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A few weeks back, the US shot down a Chinese “balloon” that was hovering over its territory. The US claimed that it could be a “spy balloon” equipped with high tech surveillance systems used for intelligence gathering. China contended, “it’s a civilian air ship used for meteorological research, but accidentally entered the US air space by being deviated far from planned course”.  Meanwhile, Secretary of State Antony Blinken postponed a pre-scheduled visit to Beijing following a “political uproar” in Washington in the wake of the incident. The balloon incident has certainly ignited a dispute and damaged the US-China relations to some degree. The incident does not seem to have posed a serious national security and intelligence risk thus far, but further escalation may even cause  a ‘war’—hot or cold—between the two countries. The US-China relations have definitely worsened since 2020, mainly after China adopted a “tit for tat” retaliation, by ordering the US to close its consulate in Chengdu, in response to the American closure of the Chinese consulate in Houston (Texas) in 2020 on the charge of spying and intellectual property theft from that consulate. In 2019, the US imposed a ban on the import of Chinese telecommunication equipment produced by Huawei Technologies and ZTE, citing a threat to national security and also debarred the export of tech or software products, including AI chips, to China in 2022. This “tech power game” exhibited tech imperialism, inviting a “Digital Cold War” between the US and China. The ongoing Russia-Ukraine war has drawn the attention of the global intelligence community and this war is more likely to escalate further, with the US and Germany recently announcing their commitment to supporting Ukraine by sending dozens of the world’s most advanced battle tanks. While Russia has blamed NATO for seeking direct involvement in the war, the US blamed Russia for obtaining drones and high-tech missiles from its allies, including Iran. Russia is destroying Ukraine, though the latter has received massive tech and arms assistance from the US and its allies. North Korea, under ‘tech propaganda’, is constantly testing and parading multiple modern missiles and challenging the tech superpower—the US. Pakistan is sporadically challenging another tech power India in the guise of AI technology, drones and nuclear weapons. The geodigital situation of Nepal is equally vulnerable as the geopolitical situation is, given a high high possibility of cyber-battle between the two populous and giant economic rivals—China and India. The tech battle between tech superpowers—the US and China—has already swayed the geopolitics of technology. The geo-tech interests of superpowers, “democratization of technology” as well as various transnational issues—terrorism, war, crime, cyber security, nuclear and AI threats—are creating crucial challenges to national security and sovereignty. For tech superpowers, AI and nano-technology have become powerful means in defining state capabilities. For them, AI has become a key tool for national security. Technology has been playing a significant role in the state of affairs since the 1980s. Post the September-11 attacks, AI and foreign policy have become complementary to each other. AI is having a deep influence on foreign policy, while foreign policy is adding inducement to the development and (mis)use of AI technology. The AI, on the one hand, is undermining global peace and security, and weaponizing data. On the other, AI and foreign policy, which have an intertwined relationship, are (re)balancing the clout between tech powers, and helping to shape “global power dynamics”, tech tyranny, digital dictatorship and data colonialism. With the tech and digital revolution, “modern day bipolarity” is progressing toward “tech bipolarity” between the US and China. The US-China rivalry today is largely centered on digital space, AI and tech supremacy. If this tech battle continues for a long time and wreaks restrictions on each other’s tech diligence, India, perhaps, will start gradually dominating global tech and AI. The three powers—the US, China and India—are focusing on “techno-economic competition”, besides traditional rivalry. China is aiming to become a global tech leader, while the US is focused on ‘countering’ or ‘containing’ China. India is strategic enough to benefit from tech bipolarity and geopolitics of technology, while it has made significant achievements in tech and intelligence and is aiming to become a part of possible “tech tri-polarity”. Seemingly, India can play a mediating role between Russia and the West to bring peace in Ukraine as India is close to Russia, enjoys significant economic partnership with China, and has been maintaining strategic relations with the US. India’s role on the “Taiwan issue” will, most probably, determine whether the country is pragmatic enough to (re)shape the changing dynamics of global geopolitics and take advantage of geo-economy and geopolitics of technology. Despite intensifying geo-political friction between the US and China, the two countries have had deep economic ties in the 40-plus years of their diplomatic relations. The two most responsible great powers, however, should envisage a larger landscape and ‘set the seal’ on diplomatic relations with “amity of greatness”, more so after the puncturing of the Chinese “balloon”. Instead of upending geopolitics of technology, the tech powers should center on “navigating democratic and rational technological future” through multilateral diplomacy (tech and digital) and tech foreign policy, whereby they could leverage from tech cooperation, digital markets, digital and cyber intelligence, tech sovereignty (digital, data and cyber), AI regulation and ethics, global data protection and tech order. Since “politics and geo-politics alike are the art of relationship”, it would be wise for them to “leave something concrete on the table” and resolve the blistering issues—diplomatic, tech and trade. For this, there has to be ‘passion’ for peace and prosperity, and ‘greed’ for goodwill and global harmony. Washington and Beijing need to be fortified with sensitivity, conviction, rationality, intelligence and ability to pursue each other. They have to meet, sit, face, dine, communicate and embrace a common strategic and transparent framework as Churchill once said: “If I could dine with Stalin once a week, there would be no trouble at all. We get on like a house on fire”. Essentially, none of the powers can leverage by making other powers terrified and miraculous. If the tech powers do not use intelligence and rationality under the sway of AI and tech supremacy, only ‘madness’ will prevail and ‘human intelligence’ will be in vain. The fate and future that can be caused by the misuse of AI and nuclear technology can be so terrible, painful and miserable that there will neither remain human civilization nor mastery of AI technology, or irrational tech supremacy. The author has studied MSc (CS), MSc (Stats), MA (IR&D), and MPhil (Mgmt). He is pursuing research on Tech Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Thought

