Silicon Statecraft: What Technology as Geopolitical Power Means for Businesses

In 1996, the renowned British political economist Susan Strange heralded the modern era as one characterised by the retreat of the state, arguing, perhaps prematurely, that "the heads of government may be the last to recognise that they and their ministers have lost the authority over national societies and economies they used to have." The rethinking of economic interdependence now proceeding in Washington, Brussels, and Beijing is the institutional codification of a view that supply chains, semiconductor flows, and artificial intelligence capabilities are strategic assets, and that the firms controlling them are consequently instruments of statecraft, whether they choose to be or not. Governments are invoking national security over domains that would have seemed eccentric to classify that way a decade ago. As such, a new corporate environment has emerged, in which the relevant counterpart for political strategy is no longer the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) or the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) but the National Security Council.