CODE · Competition in the Digital Era: Technology and Geopolitics in the XXI Century

The Competition in the Digital Era (CODE) project investigates the competition between China, Europe and the United States (US) for access and control of three critical technological sectors: semiconductors, cloud computing and space. These sectors are, respectively, the backbone, the brain and the legs of the current wave of technological innovation and they have a fundamental impact on economic, military and geopolitical hierarchies.CODE proposes a multidisciplinary theoretical framework and an original mixed-method approach to study technology competition in these sectors. The main hypothesis of the project is that the very technological characteristics of the industrial sectors are key to explain when and why China, Europe and the US succeed in some sectors and struggle in others. Specifically, different combinations of cycle of technological change (the speed at which technologies evolve in each industrial sector) and the degree of modularity (the possibility to divide complex technical systems into components and outsource them to external suppliers) generate different hypotheses on the ability of China and Europe to compete with the US in semiconductors, cloud and space.CODE is a high-risk project because investigates technologically complex and highly politicized sectors. Yet, it is also a high-gain project as simultaneously advances the debate on international relations (US-China geopolitical transition, Europes role in the world), political economy (role of the state in technology innovation, role of global value chains) and management and innovation (how technology competition unfolds in highly politicized sectors).