• CH
• CHINA TECH
• COVID
• COVID19
• SINO-INDIA
• XI JINPING

On June 29, the minister for electronics and information technology and law and justice, Ravi Shankar Prasad, tweeted that “For safety, security, defence, sovereignty & integrity of India and to protect data & privacy of people of India the government has banned 59 mobile apps.” After the usual partisan bluster surrounding this move subsides, India must operationalise and strengthen this momentous decision. India, its people, and its territory that are now increasingly digital, must be protected from China’s encroachment and influence.

This long-term response has to be shaped by three ideas. First, India must not contribute to the success, proliferation and performance of digital weapons that will be ranged against it. China’s tech must be recognised as one. Second, it must wean itself away from an iniquitous trade relationship that makes it dependent on a country that seeks to harm it. And, third, India needs to step out of the shadow that stunts its own economic growth, diminishes its political clout and limits its digital ambitions.

The presence of China’s hardware and platforms in India’s digital ecosystem constitutes a long-term security threat. Arriving at this conclusion requires no strenuous leap of logic. A level-headed assessment of China’s stated intentions and observable actions is enough. China has manipulated democratic means to transmit its propaganda and advertised its way to ensure suitable reportage and headlines. It has leveraged WeChat to interfere in Canadian politics, and to intercept content beyond its jurisdiction, and adopted western social media platforms to target dissidents abroad, exacerbate racial tensions in the United States (US), interfere in Taiwan’s political processes and spread disinformation about the coronavirus. China has entrenched the influence of its tech platforms in key global institutions such as the United Nations in an attempt to redraw the rules of information flows and the ethical applications of emerging technologies like facial recognition systems.

These are fundamental to China’s great power ambitions — they assist Beijing to expand its “discourse power”, develop indigenous technologies, create lock-ins through standards and infrastructure, weaponise its economic and technological interdependence, and emerge as a technology superpower. Relations with India are inconsequential to Beijing’s imagination of the world. India has to look out for itself. This new mindset to review engagement with China tech is a vital first step to protect itself.

China will continue to gather information on Indians. More worrisome is the insidious ability of the Communist Party of China (CPC) to interfere in or influence India’s political and social spheres. During the Doklam stand-off, the security establishment discovered that the Chinese-owned UC Browser was filtering certain news on Android handsets in India to shape perceptions and outcomes — classic information warfare in the digital age. Recently, we have seen content critical of China being taken down on one of the banned apps and moderation of other incidents and images as well.

This is not unique to Chinese platforms. But far-reaching national security legislations, and subservience to a one man-led party that is inimical to India, make their continuance untenable. Indian democracy, howsoever flawed, must steer clear of the digital “tea rooms” owned by the CPC.

Will this Indian decision cause economic harm to Chinese platforms? In terms of revenues, clearly it will not. In terms of value, tremendously so. Platforms rely on network effects to scale — every additional user drives up valuations and the aggregate data that they produce feeds into other commercial and research and development activities and product development. Indian eyeballs and data should not fuel Chinese malfeasance directed against them.

Similarly, India must bar China’s telecommunications infrastructure from its 5G networks. It is time to say “No way Huawei”. Countries such as Singapore, the US, Australia and others have already signalled different degrees of intent to manage the Dragon. New Delhi’s decision should strengthen this trend and encourage others. Political trust is increasingly going to shape the direction of technology flows. India must work with its allies and partners through new initiatives such as the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to compete with and contain China.

India’s actions will invite consequences. China will respond using other aspects of the economic relationship. India’s dependence on electronics, pharmaceuticals and other industrial inputs are well-documented and easy pickings. China’s response could manifest itself along the Line of Actual Control or through cyber intrusions. China’s ability to impose costs must serve to motivate India.

Bilateral trade is healthy when there is a balance. With China, it is a doubled-barrelled shotgun trained between India’s eyes. It is important that we fix this now as a three trillion dollar economy. Otherwise, all our future growth will only serve to strengthen the entity which seeks to weaken us.

India’s decision has come at a time when economic activity is already under siege from the Wuhan virus and when major economies are also questioning their dependence on China. A reconfiguration of value chains is inevitable. Public opinion favours this and the short-term pain will be acceptable to many. As India restarts its pandemic-stalled economy, let us create value chains that are not of dubious origin.

This commentary originally appeared in Hindustan Times.

The current violent confrontation between India and China in east Ladakh along the Line of Actual Control should come as a surprise to none. This was inevitable. An inexorable chain of events was set in motion in 2017 when New Delhi rejected Beijing’s imperial invitation to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) event presided over by President Xi Jinping. A second rude rebuff followed later in the summer of that year when India stood up to China’s efforts to reorganise  Himalayan political geography on the Doklam plateau. India must be prepared to strongly repel the backlash from Beijing on our mountains, in our waters and through our digital platforms.

