“Geotech—the race for technological leadership among the world’s powers—will remake the world order.”—Fred Kempe, Atlantic Council president and CEO, in “The Global Innovation Sweepstakes”

Please join the Atlantic Council’s Asia Security Initiative, housed in the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, for a discussion of how technological innovation is reshaping global and regional economic landscapes and US-China relations.

In a landmark two-year study published this June, “The Global Innovation Sweepstakes,” the Scowcroft Center’s Foresight, Strategy and Risks Initiative embarked on a global tour of technology hubs to determine which ones were at the cutting edges of tech-based innovation. With the fourth industrial revolution well underway, the convergence of developments in artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, biotechnology, and other major technologies will create seismic shifts in the global economy—and global geopolitics alongside it. Just as the advent of automation and new manufacturing processes dramatically transformed the global balance of power through the 19th and 20th centuries, so will the advent of distributed, embedded, and increasingly integrated technologies in the early 21st. 

The cultivation of these technologies holds not just economic but also strategic significance—and as “The Global Innovation Sweepstakes” found, there is no guarantee that the United States will retain its technological upper hand, as economies such as Hong Kong and China provide competing models for growth and development. Led by the Scowcroft Center’s Asia Security Initiative, this event will examine that technological race to the top through the lens of innovators and policymakers from the United States and Hong Kong. In the midst of this revolution, what have the United States, Hong Kong, and China done to maximize their home advantage in technological innovation, and where can they find more leverage? What are their strengths and weaknesses? Join us for a discussion that will be sure to tackle these hard questions—and more—about innovation and geopolitics in the 21st century. 


Featuring keynote remarks by:
Secretary Edward Yau
Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development
Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region
Panelists:
Steven Lam
President and Chief Executive Officer
GoGoVan
John Chai
Managing Director
Fook Tin Group Holdings
Samuel Klein
Assistant Director, Foresight, Strategy, and Risks Initiative
Atlantic Council
Stephanie Segal
Deputy Director and Senior Fellow, Simon Chair in Political Economy
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Moderated by:
Robert Dohner
Nonresident Senior Fellow, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security
Atlantic Council