In 189 pages, the Special Competitive Studies Project, led by Bob Work and Eric Schmidt, addresses the complex topic of technology competition between the US and China.
The report opens with a letter from Henry Kissinger. The former US Secretary of State writes of an intense competition between the US and China for strategic advantage.
It is clear how, today, this advantage derives from investments in artificial intelligence and other technologies that are clearly re-creating entirely new strategic scenarios and have very profound economic, military and social impacts.
Kissinger emphasises an aspect of great interest. He writes: there is also a sense among democratic countries that we are losing confidence in our system of government.
This is a decisive political passage and, in our opinion, this loss of confidence stems first and foremost from the proclaimed inability of democratic systems, especially in recent decades, to guarantee substantial ‘representativeness’ and to protect the national interest through real mediations between global flows and local realities.
Democracies are called upon to rethink themselves in order to deal with what Kissinger calls the new strategic environment.
