ACLF 2021 - Tech wars: is technological globalism dead?

well good morning everyone we might kick off um for this concurrent breakout session at the crawford leadership forum um somewhat excitingly and provocatively titled tech wars is techno technological globalism dead um i'd like to start off as we always do at the australian national university by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on uh on the land that we are meeting today um and i'd like to extend that to the traditional owners across australia and indeed the world wherever you're tuning in from today um for canberra where i am um that's the none of all people um i'd also like to welcome those uh members of the media who've joined us today and indeed anyone who wishes to engage on social media the hashtag to use is hashtag acl forum and we're looking forward to a robust debate there as well um so without further ado let me welcome the speakers for today's panel uh in no particular order they are tim watts the shadow assistant minister for communications and for cyber security i'm tau wang the managing director and head of asia economics with ubs investment bank uh heather evans the supply chain manager cdl covert 19 rapid screening consortium and finally dr tobias feiken australia's ambassador for cyber affairs and critical technology i should also say i'm catherine manstead i'm a senior fellow in the practice of national security here at the australian national university so let's dive straight into the panel today it seems almost as though we could have no more of a topical discussion on such a critical set of issues uh than one on technology and the way in which that's playing out in geopolitics for those who were at the crawford leadership forum yesterday the australian treasurer's remarks uh really bear on this panel as well he was emphasizing the importance of economic resilience and the need for australia to consider how we go about securing our supply chains and that really builds off into the topic of today's panel which is looking at technology and the way in which it is very much at the front lines of u.s china competition one of the enduring geostrategic realities that australia has to confront as well and trying to understand just where this is going in the future are we heading towards a world of multiple um different uh supply chains maybe a bifurcated world of supply chains are we headed towards a world that is in some level interdependent um as as it has been to this point and really we could think of no better people to weigh in on this debate and also uh sheet home the implications of all of this for australia and i thought i might kick off today by first turning to um heather evans and asking to get a bit of a view from the us this is shaped up as a u.s china frame and we can perhaps deconstruct or unconstruct that as we go through but my first question to you i suppose heather is we know that in the trump administration the notion of a of a trade war between china and the us was very much at the forefront of president trump's agenda uh and we also know that there was a big step up for the us to start becoming a technological leader once again or shoring itself up as a technological leader often in opposition um to china so my question to you is to what extent is this continuing under the biden administration and what are some of the key policies we're seeing president biden's administration putting out there in this space thank you for the question building on what you said it is very clear that the biden administration is continuing and in certain cases amplifying some of the punitive measures that the trump administration initially put in there's also a lot of questions that still remain in particular with respect to trade between the us and china which has caused a lot of disruptions in the business community doing their best to plan ahead and work around a number of tariffs that continue to exist on around 360 billion dollars worth of goods between both countries we've seen on the domestic front a very partisan congress and senate has been able to pass bills specific to increasing the domestic capabilities of the united states with respect to technology so earlier in june the u.s innovation and competition act was passed a 250 billion investment there's a lot of look at infrastructure investment right now in the united states and an element of that president biden and his team are discussing how um by shoring up additional infrastructure domestically again it's a way to counteract what's going on in china interestingly while um campaigning for president biden did discuss the fact that the trump administration was not working well with allies with respect to trying to manage the relationships trade-wise with china and so we have seen with the eu in particular that biden's team has worked through some trade disputes and played a part in a more aggressive trade deal for between the eu and china but in general at this point there's a lot of questions that remain about what the main economic chinese strategy is with the biden team and currently it's been said that they're doing a complete review of all data and policies prior to announcing anything but there's a lot of anticipation from the business community in particular to try to figure out how they can continue to manage operating within the two largest economies in the world exciting times you know can i just draw you out on that because it's not just economics it's not just trade right there's a lot of policies in the u.s coming out about i'm clamping down on the export of kind of multi-use or dual use technology there's concern about chinese researchers in u.s university there's a whole range of kind of non-economic policy in terms of immigration data protection foreign investment etc that's really been amped up of late are you seeing i mean so it's one thing to say this is bipartisan is this also a cross-portfolio kind of initiative are there any would you say that there are any holdouts um or any areas of at that federal level um in certain portfolio areas which are less on the front foot of this of this um process or indeed are there any state governments that maybe aren't as far bought into um some of the trends you're describing well of course it sort of goes without saying that while it's politically very favorable to be incredibly hawkish towards china again regardless of what side of the aisle you're on