Posts Tagged ‘policy’
“As the servants of the Machines are becoming a privileged class, the Machines are going to be enormously more powerful”*…
Technological sovereignty is a nation’s ability to create, control, and own (or reliably source from reliable alllies) the technologies, infrastructure, and data essential to national security and economic growth.
Concerns with technological sovereignty date back to at least the 17th century (when, for instance, European mercantilist states banned the export of textile machinery to protect domestic monopolies and maintain a favorable balance of trade). They characterized much of the 20th century (as nations built up indigenous defense industries to ensure military independence).
In our 21st century, the one-two punch of the Trump tariffs and his attack on Iran (and the effective closure of the Straights of Hormuz), with the supply chain disruptions attendant on them, have raised the issue of technological sovereignty anew– and with a vengence. In our interconnected, interdependent– thus vulernable to disruption– world, China and the U.S. are in the lead; but experts project slow advance in national tech sovereignty over the next several years.
But this time around, Francesco Crespi and his co-authors argue, the Big Tech corporate monopolies/oligopolies in both China and the U.S. have emerged as even more important players (than their historical analogues have been). Their increasing dominance of private R&D, the increasing centrality of privately-controlled digital technology, their resultant control over knowledge, infrastructures, and key technologies such as telecoms, cloud computing, and AI. have made them central to nation’s futures, even as the Big Tech players (as corporations) have different imperatives.
Crespi, et al. unpack this state of play and propose a typology of technological sovereignty that takes into account the degree of technological dependence on Big Tech, the nature of the relationship between states and digital companies, and, consequently, a nation’s capacity to align the activities of these companies with its own strategic objectives. They summarize:
This paper has examined TS at a historical moment in which the control of critical technologies, infrastructures and knowledge is increasingly concentrated in a limited number of digital corporations. Its starting point was a conceptual tension in the existing debate. TS is commonly defined as the capacity of a state, or a federation of states, to access and provide critical technologies without incurring one-sided structural dependence (Edleret al., 2023). Yet this definition implicitly assumes that sovereignty is ultimately held and exercised by public authorities. The argument developed in the present paper is that this assumption has become increasingly problematic. In core domains such as cloud computing, AI, data infrastructures, satellite systems and digital services for defence, the effective control of technological capabilities is often exercised by private corporations whose interests, strategies and governance mechanisms only partly overlap with public objectives.
The empirical evidence discussed in the paper points to three connected transformations. First, the long-term retreat of public research and the expansion of intellectual property regimes have shifted the centre of gravity of innovation systems towards large private actors. The rise of ICT and platform-based business models has reinforced this tendency by allowing a small group of firms to accumulate data, proprietary knowledge, network advantages and infrastructural assets on a global scale. Second, the hierarchy of corporate R&D has changed substantially since the early 2000s. Digital firms, especially from the United States and China, now occupy the leading positions among global R&D spenders and dominate strategic technological areas such as AI, cloud and software ecosystems. Third, this concentration is infrastructural as much as technological. The control of data centres, cloud availability zones, platforms, operating systems and search engines gives Big Tech firms a systemic role in the functioning of economies, public administrations and security apparatuses (Coveri et al., 2025).
As a result, this concentration of techno-economic power modifies the relationship between the state and private capital. Public authorities no longer simply procure technologies from firms operating in competitive markets. In many cases, they depend on proprietary ecosystems that set standards, store data, provide computing capacity, update software and mediate access to essential digital functions. This produces a form of structural lock-in that is particularly severe in dual-use and security domains. The state can retain formal authority while losing part of the operational capacity required to exercise it. Under these conditions, TS cannot be evaluated only by measuring the presence of advanced technologies within a territory; it must also be assessed by asking who owns, controls and governs the infrastructures and knowledge through which those technologies are produced and deployed.
The analysis of the military-digital complex further strengthens this conclusion (Guarascio and Pianta, 2025). The digitalisation of warfare has made the capabilities of Big Tech increasingly indispensable for military and intelligence activities. Cloud infrastructures, AI systems, cyber-defence tools, satellite connectivity and battlefield data services have become essential components of contemporary security systems. At the same time, public procurement, defence contracts and battlefield experimentation reinforce the technological and market position of these firms. Hence, the resulting relationship is one of mutual dependence, but it is not necessarily symmetrical. Governments need access to digital infrastructures and capabilities that they often do not control internally, while Big Tech firms use military and security demand to consolidate their technological advantages, expand proprietary ecosystems and increase their bargaining power vis-a-vis public authorities. This gives concrete substance to the notion of privatised TS (Abels, 2026).
