Today’s geopolitical race is to get a technical lead

Technology is a force multiplier. Think of it as a cheat code in geopolitics. It helps you gain an advantage over your competitors. With technology, a small island of a few million people has forged the greatest empire in history. This is how the United States quickly ended World War II.

You can be brave and determined to keep up with your rivals. But not in technology. Every era is shaped by a defining invention.

Today it’s tiny chips.

The countries behind these inventions dominated world politics.

The rise of companies like Microsoft and Ple coincided with America’s leadership of a unipolar world. A world that wants to overthrow China.

Beijing has an advantage over the democratic world. We cannot set ourselves the Millennium Development Goals in democracies. Elections change, governments change, and so do priorities. China does not have the inconvenience of free thinking. Your goals are permanent.

China accounts for 2% of its GDP for R&D. That’s around $ 346,000 million.

What about the USA?

It spends 2.7% of the national GDP on R&D. The equivalent of $ 476,000 million. China is gently winning over the US. But it’s not quite on the same level.

Here is an even clearer indicator. China employs 1,089 researchers per million people.

The USA? 4,205 per million people. The US is spending more money and manpower on the tech race.

But here is the problem. The US is a superpower in decline. China is on the rise.

The trajectory is more important than the absolute numbers. The only area China currently leads the US in – in terms of cybersecurity.

The large electronic wall is impressive. But it is built on the altar of freedom and contradiction. That’s why the world is betting that China will lose the tech race.

The key to China’s demise will be emerging powers like India. India spends around 0.7% of its GDP on research and development.

That’s $ 47,000 million. It just doesn’t cut numerically. But India has an ace up its sleeve.

Ingenuity.

Indian researchers can get more out of every dollar than their peers. The space missions are the best example.

India’s Mars probe cost $ 74 million. Matt Damon’s film The Martian had a budget of 108 million. India has done where China failed. Beijing produces goods that last a lunar cycle.

India has managed to combine low costs and the highest quality. The next step is marketing. How do you get foreign investors to make money in India? Some programs have already been implemented. Like the production-based incentive system for the manufacture of electronics on a large scale.

It has an expense of around 41,000 crore rupees, spread over 5 years. There is a similar incentive system for information technology.

This has an effort of 7,300 crores over 4 years. India presents itself as a stable and open supplier. This is reflected in India’s rise in the ease of business leaders.

But there are a couple of things India needs to be careful about.

First, without sacrificing ingenuity.

Manufacturing is a money spinner …

But inventions pay more. The focus must continue to be on research and development. Using robots is one thing. Making them from scratch is the real deal.

But who makes the robots? Should the tech race be run by the government or the private sector.

In January, Germany, the US and the UK, it’s the private sector. But in India the government is spending $ 10,000 million on the private sector.

Citalism has many failures. Ingenuity isn’t one of them. India’s private sector must join the race. It has to rely on Indian heads.

Today’s geopolitical race is a race to get the technical edge. It is at the root of military deterrence. It is the key to solving domestic problems such as poverty and climate change.

And as always, this race is also about coming first.

As Mikhail Gorbachev said, whoever comes late will be punished by life. The world cannot afford to be late this time. Because punishment is a cyber world led by a cyberbully.