It’s easy to feel disoriented amid the increasingly intense debates over artificial intelligence, semiconductors, energy transition, autonomous vehicles, platforms, genomics, quantum computing and other technological marvels of our time. In the past six months, technology policy has overtaken China and the Indo-Pacific as the primary topics foreign visitors to Taxila want to discuss. A decade ago, I escaped the world of technopolitics for what I thought was the more exciting world of geopolitics and international relations. Today, I find it difficult to distinguish between those disciplines.
So I thought I should take a step back and really flesh out the big picture issues to help us think more clearly about what is happening in the world and what we should be doing about it.
First, we are in the information age. By this I mean that we live in an age where society is built around the production, consumption and effects of information. Information is a key driver of economics, politics and culture. In earlier ages, it was land, livestock, population, iron and industry that occupied this central place. But the information is unlike anything we’ve experienced before, because it’s a non-zero-sum. In the old days, a king who usurped land, cattle or factories from another would get it at the cost of the one who lost it. Information can be hidden, controlled or protected, but it is physically possible for both kings to own the same piece. Non-zero-parity has profound implications that we have yet to fully explore, not least because our tendency to treat it as zero-sum. No, data is not the new oil.
Second, because information is mostly manipulated by technology, the latter has become a source of power. This is the reason why technology permeates every dimension of domestic and international politics. To the extent that technology is a form of knowledge, it is also not a zero sum. But because it requires physical things like routers, lithium or lasers to work, and these are zero-sum stuff, those who have it can be more powerful than those who don’t. This is why countries are pursuing self-reliance and supply-chain assurance in critical technologies. This is why the US is creating a technology denial regime aimed at stopping China’s progress. Technology policy is difficult because of this mix of zero-summance and non-zerosummance; And self-reliance, proximity and technology barriers are both good and bad ideas.
Third, the geopolitics of the information age is less a contest between traditional nation-states, or between religious or economic ideologies, but more a contest between the ways societies structure information (and, in turn, through are structured). At one extreme is a free, open and pluralistic information order. Indian epics like Mahabharata and Ramayana are a good example of this. No one has control over them. Anyone can tell them again. No one has been stopped from reading other books. There can be an infinite number of variants. Yet, there is an overall narrative that gives our epics their distinctive identity. At the other end is the closed, ordered and immutable order: the word of God, written imperial history and other top-down narratives cannot be modified or changed. They are controlled by the powerful and imposed using force.
Under free competition, we know that free and open systems quickly dominate closed systems. If the collapse of the Soviet Union happened too long ago for you to remember, just imagine why so many Chinese internet users want VPN access to the open internet that people in a democracy enjoy. It takes a lot of resources to run a closed system. China may seem to be doing quite well with its Command Information Order, until you try to estimate its opportunity cost. If China had not spent so much political, financial and human energy on firewalls, censorship and surveillance, it would likely be a far more prosperous, more innovative and vibrant society.
This is not to say that a free and open information system is a paradise. From what we know so far about information economics, companies can gain global power, minds can be manipulated on a large scale, prejudice can spread as fast as moral progress, and social Inequalities could be worse. These are the great policy challenges of our time. We know about these shortcomings precisely because the information is free and open, which opens the door for everyone to try and overcome them.
The outcome for India is an opportunity to shape the global order for the first time in history. Our civilizational bonds, democratic instincts and technology base allow us to cooperate with societies that have common information orders that help ensure that minds are free from fear, heads are held high and knowledge is free across the planet. It is in India’s national interest to play to these forces.
Tailpiece: It’s a terrible idea for any society to allow its government to determine what is true. Many societies have come to grief when truth and power are in the same hand.
Nitin Pai is co-founder and director of The Takshashila Institution, an independent center for research and education in public policy
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