The escalating technological rivalry between the US and China is generally framed in terms of economic advantage, national security, and global influence. But beneath this strategic competition is a deeper and more consequential contest over the future of humanity itself. As the two rivals pioneer advances in AI, quantum computing, biotechnology, and digital surveillance, they risk embedding in these technologies fundamentally different concepts of human nature and social organization. This talk will examine how US and Chinese approaches to technology reflect and reinforce divergent philosophical values and how these differences may become globally normative in shaping attitudes towards personal identity, agency, and ethical behaviour. As each country seeks to export its technological systems and values to the world, there exists a risk of growing technology-enabled ideological bifurcation, in which competing models of what it means to be human become embedded in digital and biological infrastructure. This talk is intended as a follow-up to the author’s book The Great Decoupling: China, America and the Struggle for Technological Supremacy (Hurst, 2023). It will draw on the author’s decade-plus experience of engagement in Track 1.5 and Track 2 diplomacy with China, the UK, the US and Europe on cybersecurity, cyber stability and the military applications of AI and other frontier technologies. It will draw on publicly articulated official Chinese policies and the writings of policy-relevant Chinese academics, and will compare these with relevant Western policies and academic perspectives.
Nigel Inkster CMG is senior advisor to the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) and director for geopolitics and intelligence at Enodo Economics. At the IISS he worked first as director for transnational threats and political risk, then as director for cybersecurity and future conflict. In the latter capacity he was involved in para-diplomatic dialogues on cybersecurity and military cyber stability with China and Russia. He also served from 2017 to 2019 as a commissioner on the Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace. Prior to joining the IISS, Inkster served for 31 years in the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS). From 2004 to 2006 he was assistant chief and director for operations and intelligence. His publications include China’s Cyber Power (Routledge, 2016) for IISS and The Great Decoupling: China, America and the Struggle for Technological Supremacy (Hurst, 2023). Inkster’s current research focus is on China’s response to US technology restrictions and the implications of US-China technology competition for evolving concepts of humanity.
IWM Rector Misha Glenny will moderate the discussion.
