Over the past 12 months, Spectrum’s editors have observed an rising by line connecting a number of main tales: the centrality of know-how to geopolitics. Final month, our cowl story, finished in partnership with International Coverage journal, was on the way forward for submarine warfare. And final October, we centered on how sea drones may bolster Taiwan’s “silicon shield” strategy, which rests on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.’s domination of high-end chip manufacturing.
So after I requested the curator of this concern, Senior Editor Samuel K. Moore, what he noticed as the main theme as we head into 2025, I wasn’t shocked when he stated, with out hesitation, “geopolitics and know-how.”
In truth, the identical day Sam and I spoke, I forwarded to Spectrum’s Glenn Zorpette a information merchandise about China banning the export to america of gallium, germanium and antimony. China’s overwhelming command of uncommon earths like these is on the coronary heart of Zorpette’s story on this concern. “Inside an American Rare Earth Boomtown” paints a vivid image of how america is attempting to nurture a home uncommon earth mining and processing business.
China, in the meantime, is itself trying to reduce its personal dependence on imported uranium by constructing a thorium-based molten-salt reactor in the Gobi Desert. And tensions between China and Taiwan will undoubtedly be additional burdened with the opening of TSMC’s first advanced wafer fab in the United States this 12 months.
The mitigation of climate change is one other key space the place politics informs tech advances. In “Startups Begin Geoengineering the Sea”, Senior Affiliate Editor Emily Waltz takes readers aboard a pair of barges anchored close to the Port of Los Angeles. There, two corporations, Captura and Equatic, are piloting marine carbon-capture techniques to strip CO2 out of ocean water. Whether or not the outcomes will be measured precisely sufficient to assist corporations and nations meet their carbon-reduction targets is an open query.
A method for the worldwide neighborhood to check the impacts of those efforts may very well be Deep’s Sentinel program, the primary a part of which will likely be accomplished this 12 months. Our correspondent Liam Critchley, based mostly in England, studies in “Making Humans Aquatic Again” that Deep, situated in Bristol, is constructing a modular habitat that may let scientists dwell underwater for weeks at a time.
One other geopolitical concern additionally lies at sea: the vulnerability of undersea fiber-optic cables, which carry an ever-growing share of the world’s Web visitors. The potential of outages because of assault or accident is so worrying that NATO is funding a project to quickly detect undersea-cable damage and reroute data to satellites.
In a provocative commentary on why know-how will outline the way forward for geopolitics printed in International Affairs in 2023, Eric Schmidt, chair of the Particular Aggressive Research Mission and the previous CEO and chair of Google, argues that “a rustic’s skill to mission energy within the worldwide sphere—militarily, economically, and culturally—depends upon its skill to innovate quicker and higher than its opponents.” On this concern, you’ll get an concept of how numerous nations are faring on this regard. Within the coming 12 months, you’ll be able to look ahead to our persevering with analysis of how the new U.S. administration’s policies on primary analysis, local weather change, regulation, and immigration affect international competitors for the uncooked supplies and human assets that stoke the engines of innovation.