Building on this analytical and empirical framework, the paper proposes a typology for interpreting the notion of TS according to these structural transformations. In particular, it distinguishes between strong and weak technological sovereignty and between private-driven, public-driven and public-private-driven governance arrangements. This distinction matters because the same technological capability may have different economic and political implications depending on the distribution of control across states, domestic firms, foreign firms and hybrid institutional arrangements.
They conclude:
Taken together, these findings suggest that TS should not be assessed only by asking whether a country possesses advanced technologies. It should also be assessed by examining how control is distributed and governed across the state, domestic firms, foreign firms and hybrid governance arrangements. The broader implication is that private-driven TS is not neutral from a welfare standpoint. It may increase innovation speed and geopolitical capacity, but it can also redirect technological change towards rent extraction, militarisation and proprietary lock-in. On the opposite, public-driven technological sovereignty can better preserve public-good objectives, but public institutions should possess adequate technical, financial and organisational capabilities, while public-private technological sovereignty can work when public conditionality is strong; otherwise, it may degenerate into the socialisation of risk and the privatisation of control. A welfare-oriented strategy for TS should therefore prioritise public and collective control over essential technological infrastructures, strengthen public R&D and procurement capabilities, impose interoperability and open- standard requirements, and ensure that critical data, patents and infrastructures generated with public support remain accessible for public purposes.
The central policy question, therefore, is not simply how to become technologically sovereign, but how to prevent the pursuit of sovereignty from becoming a vehicle for the privatisation of the very capabilities on which welfare, democracy and long-term development depend. Technological sovereignty can strengthen resilience, strategic autonomy and collective welfare only if it is embedded in institutions capable of governing technological change in the public interest. Without such institutions, the language of sovereignty may legitimise new forms of dependency: dependence on domestic monopolies in some countries, dependence on foreign platforms in others, or dependence on public-private arrangements in which public authorities finance
strategic projects while private actors retain control over their future trajectories. A research and policy agenda on TS should therefore place ownership, governance and accountability at the centre of the analysis, alongside capabilities and geopolitical positioning.
Eminently worth reading in full: “Technological Sovereignty, Big Tech, and the Military-Digital Complex” via @ssrn.bsky.social. (Full PDF here.)
See also: “Technology sovereignty as an emerging frame for innovation policy. Defining rationales, ends and means” and “Reconciling open science with technological sovereignty“
And for a look at one of the moving parts of the puzzle, one that underlines the importance of Crespi’s closing suggestions: “Elon Musk and SpaceX’s Futurist Coup.”
(Image above: source)
* J.R.R. Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien
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As we develop deftly, we might might send connected birthday greetings to a man who was instrumental in the development the promise/threat of Big Tech as today we know it: Mark Weiser; he was born on this date in 1952. A comouter scientist and CTO of Xerox PARC, he is is widely considered to be the father of ubiquitous computing, a term he coined in 1988, when he described a future in which personal computers would be replaced with tiny computers embedded in everyday “smart” devices and their connection via a network.
“It’s difficult to make predictions, especially about the future”*…
It’s that time of year: predictions and forecasts and outlooks for 2026 on just about everything are everywhere. Scott Belsky‘s list is eminently worth a read…
From talent arbitrage and “proof of craft” to hardware moats, ambient listening, homegrown software, and the end of waste – what should we expect to see in the coming year? What are the implications?…
“12 Outlooks for the Future: 2026+”
For a bracing list of “black swan” possibliities in the new year, see “15 Scenarios That Could Stun the World in 2026.”
But in the interest of starting this year on as positive a note as possible: “1,084 Reasons the World Isn’t Falling Apart.”
* an axiom attributed to Niels Bohr and Yogi Berra, among others
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As we contemplate what’s coming, we might recall that it was on this date in 1902 that Andrew Carnegie filed the incorporation papers for what he called the Carnegie Institution of Washington– which we now know as Carnegie Science. The first of 20 not-for-profit institutions he founded (in addition to his other philanthropy, e.g., funding over 3,000 public libraries), Carnegie Science conducts fundamental research both directly and in collaboration with other organizations (mostly research universities). In its 120+ year history, it has contributed scores of foundational discoveries– e.g., the expanding universe, the existence of dark matter, transposons (“jumping genes”)– across multiple scientific disciplines. Its principals have won multiple Nobel Prizes (and myriad other awards) and have contributed to scientific and technical policy (e.g., Carnegie President Vannevar Bush) and to scientific education.