the relationship that different regions have with china with respect in particular to trade but in other areas can be really key to their local economies but another thing that i think is is undoubtedly going to come up and should continue to come up on all panels and discussions in today's world are with respect to collaboration for climate change and climate solutions and so um i i very much look up to the the diplomats and the negotiators who are working on trying to find solutions and avoiding the um politically challenging or dangerous red lines in their conversations in order to try to reach productive conclusions at finding solutions to various things related to climate change um and one additional thing just quickly to add on that i think an area that's um under threat which you mentioned that's quite concerning is of course the lack of interscholastic um movement of individuals collaborations at an academic level even just something so small as during the trump presidency when they blocked chinese graduate students from coming to the united states and in general doing anything to make it more difficult for students to study at university from a soft power perspective or pretty dangerous it speaks volumes for a lot of the world's elite wanting to study at universities in the united states and anything to make that more difficult um i think is on the whole quite negative for the united states but in general it's very important for minds from all over the world to be able to gather together to help figuring out the challenges that we face but it can be very easy to read headlines and get an impression that there's a universal negative and sort of restricted glance between both countries and in fact many countries in relation to china at this time which uh is is challenging but i think it's much more nuanced than like anything in life it's far more nuanced than it seems um at a high level i think that's a really important point and i also think that's one that we've seen messaged out of the new administration when we see um kind of tony blinken and jake sullivan when they first were shaping up their their foreign policy they were clear to say that there are areas of cooperation and potentially competition with china and climate change being one of those areas of cooperation as you surfaced um look i might bring um tao into the conversation now we know that there is a bit of a global stash over some of china's tech giants at the moment um it's no secret that there's a there's a disagreement between the us and china over the fate of um big tech leaders like huawei and zte um but what i wanted to to bring you in on is it's not just the us cracking down on chinese big tech right now it's also china cracking down on chinese big tech right now we've seen some big muscle movements over the last 12 months where leaders of of tech companies in china have have come a cropper of the ccp we've seen restriction on listing on overseas capital markets how are you seeing um this from the chinese government's perspective um is there a bit of a crackdown on big tech happening and if so why is it is it part of this u.s china stash or is it something entirely different and domestically um perhaps orientated instead thank you um for this question and thanks for inviting me to this forum uh i i think i i would not characterize uh recent regulation titan regulatory tightening in china as a crackdown on big tag um i i think we need to separate this these two issues so since 2018 the u.s has tightened china's restriction to uh you know access to technology banning sales of certain semiconductors chip you know chip equipment to huawei and zte as you mentioned and as heather mentioned under biden administration these restrictions has actually intensified it did not ease and indeed it's unlikely to ease because um you know usc tech rivalry as a core part of rivalry with china and so you know chinese investment in technology has been restricted highly scrutinized and probably you know impossible to proceed in the future um and and some some restrictions uh have also been placed on academic uh collaboration as well uh china's response on this front is uh as indicated in the five-year plan and so on is on one hand continue to advocate for um you know continued uh integration with the world and collaboration and the same time pursue market opening but also preparing for the worse right for things not easing and maybe the restrictions intensifying so there has been an increased emphasis on technological innovation and self-reliance in china which means increased investment uh in in hard tank uh as for example semiconductors and advanced manufacturing and so on um and to to basically shore up its own capabilities uh and continue to push for digitalization and building digital infrastructures including 5g the recent regulatory tightening is in in the internet space is really stemming from a rectification i would say of earlier lacks regulations on internet finance on antitrust on data privacy and data security and so on so forth they are mainly you know domestic agenda about controlling risk including financial risk reducing monopoly power and have better oversight it's not inconsistent with supporting technology and you know supporting digitalization data security part i think is perhaps influenced by the u.s china dynamic because in the current political atmosphere every country is talking about data security as a national security and so china is also sensitive to that and and realized that a lot of the rules and regulations were lacking and so they have come up with tighter rules i just want to pick up on one thing you said there that data security is national security and i'm actually going to then throw this across to tim watts because it seems that in these conversations when we're talking about technology data et cetera um what once were hived off as being tech issues are now seen considered universally almost by countries as also being security issues um tim from your perspective how do you see both u.s china tech competition impacting australia but also how do you see this kind of securitization of technology and data playing out in the australian domestic sphere as well sure um i should start by acknowledging i'm joining you today from the uh traditional lands of the buenarang people in the cooler nation from here in melbourne it's great to be a part of this panel um look the first