Last month, the author got an opportunity to attend (virtually) “Tanner Lecture 2023” on “AI and Human Values” conducted by Seth Lazar, Professor of Philosophy at the Australian National University, at Stanford University. The lecture was primarily focused on AI-Human connection and AI ethiCS (“ethiCS: the ethics in Computer Science”). “We are increasingly connected to one another by algorithmic intermediaries—sociotechnical systems such as centralized privately—and publicly-controlled digital platforms and competing decentralized architectures”, underlined the lecture. Amid the advancements in technology, human thoughts, perceptions, behaviors and lifestyles have also been unpredictably changing. Starting from the Steam Engine in the ‘First Industrial Revolution’ to Nano Technology, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Quantum Technologies and Biotech in the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ and beyond, the technological revolution seems to combine both ‘life’ and ‘non-life’ materials including physical, digital and biological sphere. AI technology is likely to be an important means of navigating the entire world, while it has already made a global impact on society, economy, politics, national security and international relations (IR). More than 5 billion people are said to be wedged within a range of broadband infrastructure—that provide access to internet connection—and live online globally, while the global spending on ICT was nearly $5.82 trillion in 2022 (WEF). AI is expected to add about $16 trillion to the global economy by 2030 (IGCC, UC). The technological revolution today has not only changed perceptions of the human race, it has also made it possible to control every action around the world with just one “click” charted by one thought. Technology has made our lives so easy that cellphones are handling many of our activities, including monetary transactions. The phenomenal development of AI has made us so successful in technological innovations that (perhaps) nothing we think is impossible, today. Lately, ChatGPT (Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer), a next generation AI technology, has created a huge storm in the tech world. ChatGPT, reportedly a large language model trained on language from the internet data sets, is designed by OpenAI, a tech firm based in the US. It is said to be one of the best AI technologies algorithmically, as it solves academic queries, including writing essays, research papers, preparing speeches and solving exam questions with explanations. It can produce music (songs) and write poetry. It has been equipped with terrific general knowledge, rationality and reasoning that helps to give synthesized responses to every enquiry. ChatGPT can even do coding for different languages including Python. Yet it cannot make judgments or decisions and work on real-time as it does not possess any consciousness or ability to feel emotions. ChatGPT, however, is spurring both hope and despair as well as excitement and fear in society and the tech sphere. Some institutions in the US have reportedly banned ChatGPT considering its negative impact such as ‘accuracy’ and ‘completeness’ of information in learning. The generative AI technology, however, is said to “shape the future of technology” as it has distinct features such as ‘interactivity’, ‘autonomy’ and ‘adaptability’. But will we be able to shape the future of human mind (rationality and critical thinking), humanity, job security, economic equality and societal biases, and conserve the future of traditional schooling systems? This is a crucial question. AI technology is destined to replace humans in multiple sectors, including tech, hospitality, industry and service, which is likely to render hundreds of thousands of people jobless. Per WEF predictions, more than 85 million jobs will be displaced by AI technology and automation by 2025. Big tech and social media companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft, Twitter, Meta and Amazon among others, reportedly laid off more than 200,000 employees just in 2022. The reasons for mass tech layoffs are said to be pandemic, economic slowdown, inflation and war. Indeed, the long-term objective of the big tech companies is to depend on AI instead of humans. Technology has made people’s lives simple, comfortable, successful, apart from saving lives and helping them to cope with disasters. For instance, AI robots and drones were deployed to locate survivors beneath the rubble in Turkey and Syria that experienced a massive earthquake recently. Conversely, technology has also added to stress. With the increased use and abuse of social media and technology, “social isolation” is growing rapidly, damaging emotional and mental health of most social media users. Social media were expected to rationally connect society and strengthen democracy, but they have been used as a “tech propaganda machine” to spread disinformation and destabilize democracy. Various studies have shown that the big tech companies and social media, in complicity with the powerful ruling elite in different countries, have tried to undermine democratic values in the guise of ethnic and religious nationalism. Also, the state authorities have scrutinized civilians underneath the “surveillance system”, which is dictating every personal space and distressing “sovereign human dignity”. The surveillance technology is said to be detecting even the ethnicity of individuals along with racial biases. Non-state actors including cyber criminals and cyber terrorists are posing a serious threat to cybersecurity architecture around the world. The Nepali tech and cyber sphere was outraged a few weeks back due to cyber hacking and snagging of digital infrastructures at different government offices. The central server of the government and servers of different sensitive sectors such as the Department of Immigration and National Information Technology Center went down. The main purpose of hackers, perhaps, was data breaching. Nepal has witnessed multiple cybersecurity threats in banks, telecoms, power-grids, airports and foreign missions due to weak digital infrastructure. Nepal needs to rationally focus on intelligence mechanisms—cyber and digital intelligence—so as to protect data, information and sensitive digital infrastructures from foreign cyber actors or political predators. It is essential to address human values such as freedom, equality, societal dignity, emotional health, personal sovereign dignity, and national security as a matter of policy under a broad regulatory oversight. All nations are required to raise a united voice through multilateral channels (diplomatic channels) to bring all ethical, technical and policy concerns within the ambit of international law and data policy to regulate AI technology, big tech and social media globally. The technology, though, will definitely help advance human lives by conserving human values if AI, digital technology and social media are used in an honest, safe, fair, ethical and responsible manner by all the users. (The second part of this article will appear next week) The author has studied MSc in Computer Science, MSc in Statistics, MA in International Relations & Diplomacy, and MPhil in Management. He is now pursuing research on Tech Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Thought