“Enough is abundance to the wise”*…
The “new” idea of Abundance is having a moment. The estimable David Karpf worries that the folks behind it are blowing their opportunity…
I guess I would call myself “Abundance-curious.”
There is a version of the Abundance agenda that I quite vocally agree with. My interpretation of Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s central argument was something along these lines:
- Government should have a strong hand in establishing, directing, and funding social priorities.
- In the course of setting these priorities, government should endeavor to get out of its own way.
Klein and Thompson are pretty firmly in favor of government intervention and industrial policy. They aren’t just saying “growth is good and we should all cheer for developers!” They are instead saying something more along the lines of, if the government thinks something – housing, clean energy, etc – is a priority, then the government should proactively support that goal. Put money behind it. Don’t leave everything to the “will of the markets.” And, oh yeah, if the government wants to build high-speed rail or housing (etc etc) then the government should get out of its own damn way and make it can actually fulfill those promises.
I pretty enthusiastically agree with all of these points. We ought to rebuild administrative capacity and get back into having government make governance decisions. Government ought to be both proactive and responsive. And often the best way to make a better future possible is to devote public money towards promoting public goods.
I also quite like several of the people operating under that banner, and quite like some of their ideas as well. (Specifically: government should fund more things, we should have more administrative capacity, and the accretion of procedural checks-with-no-balance has had plenty of regrettable consequences.)
And hey, they’re having a moment. Good for them.The term is rapidly becoming an empty signifier, though. Tesla’s new master plan boasts of “sustainable abundance.” The Silicon Valley variant of the abundance agenda is just warmed-over techno-optimism — less “let’s rebuild the administrative state and make government work again!” and more “the government should hand big sacks of money to tech startups and exempt them from taxes and regulations. Let our genius builders build!”
The Abundance 2025 conference [happened] in DC [last] week, and the speakers range from pro-housing YIMBYs to a guy arguing for “deportation abundance.”
Yikes.
Steve Teles has taken a good-faith shot at sorting through the mess:
It would not be hard to conclude that the emergence of these various flavors of abundance betrays the inherent squishiness and incoherence of the concept. And it is true that abundance is not a systematic ideology attached to a specific political coalition, as are conservatism or democratic socialism. But that doesn’t mean that it is ideological vaporware. As someone who has been working on many of these ideas for a decade or more, I think it is time to nail down just what sort of idea abundance is.
Abundance stirs confusion in part because, unlike contemporary conservatism and progressivism, it is not an idea that emerged to justify a specific party-political, coalitional, material, or cultural project. Given that abundance has been embraced by post-colonial socialists, techno-futurist capitalists, and Democratic centrists, it is best conceptualized as an alternative dimension that cuts across existing ideologies without entirely superseding them, defined by a new set of problems and tools for addressing them.
Abundance is fundamentally “syncretic,” spreading by attaching itself to a variety of different cultural practices and political projects, rather than by preserving its doctrinal purity.
He goes on to define the central unifying idea:
At its base, Abundance is best understood as having one central aspiration that requires tackling two interlocking challenges. The aspiration is to escape from a political economy defined by artificial scarcity, to create a world in which we solve problems primarily by unlocking supply.
That’s it. That’s the whole thing. Abundance says “we should solve problems by creating more,” and invites the competing political coalitions to draw their own conclusions on what constitutes a problem. (And, also, more of what, exactly?)
Syncretic terms like this run the risk of falling apart though. If DOGE is part of the Abundance movement, and the people DOGE is illegally firing is also part of the Abundance movement… If the Green New Deal is Abundance but oh hey also the Claremont Institute is Abundance too, then Abundance ceases to mean anything at all. The term is already washed.
(Q: Are Curtis Yarvin, Balaji Srinivasan, and the other Network State neomonarchists part of the Abundance movement? A: yes, that’s “dark abundance.”)
I can empathize with the instinct to try to build the broadest possible coalition. I can see why making your new “movement” seem like the one big cross-partisan idea right now feels like a win. But it is a temporary, pyrrhic victory.
Strategy is a verb. The act of strategizing involves making choices that help you accomplish goals and wield power. The Abundance movement does not appear to be making any choices whatsoever. That’s the fast track to irrelevance.
Just saying, if *I* was part of the Abundance movement, I would be cautioning people that it sure would be nice to accomplish something, anything at all, before the idea gets entirely co-opted and loses all meaning. If the Abundance folks insist on advancing a syncretic proposal so broad that it pointedly has nothing to say about what problems ought to be solved, then they are quickly going to find that their clever-new-phrase means nothing at all.
