The Digital Silk Road

China's Quest to Wire the World and Win the Future

By: Jonathan E. Hillman

Narrated by: James Fouhey

An expert on China’s global infrastructure expansion provides an urgent look at the battle to connect and control tomorrow’s networks.

From the ocean floor to outer space, China’s Digital Silk Road aims to wire the world and rewrite the global order. Taking readers on a journey inside China’s surveillance state, rural America, and Africa’s megacities, Jonathan Hillman reveals what China’s expanding digital footprint looks like on the ground and explores the economic and strategic consequences of a future in which all routers lead to Beijing.

If China becomes the world’s chief network operator, it could reap a commercial and strategic windfall, including many advantages currently enjoyed by the United States.

It could reshape global flows of data, finance, and communications to reflect its interests. It could possess an unrivaled understanding of market movements, the deliberations of foreign competitors, and the lives of countless individuals enmeshed in its networks.

However, China’s digital dominance is not yet assured. Beijing remains vulnerable in several key dimensions, the United States and its allies have an opportunity to offer better alternatives, and the rest of the world has a voice. But winning the battle for tomorrow’s networks will require the United States to innovate and take greater risks in emerging markets. Networks create large winners, and this is a contest America cannot afford to lose.

Epistemology?!…

Blue print to Western Civs down fall. Performance is a bit Sotto Voce. The West survived without China for so long. Now it can’t survive.

THE RACE TO WIRE THE WORLD

Fascinating book about the race to wire the world generally and China’s strategy in particular. The book paints China and it’s companies in a bad light, presenting them as unfair competitors, at best. I’m not going to argue with the book’s findings, there is plenty of compelling evidence of intellectual property theft, and disregard for the privacy laws of certain jurisdictions, amongst other things. But what I found particularly interesting, and sadly not surprising, is how US and other big players in various industries were more than happy to facilitate what China and it’s companies have done on this front. For the end user customers, cost and availability are huge issues, so understandable why Chinese products are attractive alternatives. Notwithstanding all of this, what China and it’s companies have achieved in little more than a generation is incredible. And after making so much progress, they now find themselves in a position where they too have IP which others covet and their cost advantage is not what it used to be.