Sino-Europe 4th Industrial Revolution: Is US falling behind?

BY Dr. Carsten Stöcker

Editor’s note: Dr. Carsten Stöcker is the founder of Spherity GmbH. Spherity is a scalable decentral platform for the Fourth Industrial Revolution providing secure identities and digital twins bridging the physical, biological and digital spheres. The article reflects the author's opinion, and not necessarily the views of CHINAPLUS.

US Congress [Photo：VCG]

Following recent global rankings, the US is falling behind in many areas such as education, ending poverty, reducing inequality, improving social welfare, protecting the environment, growing the economy, extending global trade, attracting direct foreign investments, and delivering technology innovation. What's worse, the US happiness ranking has been falling over the years and the intellectual elite is leaving the country.

American citizens were taken by surprise when they recognized they are losing ground. Across the US, individuals and communities are now feeling left behind by globalization. These communities are loudly and effectively resisting economic, environmental, social and technology trends they think undermine local sovereignty, force change from above or rob them of power and economic prosperity.

This shared frustration among Trump voters is the key ingredient Trump’s domestic power base is built upon. Consequently, America First policies are escalating resistance from a local to a global scale. And Trump is taking an aggressive trade war literally everywhere.

All Trump administration actions seem to be justified by two (naïve) assumptions:

1)    The US can win the trade war with confrontation, and not cooperation

2)    The US can lead the 4th Industrial Revolution from inside to regain economic strength

However, the 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR) is driven by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres. It is fueled by ecosystem innovation, cooperation and leadership in a faster changing, globally connected world disrupting almost every industry in every country. 

Aerial view of New York City skyline and sunset, New York, United States. [Photo：VCG]

Shifting attention and resources to old economy industries, losing ground in many 4IR areas and damaging relationships with aggressive trade tactics will not be successful to deliver Trump’s bigger ‘4IR Made in the US’ ambition. Trump is significantly overrating America’s capabilities to succeed. The US will fail to lead this revolution from inside a depressed country.

The blend of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, automation, renewable energy, biotechnology, and blockchain are significantly changing the way we all live and do business. We are all engaged in a race to gain technology supremacy. Very few global leaders have understood why technology supremacy is important and how to win the race.

Incredibly huge investments in technology research, development and adoption through large-scale roll-outs is setting China apart from all other nations. For instance, China is already a world leader in the technology called quantum key distribution (QKD).  It has brought QKD already into space, is starting to deploy a nation-wide QKD network and planning to expand this network to Europe.

While China is delivering a national “Made in China 2025” agenda European leaders are debating the case for bringing their 4IR investments to the next level.  

Conceptual image of circuit board in globe shape depicting globalization of technology. [Photo：VCG]

Many European countries have a very well developed industrial base. Europe can still compete in the technology race with its skilled resources by blending in or retrofitting 4IR technology into its industrial infrastructures at a significant scale. China has ramped up partnerships and direct foreign investments in many EU countries already.

In addition, the EU is pushing ahead on forging deeper trade ties with Asian nations including China and Japan. Trade ties, foreign investments, and cooperation will establish a strong Eurasian axis for impactful 4IR ecosystem innovation.

There is still hope that the US will leave the path of confrontation as President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker have agreed to work toward eliminating tariffs and barriers on trade.

In the instance that Trump does continue to disrupt global trade, deliver collateral damage and undermine  America's leadership role, the US will fall even further behind.