thing to note on this topic is that you know these trends represent a really big change um for australia we've benefited enormously perhaps more than any other country in the world from that kind of post uruguay round period of increasing trade openness increasing uh technological integration standards harmonization i mean as an open economy as an open society we've thrived in that world this world we're moving into now where governments are increasingly using technology policy as well as economic policy to pursue strategic ends you know that's a big change for us it's going to require a bit of a a change in conceptual thinking for government because reality and a lot of these technology markets now um you know these are increasingly state-driven markets you know they're not driven by sort of commercial outcomes um in the way that they once were um so australia is going to have to adapt to this there's a lot of challenges for australia in domestic policy making here um you know you only have to imagine a world where we're in one technology ecosystem and a lot of our export markets are in another technology ecosystem and imagine a challenge for uh for our exporters they particularly in you know very human-facing sectors like services exports but they're also opportunities but only opportunities that we can realize if we get through that conceptual change in the way the australian government thinks of it with these state-driven markets we're going to see new market opportunities for exporting into other states that share our strategic circumstances or share our security concerns we're looking for trusted suppliers but we're really going to need governments by a bigger role in leading that this is not just about government regulation it's also about government investment and setting directions um in r d and innovation policy we've seen around the world a big increase in the amount of industry policy not just in you know defense procurement but in strategically uh significant more sensitive technology sectors sectors like ai like quantum security uh quantum computing and that's something that australia is going to have to push into in a policy space in a big way it's really notable when you look around the world that quantum computing investment quantum computing is a big part of the post code recovery strategies of countries like you know uh the uh china japan eu netherlands germany france india all of which have billion dollar or multi-billion dollar investments in quantum computing state-led investments in their quantum computing sector it's really notable that in australia we don't even have a strategy for directing quantum computing uh investment in this country and in this new world that we're moving into unless we can get a more active government in these spaces you know australia is going to be left behind here well one of the areas where we do arguably have an active sector of the government is um in our diplomacy capability i might bring in ambassador faiken into the conversation i see you're sitting behind a recent australian cyber and critical tech engagement strategy and i know a big part of that is thinking about what role the australian government has on a number of these issues including kind of supply chains building out our capability and working with partners from your perspective um two things one what role can australia as a kind of a small-ish middle power um play in these global stashes a and then b to the extent we can play where are our main lines of effort um let me characterize it maybe i think um we we should be thinking big um and acting shrewdly uh let me see if i can dig into that a little bit um you rightly pointed out behind me um you know we launched an international cyber and critical tech engagement strategy for all of the reasons that we're already discussing in this panel and thanks very much for having me here today which was recognition that the world is undoubtedly changing at a significant rate of knots that there are these key areas of especially digital technology certainly those technologies that feed off of the infrastructure that cyberspace provides us with such as ai such as quantum machine learning a whole range of these new technologies now which are becoming such common parts of lexicon for the general public um in a way that i think probably has taken many by surprise um and and the realization that it is important that we as um as you say perhaps not the most highly populated country in the world but certainly technologically significant country needed to be involved more prominently in the international discussion around these broader sets of concerns you know where i began in this job in the australian began in its international outreach was very clearly about what did we want cyberspace to look like how could we shape that and well what we learned is that if you direct your efforts in particular areas you can have significant impact in the way that the global environment is shaped now you know one benchmark that you could use is is in cyberspace around the un group of government experts the un open-ended working group and all those processes they're going on the un we targeted our voice in a very direct way to work the middle ground to make sure that we were there with new ideas new thinking on on what could be next and that is the same in terms of this broader technology environment and absolutely in terms of the current coded situation it's not only accelerated our focus on all these areas of technology but it's also meant that we've had to think more clearly about well what what does our supply chain look like because it's shown us the fragility of that globalized idea of supply chain now i don't think you know globalized concepts of tech supply chain are going to disappear entirely but certainly you know policies like the international cyber critical tech engagement strategy and a range of other policies that government is taking and colleagues are addressing um are aimed and targeted at trying to ensure that we are best placed to take advantage of what's going on and it's interesting you know if you look at lincoln's recent speech um to uh the the uh it was an ai conference uh so the national security commission on artificial intelligence uh uh summit and there's a couple of things that he said which resonate very strongly with the way that we're looking at this as well it's you know it's not that you need