May 01, 2021

Is Washington prepared for a geopolitical ‘tech race’?

Journalist: Scott Bade

When Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan sat down with Chinese officials in Anchorage, Alaska for the first high-level bilateral summit of the new administration, it was not a typical diplomatic meeting. Instead of a polite but restrained diplomatic exchange, the two sides traded pointed barbs for almost two hours. “There is growing consensus that the era of engagement with China has come to an unceremonious close,” wrote Sullivan and Kurt Campbell, the Administration’s Asia czar also in attendance, back in 2019. How apt that they were present for that moment’s arrival.

A little more than one hundred days into the Biden Administration, there is no shortage of views on how it should handle this new era of Sino-American relations. From a blue-ribbon panel assembled by former Google Chairman Eric Schmidt to a Politico essay from an anonymous former Trump Administration official that consciously echoes (in both its name and its author’s anonymity) George Kennan’s famous “Long Telegram” laying out the theory of Cold War containment, to countless think tank reports, it seems everyone is having their say.

Read the full story and more from TechCrunch.

Author

  • Jordan Schneider

    Adjunct Fellow, Technology and National Security Program

    Jordan Schneider is the founder of the ChinaTalk Podcast and Newsletter. He previously worked for the Rhodium Group and Bridgewater. Jordan received a master's degree in econo...