When the political leaders of the 20 most important industrialized and emerging countries (G20) meet in Rome next weekend, they will be surrounded by the aura of world government. The really powerful, however, do not even sit at the table. For a long time, it is no longer the state leaders alone who decide on the great questions of human fate such as pandemics, climate change or prosperity in a digitized global economy. Power has shifted from government seats to the corporate headquarters of large, global technology corporations.
You can see that not only in the fact that the market value of Apple, Microsoft, Google and Co. now exceeds the economic power of many G20 countries. The five tech giants from the USA spent about as much on research and development in 2019 as all private companies and government agencies in Germany put together. When it comes to the future, Big Tech has long been on a par with the leaders of states. In addition, the discoverers from Silicon Valley and their rivals from China determine many rules of the game in digital space – be it as gatekeepers of global social networks, or as pioneers of the technologies that determine prosperity and security in the 21st century.
“It is time to think of the biggest tech companies as state-like. The tech giants have become geopolitical actors themselves, ”says Ian Bremmer, head of the Euraisa Group think tank in New York. So it is quite possible that the true technology war of the future will not take place between the USA and China, but between nation states and global tech companies.
Mark Zuckerberg’s plans show how far the future makers’ ambitions go. The Facebook boss wants to give his social media empire a new name this week, which should also include Zuckerberg’s vision of a “metaverse”. The term originally comes from the science fiction novel “Snow Crash”, in which the author Neal Stephenson designed a three-dimensional virtual future world as early as 1992.
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If you want a more up-to-date foretaste of Zuckerberg’s dreams of the stateless Internet, you should read Ernest Cline’s bestseller “Ready Player One”. It does not matter whether Cline’s dystopia will ever become a reality. More importantly, many features of its metaverse are already “in the works”. “The Metaversum is a place where augmented and virtual reality, next-generation data networks and decentralized financing and payment systems contribute to a more realistic and immersive digital world in which people can socialize, work and trade in digital goods,” writes Bremmer .
However, it is by no means clear whether this will happen. The nation states have no control over the digital space, but they are far from being powerless. The USA and China in particular are advocating techno-nationalism and are trying to harness their tech icons for geopolitical goals. Biden’s “Decoupling” is just as much an example of this as Xi Jinping’s “Made in China 2025” initiative. In addition, the political “techlash” in Washington and Beijing shows that the power struggle between Big Tech and the states has not yet been decided.
Europe cannot be interested in either American-Chinese techno-nationalism or a stateless metaverse à la Zuckerberg. As long as Europeans do not have global players in the digital world themselves, Europe’s strength lies in its regulatory power over a single market with around 500 million consumers. This makes the EU a champion of state sovereignty in the global techno sphere. This is not only supported by the General Data Protection Regulation, but also by the planned rules for Internet platforms and the use of artificial intelligence.
It is ironic in the new tech world that Europe’s most important allies, to a certain extent, are the US giants Apple and Google, who are repeatedly caught in the crossfire of the cartel watchdogs in Brussels. Both corporations are the true globalists of the tech elite and have a keen interest in a global market with global rules. A spin internet determined by tech nationalism would do them the most economic damage, like the Europeans.
“People, Planet, Prosperity” is on top of the G20 agenda at the weekend. The Eternal City is the right place for the leaders of states to reflect together on these questions of humanity. Does Rome also contain the eternal warning against the hubris of its own perfect power.
More: Many G20 countries go further than Germany in terms of climate protection – the 1.5 degree target is still difficult to achieve