to unsure everything but we need to work to partners and he used the term to friendshaw or nearshore and i think that's a really interesting concept to work to it's how do we work more creatively with other partners and we've certainly been doing that through the quad mini laterals bilaterals to think about how do we shape that supply chain so that we can use trusted vendors and trusted suppliers know where the tail of that supply chain comes from know that there's some transparency around that supply chain and you know excellent work that my home affairs colleagues have been doing for some time now and driving that you know the domestic discussion on supply chain resilience and what it looks like we're taking that further with colleagues across government to have that conversation internationally to ensure that we can not only diversify our supply chain but ensure that we have trust built in as far as possible into that increasingly diverse supply chain that we're now working with um tal i might bring you back into the conversation at this point because i think what we've heard pretty much across the board today is that there's a bit of a renaissance in industry policy it wasn't very it wasn't very sexy in the 80s and the 90s and now all countries are doing it australia's doing it we've heard an eloquent plea from tim watts for australia to be doing more on quantum for instance the us is doing it even though industry policy was once anathema um to the americans china's doing it too so my question to you is where do you see this going looking ahead 12 months 18 months with a resurgence of industry policy where does this leave the world does it actually mean that globalism as the title of this session was titled does it mean that globalism is dead what is going to replace it what does the world look like and what is the global economic situation look like 12 months 18 months into the future as we all start to do industry policy in this space more thank you that's a very good question it's it's quite uh ironic that the u.s one of the big um accusations on china of course is that china has conducted industrial policy subsidizing its domestic firms and uh that makes chinese firms inefficient uncompetitive but somehow it worked wonders um so therefore the u.s is going to do it as well um so it's it's it's unclear to me that um you know is that going to be really successful um the current world with the open economy globalization and and so on has led to deep integration especially in the tech space where you know us actually is the uh the absolute leader in technology with you know the upstream for example in the semiconductor space upstream the design and so on and the ip are all from the us the manufacturing are in taiwan and korea and so on are in the french or in in the alliance of the us it's only the assembly at the last stage that is a lot of that is in china but i think the u.s um it would be very interesting to see how this collaboration with with allies work because uh the policy is you know allies please work with us to have a united front against china but by the way i'm going to subsidize my semiconductor companies so the manufacturing is in the u.s not in any of the allies space so i'm curious how these policies you know offer oneself each for oneself works i think the end result it probably will not happen in the next 12 to 18 months though because um reshaping the whole industrial structure and it would take a long time but i think you know eventually uh subsidies and so on from each countries will try to i suppose disassemble the already quite competitive supply chain a very efficient supply chain that means that even though companies may not want to do so to de-globalize and decouple political pressures from each government is going to force the companies to do that that's going to raise the cost of production for companies that's going to make things uh less efficient as before and that's going to mean higher cost for consumers for taxpayers in every country not just in the u.s or in china so i think that's not a ideal outcome but probably a more realistic outcome given the political wind that's blowing in most countries at the moment tim i might bring you in here because it's interesting tales mentioned this concept of efficiency which has been the organizing principle i would argue of of liberal economics for some decades but we also now have a competing concept of resilience as well and i wonder if you have a reflection on the extent to which i mean to efficiency and resilience in this area do they trade off against each other or are they one of the same coin i suppose covert has really shown us that sometimes very efficient supply chains may not be the supply chains that get us through in a crisis so welcome your reflections on that kind of complex trade-off in the tech space yeah i mean i i found myself reflecting um while listening to uh tao's observations that while the americans they may disavow uh industry policy in word um in action um they're probably the the world's greatest exponent of industry policy i mean they have a and have since you know since the cold war a very complex system of state institutions and policies designed to promote their their technology sector like people like mariana matsukadu have detailed in you know in great depth the way that institutions like darpa for basic research flowing through to incutel for directing venture capital funding to strategic um imperatives of the the u.s security establishment um work together um to create the the great private sector efficient companies that we we know and love like uh you know the apples and the googles of the world you know even companies like tesla and spacex the sort of the new generation of those have benefited enormously from that innovation system that the us has been operating in this space and i think there is a different calculation on the efficiency and resilience uh context when we are moving into a less stable global order less stable from you know covert but less stable increasingly in the future from climate change and less stable from geostrategic considerations um so so maybe that the balance between efficiency and resilience um you know it hasn't changed in a philosophical sense but it has changed because the context that that companies are operating in and that nations are operating in is significantly different there is just a lot more risk and