Digital lead and geopolitics

stein@opensky

This is the time of year when every self-respecting consultancy company makes predictions for the year to come (i.e. 2026 just now at the starting gate). I will not try to predict much myself – but rather than writing long articles about specific themes (which I have done too often recently), I am issuing a set of short commentaries about various topics that have triggered or still trigger me. Here is a short commentary on digital leadership and geopolitics.

Exactly one year ago I wrote an article on “Taking the digital lead” – which at the time was triggered by the Norwegian Government’s ambitions to become “the world’s most digitalized country” - along with various countries across the Nordics and Europe having complained about having “lost its leadership” or wanting to take technology lead in various areas (lately specifically on AI in particular). On a larger scale, we see also large geopolitical tensions these days between the USA, China, the EU and others about taking technology leadership (less about Russia though).

The battle is ongoing about world dominance on tech and on AI in particular – and “everyone” wants to be on top of AI. Part of this geopolitical battle is political, but it is also about the battle for dominance between large local companies in the countries in question, like American and Chinese big tech companies – and in many cases also European mobile operators.

As commented already a year ago, the regulatory approaches in Europe, the US and China are every different. Europe generally follows the tradition of using regulation, opposed to the US letting the market forces free and thinking about it later (having supported the growth of the global American big tech sector, by the way). In Europe, data protection and privacy are in much focus, while in e.g. China it is not such a big concern. There are also clear differences in scale. China is big enough to create global scale simply by developing technology domestically – while Europe and the US are quite comparable in scale. Further, with the EU not being one country but many, also prioritizing local (per country) competition over consolidation, it is even more difficult to compete on scale. The US is trying its best, however, to overcome their scale disadvantage versus China at political level by boycotting Chinese vendors and technology.

I recently also saw this commentary by Mobile World Live who commented on “Chinese practicality vs US idealism” – which comments on different strategies for AI, with the US “explicitly promoting the export of end-to-end AI technology” while China promotes “open technology exchange and cross-border cooperation”. I am not so sure about “US idealism” but I agree with “Chinese practicality” – as also in other cases (e.g. on 5G, 6G etc – refer my earlier article here) in the sense that China acts, i.e. works out and demonstrates concrete use cases of good use for its local industry. Although possibly not so popular in the Western world, my bet is actually on China.

To reiterate some points from last year’s article, the geopolitics among large countries is ongoing, but for smaller countries like my own country Norway there is no chance to compete technically on technology leadership - but we could and should work on building technology competence across people and companies, be it on 5G, AI, cyber security, quantum computing etc – and on using the technology.

On the larger scale, it is all about geopolitics – and with the latest Trump administration, it is stronger than ever …