharing.The widespread popularity of ChatGPT further enhances the importance of algorithms in the field of digital geopolitics.Currently, ChatGPT is not open to some countries, and some countries have disabled ChatGPT based on concerns of data security and data sovereignty.This reflects the influence of digital geopolitics on algorithms.ChatGPT is an efficient AI content generation platform.The transparency of its algorithms and to whom its interface is open will become the core issues of digital geopolitical game.On top of that, what’s behind ChatGPT is an open source algorithm Transformer model, and many big language models worldwide are based on Transformer models.Whether future AI algorithm models will still adopt the open source model will inevitably be influenced by digital geopolitics.

Third, data flow is another focal issue of digital geopolitical competition.Under the trend of data localiza-tion and sovereignty, data has shifted from global free flow to flow within the framework of bilateral or regional data cross-border cooperation.Even for traditional geopolitical allies like the US and the EU, their cooperation in the field of data flow has many twists and turns.From the “Safe Harbor Agreement” to the “Privacy Shield Agreement” to the “Transatlantic Data Privacy Framework” that is currently in full swing, the EU continues to increase its control over data to prevent it from flowing to the US,while the US goes to great lengths to prevent the EU from closing the valve on data flows.This reflects the divergence of interests of the US and EU in their digital geostrategies.

The competition over data is by no means limited to the single goal of data localization.It is also reflected in other aspects such as national security.Currently, most of data localization requirements are based solely on privacy protection purposes, while some data related to national security is itself outside the realm of disclosure and flow.In fact,the geostrategic game around open data is much richer and deeper.For example, the controversy behind Tik-Tok in the US was largely based on US digital geopolitical considerations over China.In the future, on the competition for data, more strategic tools will be introduced by various countries, and the free flow of data will face more and more challenges.

MAJOR IMPLICATIONS OF GLOBAL DIGITAL GEOPOLITICS

As the development and application of artificial intelligence, quantum technology and other digital technologies continue to accelerate,the global digital geopolitical competition will further intensify and will have a series of profound impacts on the existing international landscape,international order and international rules of digital space.

First, digital geopolitics accelerates the change of international power contrast, and the digital geostrategic game becomes increasingly intense.From the perspective of the global geo-plate, North America and East Asia are the most important regions.The US and China are the representative countries of these two regions and the two most important actors in global digital geopolitics.The US has completed the basic layout of its digital geostrategy at an early stage, while other countries are either still in the initial stage or not putting it on their agenda.The US is constantly curbing the latecomers in order to maintain its preemptive advantage.To this end, it constantly emphasizes national security and ideological security in the field of digital technology, labels competitors as technological authoritarians,and hype so-called disinformation operations, in order to reshape the trajectory of technological development through geostrategic thinking,so as to maintain US hegemony in digital space.

Judging from the current global digital geopolitical development trend, the US will continue to build an exclusive alliance system in the digital space, and then shape the digital value chain to its advantage in order to maintain its dominant position.As “the only country that can challenge the US in the digital space”,China is experiencing unprecedented US suppression and containment.However, China’s nearly 1.1 billion Internet users, more than one-fifth of the world’s, are the core foundation of China’s ability to withstand any external influence.In the digital space,China’s strength is solid and has great growth potential.Meanwhile,the declining trend in digital space strength of traditional developed economies such as the EU, Japan and ROK, as well as emerging powers such as Brazil, South Africa and Russia, if not reversed, will further widen the gap between them and China and the US.

The Falcon 9 launch vehicle lifts off with 60 Starlink Internet satellites on February 15, 2021, in Cape Canaveral,Florida, United States.

Second, digital geopolitics has driven the transformation of the international order.Although digital technology has a certain degree of uncertainty, this uncertainty can be circumvented and reduced through governance.On the whole, digital technology, with globalization in its DNA, can ultimately benefit the whole world.The US strategy of competing for digital geopolitical hegemony has shaken the digital technology ecosystem.The digital geostrategic competition around computility, algorithms and data haspromoted the nationalization, ideologization and localization of digital technology, fundamentally shaking,disrupting and reversing the trend of globalization, and bringing more uncertainties and unpredictability to the international order.Against this backdrop, governments are strengthening their focus on digital sovereignty to counter the risk of disorder, and with the US vigorously promoting values and ideological alliances and forming various exclusive digital alliance systems in the digital technology field, the risk of fragmentation of digital space is increasing.

Digital geopolitical competition has intensified the fragmentation of the rule system in digital space.Relying solely on the coordination of major powers or camp-based rules obviously cannot promote the global development of digital technology.Although various digital technology alliances have been built and data cross-border cooperation carried out,a rule system in the real sense has not yet been established.In the absence of rules, conflicts between countries will frequently arise and lead to more crises, so much so that many scholars literally use “digital cold war” to describe the features of the digital space.Whether from the perspective of the changing power pattern or the transformation of the international system, it is necessary to reduce risks and conflicts by strengthening global governance, so as to create a better external environment for the development of digital technology.

Third, the security dilemma in digital space has further intensified.The security of digital technology has been widely questioned, including security loopholes, data leakage in a narrow sense, as well as algorithmic ethics and the digital divide in a broad sense.Cooperation at the global level is indispensable to solve these security issues.Measures are needed to jointly address security challenges in multiple aspects such as international rule building, information sharing, and capacity building.However, the fierce competition of digital geopolitics makes global cooperation in security extremely difficult.Digital hegemonic powers not only pursue their own absolutesecurity, but also “weaponize” digital technology security issues, which exacerbates the security dilemma in digital space.In the field of frontier technologies, the lack of experience makes the sharing of harmful information valuable for avoiding technological security risks.Due to the influence of digital geopolitics, it has become difficult for digital and cyber security companies to share harmful information among themselves to solve security risks.The security dilemma has increased the negative impact of digital technology, undermined people’s confidence in digital technology, brought great concern to the future development of digital technology, and slowed down the pace of benefiting humanity through digital technology.

February 7, 2022, The European Union Ministerial Conference is taking place in Paris,France, and the theme of the conference is Building Europe’s Digital Sovereignty.

The dynamics of competition and integration between the two logics of digital technology and geopolitics determine whether digital technology can break through the logic of geopolitics and reshape the international order in digital space with the logic of technology.From this perspective,digital geopolitics is not only about the competition among digital powers, but also the competition between digital technology and countries.Information communication technology, the forefront of digital technology, has strongly contributed to the trend of globalization.With the further development of digital technologies such as artificial intelligence and quantum information, it is still not clear whether digital technologies will reverse the current trend of technological sovereignty and push the international system towards a higher level of globalization.