instability built into the way that the global supply chains operate today i should also say in cyber security and my own portfolio another significant source of instability across international supply chains we've got a few questions coming in from the audience and keep them coming i'll come to them in a moment i just wanted to wrap up with one final question to set a really a baseline for our discussion going forward because it occurs to me we're talking a lot about technology is this huge amorphous thing but it might be helpful to for us to break it down a little bit into what some call the technology stack right so the bottom you've got the inputs you've got the infrastructure you've got software and algorithms that sit on top of that and then there's a social and informational layer that sits on top of that and i suppose i might having set up a little bit of that framework um throw to toby um to ask you two things one is my framework broadly right and please tear it to shreds and two how does australia go about i guess prioritizing or thinking about those different layers and and making sure we're doing the right action in the right places yeah look it's um it's a frequently asked question is so you know the mandate of your job has expanded and you've got this thing called critical technology on the end of it what does that mean um and and if i'm honest it's important that you don't tie it to you know exact technology types i i firstly carry out the fact that yes inside government within classified circles we're really you know looking through what are those technologies that are critical to us as a nation you know and that that could vary depending on you know what your supply chain looks like what you may have a shortage of or a surplus of at any given time um but certainly when when we were conceptualizing critical technology and where the expansion of this position came from it was it began from the position of okay so we have cyberspace which is the infrastructure part you know which which creates the the internet that we know and love and operate on often without even thinking about where it comes from but then there's this whole range of other technologies which are feeding off of that infrastructure and the data that it provides so therefore logic and you know look the first big tech decision that really was if you're like a canary in the coal mine was the 5g issue um which you know we should be speaking about for quite some time now in the international context but that illustrated that when we have these new technology innovations which build on that infrastructure and then further enable it and also then produce enormous amounts of data which are then going to feed further that innovation cycle that certainly was the jumping off point but you know look still we would include within that you know biotech and critical minerals you know the absolute base sources of how we can then build silicon chips and and build all the parts of the you know critical infrastructure that we need to continue um so you know for us we took a definition of critical technology as meaning those technologies that are critical to your national security your economy or your social cohesion and within the context of the strategy that we wrote we decided not to drill down into individual subsets of particular technologies on purpose because certainly for the international engagement part it's important to be thinking in broader concepts you know you ask the question of me first off around what should australia be doing well what's certainly evident is whether we like it or not now technology is being interpreted its use is being interpreted in extremely difficult manners and that means that we've got to be a bit more conscious and protective in projecting our values into the way that technology cycles mature and also the way that technology is absorbed into international systems otherwise we could well find ourselves in a world which we don't really want to live in to be frank because many of these technologies are being interpreted in quite draconian ways um which which are completely opposed you know the way that australian values and interests and principles um adhere to so you know it's it that that's where we began with and and that's what the strategy really tries to outlay so that we can engage and there's broader subset of you know diplomats government officials um can engage on these issues with confidence without having to have you know a deep understanding of how an ai sorry an ai algorithm might be programmed you know they don't need to know that but they do and can do good work in terms of projecting our interests in the tech space because in terms of windows of opportunity i would say we genuinely have now i would say a five to ten year window in which to shape these technologies which are maturing rapidly in ways again that i think the public would find quite hard to understand and sometimes it's good just to reflect on history and think about where we are digitally and the way that our lives are so um sculpted by our digital engagements even compared to five years ago if you know i would challenge anyone who's listening to stages just go and do a self-check of where they may have been digitally five years ago compared to now and i bet that will be quite surprised now if you ramp that up to a national a regional and then a global level um we need to be in in the middle of that game um to be frank regardless of which exact technology we shouldn't tie ourselves to exactly which technologies because it may mean you know much like an innovation cycle it might be you target your efforts in one area and realize ah no it's not that area that's the important one we need to shift quickly so having that flexibility to be able to turn quickly is absolutely vital i would say in terms of this area toby i'm going to stop you there because we've got 10 seconds before there's a hard cut off here thank you so much to our panelists and specifically also the audience for your questions we look forward to keeping the conversation going you

Channel: ANU TV

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Keywords: ANU, The ANU, Education, Australia, Research, Policy, Academic, University, The Australian National University, Higher education, degree, study, university student

Id: ZWyWhPFeC7Y

Length: 34min 49sec (2089 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 14 2021