The Great Decoupling: China, America and the Struggle for Technological Supremacy
The Great Decoupling: China, America and the Struggle for Technological Supremacy
Tuesday, May 4, 2021
11:00am – 12:00pm
Zoom Webinar
For much of recorded history, China was a leading science and technology power. But just as the West rose, China turned in on itself, and missed the Industrial Revolution. The result was the ‘Hundred Years of Humiliation’, and a long struggle for a modern, yet distinctly Chinese, civilisational identity. Today, technological innovation has returned to the core of national pride and ambition. Since the 1980s, reforms have transformed China into the world’s second largest economy and a major global power. Cyber space and other advanced technologies have become a battleground for international dominance; but today’s world relies on global supply chains and interstate collaboration–at least, for now. Growing tension between the USA and China could result in the two superpowers decoupling their technology–with significant consequences for humanity’s future. The Great Decoupling shows that this technology contest, and how it plays out, will shape the geopolitics of the twenty-first century.
The SETA Foundation at Washington DC is pleased to host a book talk with Author Nigel Inskter on “The Great Decoupling: China, America and the Struggle for Technological Supremacy.”
Speaker
Nigel Inkster, Senior Advisor for Cyber Security and China at The International Institute for Strategic Studies, Director of Geopolitical and Intelligence Analysis at Enodo Economics, Author
Discussant
Kilic Bugra Kanat, Research Director, The SETA Foundation at Washington, DC
Bios:
Nigel Inkster has worked at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) since 2007. He is the former Director of Future Conflict and Cyber Security and currently a Special Adviser at IISS. His research portfolio at IISS has included transnational terrorism, insurgency, transnational organized crime, cyber security, intelligence and security and the evolving character of conflict. He has written and broadcast on all these topics and has also been engaged in a variety of para-diplomatic activities on behalf of the UK government including leading a Sino-UK Track 1.5 Cyber Security Dialogue. He is one of the authors of an IISS Strategic Dossier on the Evolution of the Cyber Domain published in 2015, has written a chapter on The Chinese Intelligence Agencies: Evolution and Empowerment in Cyberspace in China and Cyber Security (Oxford University Press 2015) and is the author of an IISS Adelphi book entitled China’s Cyber Power published in June 2016 by Routledge. Before joining IISS he served for thirty-one years in the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) retiring at the end of 2006 as Assistant Chief and Director of Operations and Intelligence.
Kilic Bugra Kanat is the Research Director at the SETA Foundation at Washington DC. He is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Penn State University, Erie where he was awarded the Outstanding Research Award and Council of Fellows Faculty Research Award. Dr. Kanat received his PhD in Political Science from Syracuse University; a Master’s in Political Science from Syracuse University; a Master’s in International Affairs from Marquette University. He participated in Future Leaders Program of Foreign Policy Initiative. Dr. Kanat’s writings have appeared in Foreign Policy, Insight Turkey, The Diplomat, Middle East Policy, Arab Studies Quarterly, Mediterranean Quarterly, Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, and Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs. He is a columnist at Daily Sabah & author of A Tale of Four Augusts: Obama’s Syria Policy.