The Indian commentariat is needlessly agonising over the drivers of the latest Chinese actions. Let us stop theorising and be bold enough to accept that China is just being itself. India has made decisions like independent nations do as an exercise of their sovereignty. To argue otherwise would be tantamount to ignoring the sum total of Beijing’s behaviour during the ‘Made in China’ pandemic: The acceleration of territorial revisionism in the South China Sea; the subjugation of Hong Kong through the stoutly contested national security law; repeated violations of Taiwanese airspace; heightened naval aggression around Japan’s Senkaku Islands; and its most recent encroachment in Nepal.

There is a pattern to this madness; a reason for this seemingly inexplicable restlessness.

In Jiang Zemin’s 2002 report to the 16th Party Congress, the Communist Party of China (CPC) presciently foresaw a 20-year “period of strategic opportunity” for China – linked to its entry into the WTO and America’s misguided interventions in the Middle East that enabled Beijing to play a deft game of Chinese Checkers — and build national power. Emperor Xi, anointed to office for life with a heavenly mandate, is now exercising that power as a counterpoise to the diminishing clout of American influence, and the weakening resolve of a wavering EU and unsure Europe. This is the moment for the Xi Dynasty (like the Mao Gang in another era) to take charge of the wheel and steer China to its centennial objective of world domination by 2049.

The new version of Chinese exceptionalism shaped and directed under Xi’s tutelage is linked to China’s past identity, largely a product of myth-making. It has willed itself into believing that it does not need to work within the matrix of international laws, rules and norms. It has decided that the time when China would “hide and bide” its motivations and capabilities is past.

The CPC is now externalising the authoritarian idiosyncrasies it wields at home. Medievalism is the hallmark of Chinese external assessments. This is evident from its insatiable urge to redraw boundaries as an adventure sport and from its estimation of its population (as well as others) as mere fodder. This behaviour is exemplified in China’s ‘hostage diplomacy’ with Canada. Chen Weihua, the European Union bureau chief of the China Daily, offered an unsympathetic glimpse into how China views the issue: “People often fail to note that Meng is worth 10 Kovrig and Spavor, if not more.”

Supplementing this behaviour are two critical tools: an expansionist military and modern methods of engagement. Xi has overseen what is arguably the most wide-ranging modernisation of the People’s Liberation Army: purging it of corrupt or disloyal officials, ensuring its transition to a capable and expeditionary naval force; undertaking crucial administrative and organisational reforms; and reaffirming its absolute loyalty to the CPC and its ideology. In parallel, Xi has presided over China’s long-term efforts to securitise and weaponise global supply chains, flows of technology, finance and data, and institutions of global governance. The all-pervasive Chinese state is but an instrument for the benefit of the CPC.

Time and again India has confronted these realities at 14,000 feet above sea level and soon it may have to defend its blue waters against the rising crimson tides. At one level, Beijing is merely attempting to ‘remind’ India of Asia’s geopolitical hierarchy—that failure to kow-tow to the Middle Kingdom carries consequences. More worryingly, Beijing may have concluded from India’s history that heightened aggression along the LAC will invariably bring India to the negotiating table—that India will grant China greater political concessions, market access or economic bargains as the price for “peace and tranquillity”. The Indian state will have to dispel and disprove this Chinese assumption.

China is also using this moment to send a message to its other neighbours in the East and South China Sea. While a similar escalation in those waters by China carries the risk of drawing in American military response, the attempt to reorganise boundaries  on the Himalayas conveys the same intent. China is demonstrating to the world the limitations of decaying American power without having to actually confront it. In its neo-Confucian assessment an Indian capitulation may signal the final rites of Pax Americana. Beijing may be in for a surprise on both counts, provided countries are able to correctly assess the deeper import of recent Chinese actions.

India must begin with the daunting acknowledgement that the world’s second largest economy is its primary long-term geopolitical and geoeconomic rival. It must also internalise that it will not be able to negotiate its way into any favourable outcomes with China. While nations must talk and unofficial summits like Wuhan and Mamallapuram are important, India must have the singular purpose of investing in and developing robust political, economic, digital and military tools that should, for the short to medium-term, be able to protect territory and rebuff the northern marauders.

For too long, Delhi has been hesitant to impose costs for China’s military adventurism, preferring instead to settle matters diplomatically. In doing so, India has failed to realise that while Xi’s China is irrational, it is not an entirely unpredictable actor. It sees capitulation and a preference for negotiation as a sign of weakness. Delhi must be creative about how it imposes costs for this behaviour—creating unconventional and asymmetric options that help in ‘area denial’ operations in the Himalayas. Accelerating roads and infrastructure is one part, building emplacements is the second. The politics of ‘sharp’ presence (physical) is the only vocabulary understood in those terrains.

