Sovereignty in a digital era

The report offers a short study of the US-China relationship over the role of Huawei in the development of 5G technology to illustrate the manner in which the governance and control of digital technology – and especially a trend toward decoupling in the digital sector – is becoming one of the major international relations agenda items of our age. [...] 10 A digital spectrum for politics and international relations We need to rethink the concept of sovereignty and the behaviour of states in an era characterised by the return of nationalism and the changing nature of sovereignty across the spectrum of the digitalisation of politics and international relations. [...] Hierarchy and the uses of strategic power By hierarchy, we mean the behaviour of the digital ‘superpowers’ – the US and China, whose power is seen by the economic weight of their digital companies – and the aspiring great powers, notably the EU collectively, Russia, India, and Brazil, through middle powers such as the bigger Nordics, Australia, Canada, South Korea, and smaller states and regions. [...] Part five looks at the contentious relationship between digitalisation and political control and particularly the Janus-faced nature of the internet as an agent of empowerment, openness, and the potential enhancement of democratisation on the one hand and as an agent control, repression, and authoritarianism on the other. [...] At the domestic political level, there are clearly correlations in the major states between: (i) the growing ability of government, through the use of the internet, to survey and manipulate the political thinking and behaviour of citizens (maybe both individually and collectively) and the attendant political implications discussed above; and (ii) In a manner analogous to what happened with the ind.