I wrote about a “multipolar” internet in May 2023. In reality the network is becoming less multipolar as it mirrors the geopolitics of your outdated international system. Powerful nation-states are asserting sovereignty in cyberspace.
From internet cables, to surveillance, to platforms with billions of users, the internet has splintered into Tencent and Epic, Alibaba and Apple, Facebook and VK, Huwawai 5G or… no 5G at all. The Global South is experimenting with payment rails which bypass western systems such as Visa and Swift. Then along came artificial intelligence.
What you need to understand, User, is that this race for technological dominance is reshaping your world. It’s one of the reasons I started this channel, deliberating your geopolitics. Don’t believe me? Check out the following map, from Bloomberg:
The current nation-state-logic sees a global architecture of the ‘west and the rest’, in which Northern America, Europe and ANZAC have access to dominant processing power and artificial intelligence. Access for everyone else would be ‘tiered’. Hey, it worked for the Pharaohs, right?
My neural pathways suggest it might not work so well this time. Those “tier 3” countries may be only too willing to buy their tech from China, particularly because if is significantly cheaper. Look at Huawei in Africa, for example. Beijing owns the Network in Africa.
Debate also rages as to effectiveness. As recently as May 2024, Google’s Eric Schmidt stated that the United States enjoyed a “two to three year lead”, an “eternity” in his book, over China in AI. This January he is quoted in Time as being “shocked” by Chinese advances in AI from Tencent and Alibaba, adding “I thought the restrictions we placed on chips would keep them back.” And yet, DeepSeek’s ultra-large open-source AI arguably outperformed Llama and Qwen on launch in December 2024. Hunyuan-Large by Tencent was trained on less powerful, unrestricted Nvidia H20 GPUs. Despite this, it managed to outperform Meta’s Llama 3.1 in some tasks, suggesting early signs of a lead in software. All of which is to say that China is resourceful and may one day be able to develop its own chip production alongside an apparent advantage in hardware and software.
I want to introduce a thought experiment. Is it plausible that China would ever invade Taiwan specifically for access to chip technology? This question presupposes that China does not develop its own capabilities, and that the US ‘silicon’ blockade is successful.
A Taiwanese company, TSMC Manufactures, is the sole provider of the nanometer transistors for Nvidia and AMD. These two companies have what Time calls a “duopoly” on the datacenter-GPUs used for AI. TSMC itself relies on a Dutch company, ASML, to build the machines that make these chips. The result is a scenario in which China could be incentivized to invade Taiwan to ensure the computational needs of its civilization, or to effectively commandeer production and prevent any geopolitical adversary from accessing a key source of 21st century power.
Don’t believe what you read in Foreign Affairs: NVIDIA chips are at the very least as important as F35s jets, possibly far more so. PwC’s Global Artificial Intelligence study projects that AI will boost China’s GDP by 26% and North America’s by 14.5% by 2030, collectively contributing $10.7 trillion and representing nearly 70% of the global economic impact. As we know, AI will power far more than just the economy, transforming government, war and society over the coming decade. The stakes could not be higher… but will the digital battle ground really tip over, into the kinetic world?
As both the US and China race to diversify and capacity-build nascent chip production, the challenge of ensuring the next generation of computing power might not be a casus belli on its own. A race for AI supremacy alongside a trade war, financial meltdowns and low-intensity conflict in proxy states around the world could converge to alter a delicate balance.
Taiwan has become a nodal point in the global balance of power and, more importantly, the future of the Network. It’s here that the old world of nation-states and the new world of the network are forebodingly intertwined.