The fate of every successful political movement is that they eventually face co-optation and counteraction. But usually you want to rack up some actual victories before it happens…
“What *Isn’t* Abundance?” from @davekarpf.bsky.social (in his valuable newsletter, The Future, Now and Then).
See also: “Varieties of Abundance” from @niskanencenter.bsky.social, and “How to Blow Up a Planet” from @nybooks.com.
[Edit: late add of a piece from the ever-insightful Rusty Foster that dropped just after this was first posted: “Abundance of What.”]
* Euripides
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As we muse on more, we might send abundant bountiful greetings to William Bligh; he was born on this date in 1754. A British naval officer, over a 50 year career, he rose to the rank of Vice-Admiral and served as colonial governor of New South Wales. But he is remembered for his role in the most famous mutiny in history: in 1879, the first officer and crew “removed” Bligh from his command of (and set him and his few supporters adrift from) HMAV Bounty.
“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.”*…
Your correspondent is headed onto the road again; so, with apologies, regular service will be suspended until on or about May 17…
… In the meantime, the remarkable Henry Farrell offers sage advice…
Last Thursday, Combinations (a publication of the RadicalxChange foundation), published a review essay that I wrote on Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s Abundance. I’m not going to repeat here what I say there; it’s available for free, so if you want to read it, just click on the link! [and one should read it]. Instead, I want to make the implicit argument explicit.
One of the big problems of American politics – and of politics in plenty of places elsewhere – is that we lack usable and attractive futures. The result is the current battle between the defenders of the present, and an incoherent counter-alliance that brings the cultists of an imaginary past and the evangelists of an impossible future into common cause.
Because I am weird, I think that the most immediately useful aspect of Klein and Thompson’s book is not its specific argument about how to get to the future. It is that the book has the promise to reorient the presentists around the prospect of an attractive future, and the different paths you might take to get there. On the one hand, as Dan Davies says (riffing on post-punk philosophizing), if you don’t have a dream then how’re ya gonna have a dream come true? On the other, no single dream is capable of foretelling the One True Path To Abundance (or, for that matter, any other desirable goal) so you want to have useful arguments between people with different dreams, and different plausible paths…
[Farrell discusses the book and its reception– the myriad reactions it has occasioned– puts the debate into an intellectualy historical context, then pivots to his advice…]
… One terrifying prospect for the U.S. is that the Trump faction wins again in 2028. Another is that the Democrats regain power – but that like Keir Starmer’s government, they trap themselves in a vicious cycle where universal expectations of less generate factionalism and political stasis, which further deepen those universal expectations.
That is why I think that abundance is important as a goal. We need to aim towards some version of abundance to escape the trap we’re in. That too, is why I think that disagreement about how to reach that goal over the next couple of years is valuable in two ways.
First, no faction on the left or right has any monopoly on the wisdom about how to get there. It is only through argument – and experimentation in those bits of the federal system and local politics where experimentation is possible – that we can figure out what to do when we can do it. Second, if we can get to a place where the major argument is about how to get towards abundance, not just between center left and centrists, but across the political spectrum, we – for a very broad value of we – will be halfway towards winning the fight we need to win. Far more is politically possible when we are disagreeing over how to get to an attractive future, than when we are struggling to ensure that we are as close to the top of the pile as possible in a horrible one.
We need usable futures that can orient current politics in fruitful ways. Abundance – in the broadest sense of that term – is the closest thing to a common denominator across such futures that I know of…
Abundance not as an agenda but a goal: “We need usable futures,” from @himself.bsky.social.
For contrast, pair with: “Trump’s futurism: Elon’s rockets and fewer dolls for ‘baby girl’” (and Part 2) from @adamtooze.bsky.social.
* Franklin D. Roosevelt
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As we opt for optimism, we might send cautious birthday greetings to an example of what less-inclusive abundance can yield: John Warne “Bet-a-Million” Gates; he was born on this date in 1855. A Gilded Age industrialist and gambler, Gates was among the first salesmen of barbed wire. He parlayed his success into the manufacture of of the fencing; and success at that, into the manufacture fo steel. (He was instrumental in changing the steel industry’s production methods from the Bessemer process to the open hearth process.) He was the president of Republic Steel and later, of the Texas Company (an oil concern later known as Texaco) and of the Kansas City, Pittsburgh and Gulf Railroad.
Gates developed a taste– and a talent– for gambling at a young age. In his prime, he was known to host raucous, days-long poker games in his permanent suite at the Waldorf-Astoria. His nickname derived from a 1900 horserace in England on which he wagered $70,000 and was widely-reported to have won $1,000,000 (though it seems likely he won “only” $600,000).
