Understanding Tech Sovereignty in a Global Context – Shimmy Says EP4

Hey everyone, it's Alan Shival for another episode of Shimmy. Says, you know, it's every day just the, the news keeps piling on about things going on. And, and though we all think about how it affects us individually, I try to focus, shimmy says here on how does it affect us within the tech world?

And so today I want to talk about something that I call the tech. So, tech sovereignty. Tech sovereignty in a new world order.

You know, basically since the end of World War ii, we've lived under a world order where the US kinda led the, the western world, if you will, as we used to call it, or the first world. Uh, for a long time the Soviet Union were led, a second block countries behind the Iron Curtain and so forth. And then of course, in the nineties, with the fall of the Soviet Union, that that whole second block kind of dissolved.

Many of those countries became part of the western world, if you will, especially in Europe. The rise of China as a powerhouse, a superpower in almost, you know, in every meaning of the world, economically, militarily, uh, financially and everything else. And of course, most recently in the last couple years, we've seen the rise of India, right?

Just from sheer population numbers alone and, and an educated populace and, and the size of a market, because at the end of the day, it is about size of markets. Now, you know, large part through tensions between US and China, a large part is the new US administration and wanting to impose tariffs. And they call it America first.

I call it America alone, uh, kind of approach to the world. We're seeing walls and barriers go up that have not been up for many, many years. And many people believe that the fact that they weren't up, that these walls and barriers was what allowed our, the world's economy to thrive, to have more people lifted out of poverty than ever before.

What does it specifically mean for tech, though? You know, in the cloud we have this concept of concept of data, sovereign sovereignty, where we, we want our data to reside within the borders of our country, right? Or within the borders of only countries we designate.

And there's good reasons for it, and it, you know, and it, and it's okay for some things. But we're moving beyond data sovereignty to tech sovereignty. We now want all of our chips to be made, or most of our chips to be made here in the us.

We don't want our chip technology to find its way to China or any other country. For that matter, though, China is the main point of it. Um, and we're erecting barriers and tariffs to, to make that happen.

But what we, you know, the, the logical repercussion of this though is that our both allies and adversaries, friends and foe, are being affected by this. And their response to it is to be expected, which is, if you are putting up barriers for me to have goods sold in your market, I'm gonna put up barriers to have goods sold in our market. Your goods sold in our market.

And we can't forget that in a, in the US we we're a nation of exports as well. Though we have a big market. We also export, we export a lot of food and agriculture.

We export technology, we export services, we export a lot of goods and services. Um, and whether that be to Canada and Mexico or China or Europe, there's a lot of exports going on. And when we make it harder to export goods into our market, our goods will be harder to export into their market.

Now, what does that mean for tech, though? Well, that means that very shortly we are going to be dependent on the tech that we make here in the US because tech from other countries are gonna be prohibitively expensive by the same token tech that we make here in the US might become prohibitively expensive in Europe or South America or China or other parts of Asia, Pacific Africa. And they're gonna look to make and use only their own homegrown tech.

So very quickly we put up these walls and each country will have their own technology that they favor and use. We saw this play out in the Soviet block as a result, you know, those Russians lucky enough to have those Soviet citizens lucky enough to have cars were driving, I forgot the name of the brand, but I think it was with a z that was so vastly inferior to what was available in Western Europe or the us It was laughable, but that's what they had. They didn't have access to other countries, vehicles.

We may see the same thing in technology. You are going to, countries will use the technology that they're able to make in their country and not use what will be prohibitively expensive technology from other countries. Um, it, it's a very real possibility.

I call it tech sovereignty. And it, it kind of goes against the whole internet thing where, you know, we had a global village over this. Um, but this is what happens when you start having tariffs and trade barriers and trade wars and so forth, tariffs, and, and they work both ways.

This whole idea of, of the tariffs is, you know, that the US market is the biggest market in the world, and people will pay a premium to have access to us, to our market and countries. Well, ultimately we pay the tariffs, but that will force countries to produce stuff here. But, you know, there are some other big markets in the world.

The US has 330 million or so people. 4 billion. 5 or 6 billion people, uh, United, Europe, eu, and affiliated European states.

Their market from a population point of view is also about the same. And their total GDP and so forth, probably not that far behind us. It, it's no longer a US dominated world where be, if we erect barriers, people will have to kowtow to it.

And what I'm afraid is everybody is going to go to their own corner, so to speak, and for focus just on their domestic market. And you know who the loser will be. You and me and all of us.

Because right now we live in an age where we have access to the best technologies no matter where they're from. If that technology is made in China or Taiwan or Australia or Europe or South America, we, we have access to it as consumers, especially digital products over the net. Um, we have global networks that move data and information to the edge so that no matter where we are in this world, we can access the latest and greatest.

Can you imagine if you had LLMs, you know, large language model mod modules, data sets that were only country specific, sort of like in deep seek, right? Where you go to ask it things about, let's say Deman Square, and it, it has no information on that, though. The information's there, it just doesn't put it out.

I, I shudder to think of a world where we live in that kind of balkanization of our technologies and we're stuck with whatever the best local products are, and I think it'll be worse and it will get worse. Um, 'cause the problem with that is it stifles innovation too, right? If you have a protected market, you don't have to worry about external forces forcing you to innovate and keep ahead.

You get fat and lazy, you wind up with those Russian cars, right? Or these, those Soviet era cars that the Soviets had to drive. We need markets for competition.

Competition's a good thing. When you elect barriers, you're almost saying, I'm afraid to, to compete. It's okay to compete, you wanna compete on a level playing field.

And that's what technology's always been, especially US technology. Google, Microsoft, apple, the list goes on. Nvidia, uh, every tech company here in the US and in the valley out competed out, innovated out, marketed their way to becoming the tech giants.

They are in a world where barriers are put up. They can't just innovate to compete. They will be shut out and those markets will be shut off to them as a retaliation for us shutting our markets out.

So I, I hope that's not the case. I, I want us all to be able to share the fruits of what really is a golden agent technology between AI and the internet and cellular 5G and everything else, and quantum computing coming. The, the, the promise that technology offers us is so great and we have big problems that we need that technology for, whether it's climate change or, or any of the other many things that are facing humanity now.

We need that technology on a global basis for us all to have better lives. So I, for one, I'm all for free trade. I'm all for leveling the playing for field and taking abuses out.

But as this new world order emerges where it's gonna be multipolar and you know, everybody will have their markets, I hope that we can share our technologies and that consumers will be able to use the best and greatest technologies available to them as well as businesses to, to tackle the tough problems we all need to face to live better lives, healthier lives, otherwise, what, what's it all for anyway, so that Shimmy says for this week, I hope you enjoy it. I'm interested in your comments. What do you think We'll be back next week with more for now.

We're out.