Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
The world’s technological future will be defined in large part by the United States and China, two tech superpowers that are increasingly locked in conflict and distrust. Yet the old international rulebook provides little guidance for how Washington, Beijing, and others can find security and prosperity in a digital age wracked by great power confrontation. Carnegie develops practical insights to help policymakers manage U.S.-China tech tensions and, where possible, create pathways for stable co-existence. We draw on our rich network of government and private sector contacts, and our deep knowledge of technology and security policy, in both countries and around the world.
Espionage is a fact of life, yet U.S. discourse often fails to distinguish severe incidents from banal ones. If this pattern continues, the next Chinese spying scandal—however trivial—may spark a true bilateral crisis.
merica has embarked on one of its most difficult and dangerous international challenges since the Cold War. The task: reversing decades of economic and technological integration with its chief rival, China.
As America’s conscious foray into industrial policy, the CHIPS Act is an important political breakthrough and a potentially transformative piece of legislation.
Washington has dramatically expanded controls on technology flowing to and from Beijing by imposing aggressive sanctions targeting China’s chip and semiconductor industry. What impact will these changes have on the broader U.S.-China relationship?
The U.S. and Chinese governments, for the foreseeable future, will have the resources to keep each other’s society vulnerable to nuclear mass destruction.
The United States has waged low-grade economic warfare against China for at least four years now, b ut Washington’s endgame for this conflict has always been hazy. A regulatory filing from a little-known federal agency may give the strongest hint yet of U.S. intentions.
Adding the company to the SDN List could lead to unpredictable consequences for the United States and the world.
A partial “decoupling” of U.S. and Chinese technology ecosystems is well underway. Without a clear strategy, Washington risks doing too little or—more likely—too much to curb technological interdependence.
Public attribution is an important yet sensitive issue in cyberspace interaction between China and the United States. The gaps that exist between the two countries’ understanding of the issue have posed a growing negative impact on maintaining stable and healthy China-U.S. relations, both in this area and in broader terms.
A global network of similarly-structured CBDCs could ultimately facilitate lower-cost payments relative to U.S.-regulated channels, thus diminishing the power of U.S. sanctions and curbing dollar usage in cross-border trade.