Changing dynamics of code world

For any economy to thrive, it must construct an enabling environment where digital ventures can burgeon

Around the globe, in any case, nation-states do not readily relinquish their territory of influence. That is why governments are devising new mechanisms and frameworks to tame the evolving digital world, which is on its way to eroding government control over many of its areas. For that reason, the parliament of Pakistan approved a controversial amendment to its already existing Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (Peca), 2016 – though annulled recently by the Islamabad High Court. In the same vein, China has already introduced new rules for Ant Group and Alibaba, and the EU has put forward a legal regime for its digital sentries. India has passed official digital currency and data protection bills, while the US House of Representatives has given a node to various Big Tech antitrust bills. All this is to rein in the expanding influence of technology companies. As algorithms created for digital space reside in cloud centres located in the physical territory controlled by governments, digital enterprises are at a loss to avoid these curbs. In violation, they come under sanctions in the form of huge fines, blockage of websites, or the arrest of their executives.

Notwithstanding this, the digital space is growing very swiftly. Global digital estimates show that over 80 billion terabytes of data were created and stored in data centres in 2021 alone; for instance, everyday, the end-users consume over one billion hours of YouTube videos around the continents. Considering this trend, one may sense that the time is not far when the expansion of digital space will be wiring all transportation, industries, and whole cities into automated internet systems. As the algorithm realm expands, the government, which cannot provide the goods and services provided by the technology firms, would not be able to stop the latter’s service operations. Government strategies for creating great firewalls and echelon vigilance systems to monitor the flow of information and services would ultimately backfire as digital surveillance might impair its liberal legitimacy in the comity of civilised nations. Hence, the governments, at a loss to sense the change or mend their ways to speed up the digitalisation process, will be unqualified to seize the opportunities of the next phase of the digital revolution.

Alternatively, fearing forfeiture of their sovereignty under the Big Tech model, many developed states call for technology-oriented engineering policies to advance the scheme of novel approaches to clouding data and computing resources. The objective is to set up unique national data centres and cloud computing architecture grounded in their values. But developing and maintaining digital space on a large scale by a government is not an easy task, and that is too with limited funding resources. In 2021 alone, Microsoft, Alphabet, Apple, Amazon, IBM, and Facebook invested cumulatively more than 150 billion dollars into research and development. That is not equal to even joint public and private investment in R&D by any financially powerful state.

But even if governments are ready to finance these digital ventures at the expense of social sector spending, money is only part of the game. Bringing and blending the engineering mind to design, maintain and expand the splendid cloud infrastructure is no less than a Herculean task. Acquiring global leadership in artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and semiconductors requires an enormous and continued supply of financial and human capital. Setting up one unit of a modern semiconductor facility costs over 15 billion dollars. Hence, it is utterly difficult for a state running its social welfare system to divert and funnel its resources to pursue such big schemes. Conversely, other than spending billions of dollars per annum on R&D, Big Tech has developed a well-organised loop mechanism of continuously rejuvenating, redeveloping and fine-tuning its products and services in response to the consumers’ requirements and then channelling the prime chunk of earned profits back into research. So governments, instead of working separately, will have to work with tech giants to deliver tech generated services and products.

That being the case, the coming decades will determine world politics as forces of nationalism and globalism come to confluence for substantial sway over both the digital and physical space. The interaction between the goals and powers of tech firms and that of state governments would ultimately open new vistas of competition in the digital world. Under this competition, the predominance of a specific look of any big tech corporation will have far-reaching consequences for global politics. Unfettered by the physical space and subsequently dominating the digital space, Google, Facebook, and Apple have assumed an international outlook in their valuable engineering innovations. The idea behind this approach is the same: go internationally, respect states’ rules and regulations, and play passionately.

Then there are the tech firms that align themselves explicitly with government institutions to serve national goals. Technology companies in many countries, under public-private partnership laws, have secured massive revenues by providing concerned governments with the facilities of AI, cybersecurity, cloud computing and complex integrated circuit chip development. In China, for example, the state’s 5G networking and semiconductor development policies are being implemented with the help of Huawei and SMIC. Also, China’s leading search engine – Baidu – and voice recognition tech firm – iFlytek – have become part of the government’s AI team. During the Covid pandemic, all these Chinese companies have helped the government with telemedicine, video conferencing, locking down the metropolis through digital surveillance, managing transportation, issuing digital health passports, and exporting medical instruments to the developing world to enhance China’s leadership portrait.

Meanwhile, this emerging revolution of technology enterprises has given rise to another class that, owing to their unique and ambitious idea of achieving a utopian digital culture, is on its way to accord the digital world an altogether different look. Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, and Mark Zugerberg, the CEO of Meta Platforms, are the most notable figures with their impeccable ambition of pioneering avant-grade transportation systems. By coupling computers with the human brain and transforming human beings into duo-planetary species by overtaking Mars, they are striding in the scientific world by completely dominating low orbit space.

For Pakistan, with a population of more than 220 million people, steering digital transformation to a logical conclusion is the need of the hour. The intelligibility and transparency that technology brings with it may give rise to knee-jerk resistance from the stakeholders benefiting from the outdated manual system in every sector. But despite such roadblocks, the journey to digital Pakistan cannot be overturned. The time ahead is digital. And for any economy to thrive, it will require one to shift gears toward constructing an enabling environment where digital ventures can burgeon well above expectations.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 12^th, 2022.

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