Move over, tech giants – bureaucrats can innovate too

TALK of geopolitics can evoke the image of slow-moving, bureaucratic beasts using old ideas of hard and soft power to pursue national security outcomes. But in today’s landscape, the truth is anything but that.

Modern policymakers are combining national security and industrial policy to shore up their own technological strengths – and make life harder for their competitors.

The United States and China are key players in this new world of “economic statecraft”, but so too are smaller economies that seemingly face a choice between Washington and Beijing.