If the 50 cent bullet was the tool of coercion for the future the Soviet Union would have won the Cold War. The Soviets lost not because they could not produce enough bullets, but because they could not keep up with the rapid advance of information technology, computer chips, processors, and supercomputers.
China leverages its vast market power to coerce American high tech companies to provide it with the latest technology if they want to conduct business in the People's Republic. China's power is market power, it is the power to request that Google censor news that is harmful to the Communist Party. It is the power to ask Hollywood studios not put the small flag of Taiwan on Tom Cruise's bomber jacket in the new Top Gun movie. The Chinese now have more supercomputers than the United States (188 to 122), and for a few years, they had the fastest supercomputer in the world. These computers allow nations to simulate everything from the weather to nuclear detonations.
At the end of the day, China understands better than anyone that control in the future is control over information, not tanks, aircraft carriers, or nuclear tipped ICBMs.
Agreed, except that companies such as Google, Facebook, and Amazon are orders of magnitude more powerful than traditional media companies. Keep in mind that Google and Facebook are the gateway to the internet for the vast majority of users. If Facebook erases news, a vast majority of people may never know it happened.
If Google orders search results that highlight whatever it likes on the first page, and buries what it does not on the 10th page, people's understanding of the issues will be severely skewed. We are talking about companies that have the power to manipulate ideas and information orders of magnitude greater than anything in human history.
That's an excellent question, and it really is something for all of us to think about. In the 1890's people understood monopolies in terms of products. One suggestion might be that information can also be monopolized. Any company that acts as the sole gatekeeper of information should be regulated. Ironically, monopoly over information is infinitely more dangerous than over products. Monopoly over words and ideas is the definition of thought control. We need to find an answer to this problem with the tech monopolies quickly or we are all in serious trouble, not just in the West, but in every country around the globe!!
China leverages its vast market power to coerce American high tech companies to provide it with the latest technology if they want to conduct business in the People's Republic. China's power is market power, it is the power to request that Google censor news that is harmful to the Communist Party. It is the power to ask Hollywood studios not put the small flag of Taiwan on Tom Cruise's bomber jacket in the new Top Gun movie. The Chinese now have more supercomputers than the United States (188 to 122), and for a few years, they had the fastest supercomputer in the world. These computers allow nations to simulate everything from the weather to nuclear detonations.
At the end of the day, China understands better than anyone that control in the future is control over information, not tanks, aircraft carriers, or nuclear tipped ICBMs.