“Be careful what you wish for”*…
… And how you wish for it. Eric Athas, with an all-too-timely reminder…
Whenever I’m thinking about ideas to send to you all, I’m reminded of a principle called Goodhart’s Law, which says: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”
In other words, when you tell people they’re being evaluated by a target they must hit, you risk pushing them to produce the wrong results in the name of reaching the target. The incentives can drive them to fixate on achieving the target, not achieving the overall goal.
The concept is named after the economist Charles Goodhart, who introduced it in a 1975 paper about monetary management. But the theory has been connected to a range of situations.
One of the most famous examples is a story about colonial India, when the British government sought to subdue an overpopulation of cobras in Delhi by placing a bounty on the snakes. Turn in a snakeskin, get some money.
But the plan backfired. People started farming cobras to cash in on the bounties, only exacerbating the population problem. This tale, which you can hear more about in a 2012 Freakonomics episode, spawned a shorthand for this phenomenon—the cobra effect…
… Goodhart’s Law, or the cobra effect, isn’t limited to economic policy or invasive species. You can apply it to everyday situations:
- A fitness tracker rewards you for clocking 10,000 steps a day, so you spend your evenings pacing around your living room. [see here]
- A calorie-counting app pushes you to form an unhealthy diet to stay under the limit.
- You set a resolution to read book a week but soon begin selecting books purely based on length—not interest or relevance—to hit the target.
- A construction firm is given unrealistic milestones and must cut corners to fulfill a contract.
- A school becomes hyper-focused on its test scores and offers incentives for grades instead of providing a well-rounded educational experience.
That last one happened in a years-long cheating scandal in Atlanta that unraveled in the 2010s.
Workplace quotas can have this effect, too. When you’re evaluated based on a quota, you may do anything to meet that quota, even if the quality of the work diminishes.
On the flip side, a quota policy may demotivate workers. Here’s what Adam Cobb, a professor of management at Wharton, said in a Wharton write-up about quotas: “People might start withholding effort … If you can easily meet your monthly quota, why should you try as hard once the goal is reached? Doing so may encourage the company to raise the quota, making your life harder.”
You can find the cobra effect in academic research, too, with the push for publication fueling an increase in fake papers.
Today, we’re surrounded by measurements that can be tempting to use as targets in our behavior. What is inbox zero but a target that may distract us from completing more fulfilling work?
I think a lot about the cobra effect with social media, where your success is tied to your ability to accrue views, likes, comments, and shares. Those targets can create an expectation that you must always be creating something new. Social media managers, influencers, and YouTubers have talked about the pressure to churn out new content to please algorithms and feed their audiences…
… Which brings me back to the point I started with a few hundred words ago, and the title of this post. I send this newsletter every Sunday. The routine is helpful because it provides me with a structure to work within. Absent that framework, I could end up spending too little or too much time on it.
But I must remind myself that the weekly tempo isn’t the target. If it were, I’d be critiquing myself based on arbitrary timing, not on the quality of the information I’m sharing with you. I’d be more prone to “spin up” content, as opposed to finding interesting ideas to share with you. I try to keep Goodhart’s Law in mind each week.
As you go about your day, consider your own goals, personally and professionally. When you take an action, like posting a photo on social media or completing a work task, are you doing it to please a measurement? To hit a target?…
The cobra effect and the dangers of turning measures into targets: “I’m not writing this to hit a weekly target,” from @ericathas.
Apposite: “When workplace bonuses backfire” (Economist gift link)
(Image above: source)
* Aesop’s Fables
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As we interrogate our intentions, we might recall that it was on this date in 1793 that the Queen of France, Marie Antoinette, was beheaded. The French Revolution had begun in 1789…
… The Storming of the Bastille on 14 July led to a series of radical measures by the Assembly, among them the abolition of feudalism, state control over the Catholic Church in France, and a declaration of rights.
The next three years were dominated by the struggle for political control, exacerbated by economic depression. Military defeats following the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars in April 1792 resulted in the insurrection of 10 August 1792. The monarchy was replaced by the French First Republic in September, while Louis XVI was executed in January 1793.
After another revolt in June 1793, the constitution was suspended, and adequate political power passed from the National Convention to the Committee of Public Safety [which decreed Marie Antoinette’s fate]. About 16,000 people were executed in a Reign of Terror, which ended in July 1794. Weakened by external threats and internal opposition, the Republic was replaced in 1795 by the Directory. Four years later, in 1799, the Consulate seized power in a military coup led by Napoleon Bonaparte. This is generally seen as marking the end of the Revolutionary period…
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