The adage ‘it is the economy stupid’ has never been more relevant. Obsession with building India’s economic heft must override all other considerations. China’s rise was underwritten by its strategic co-option of globalisation. In an era where global flows of data are outstripping trade in goods, and where technology supply chains are being jealously guarded, India’s goal should be to emerge as one of the centres of the topography of digital globalisation. India did well to reject the BRI; it must now ensure that it rejects BRI’s digital avatar as well.`

The banning of Chinese goods may be important signalling but will have little impact on the northern neighbour due to the asymmetry in trade. Zealous protection of India’s digital backbone and networks (5G) and billion people plus digital platforms from Chinese encroachment and intrusion, either openly or by stealth, must be the clear-eyed strategic objective. But India cannot do this alone. And here is where its own period of strategic opportunity begins. In a powerful dissent against the Xi regime, Tsinghua University professor Xu Zhangrun laments the consequences of Beijing’s global assertiveness: “Instead of embracing a [global] community,” he writes, “China is increasingly isolating itself from it.” The challenge for India is to capture this moment – to shed (self) righteous theories of foreign policy in favour of pragmatic, even cynical, partnerships that bolster its economy, provide it with technology, arm its military and support its global ambitions.

That India is still debating Non-Alignment as a choice is a sad reflection of its inability to grasp the reality that stares it in the face, its failure to read the writing on the wall, its myopic disregard for what the future holds. When Non-Alignment was conceived it was an attempt by the leadership of the day to carve out a space for India in a world dominated by two superpowers. Does its propagation allow similar space to India now? Or does a string of strategic partnerships (not of the variety that exists in the dozens) serve India’s interests better?

Indeed, the time for hiding behind ‘strategic ambiguity’ is over. This stands true for New Delhi’s involvement with international institutions as well. How will India take advantage of its seat in the UN Security Council, its upcoming presidency of the G-20, its chairmanship of the WHO, its position in the Global AI Alliance, or its leadership of the International Solar Alliance? India now increasingly finds a place on the high table of global governance. Question is, can it make the most of these arenas? Can Delhi marshal its diplomatic resources to convince the international community that events in the Himalayas carry global consequences, and that silence now, only emboldens China’s perverse great power ambitions in other geographies and domains? Will New Delhi develop the appetite to call out China on Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang and Hong Kong in international forums? And can it incubate a discursive space that will challenge ‘wolf warrior’ propaganda?

• COVID-19
• D10 ALLIANCE
• DEBT TRAP DIPLOMACY
• ECONOMIC STATECRAFT
• GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAIN
• PATTERNS OF TRADE

Of the many ways the post-Covid world will look different, the rapid confluence of trade, technology and national security will rank high among them. The US’s assertion in the 2017 National Security Strategy (NSS) that ‘economic security is national security,’ EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s call this February for ‘tech sovereignty’, and China’s focus on ‘self-reliance’ in strategic technologies portend a new age for geo-economics. All three areas have acquired a sharper edge in the middle of the pandemic.

India must signal to its citizens, businesses and the international community how it plans to respond to this moment being shaped by three developments. First, the weaponisation of economics and trade, a trend prevalent among partners and rivals alike. Second, the measurement of national power will now be based on the ability to control global digital flows comprising technology, information, human capital and finance. Can India be an influential actor?

And third, old industrial tools like import substitution and market restrictions will need radical repurposing for these times. Can India devise a new mantra compatible with the latest version of globalisation? All of this translates into one layered question: How can India first attract large investments, then grow and develop its technology sector, and finally share and export ‘Digital India’ to other geographies?

This will be based on India’s ability to manufacture for, and service, the growing digital markets, as well as shape the norms, rules, standards and topography of global physical and digital supply chains. The decoupling of supply chains due to the sharpening US-China trade war makes this an imperative. GoI seems to have sensed this moment and is attempting to seize it.

Dislocations in trade and technology are an opportunity to attract global investors. India has done poorly in the past. A September 2019 Nomura report suggested that of the 56 companies relocating out of China, only three have opted for India. Nevertheless, decoupling is a long-term process. While MNCs are choosing well-established regional supply chain in East and Southeast Asia for now, India must look to the future.

In this regard, India’s decision to announce three interrelated schemes on production-linked incentive (PLI) for manufacturing of components and semiconductors, and electronics manufacturing clusters, is important. These replace the earlier ‘merchant export from India’ scheme, and align India’s support for its nascent electronics industry with WTO rules. This new regime for manufacturing and export is designed specifically to draw in large global manufacturers like Apple and Samsung, facilitating the relocation of a part of their production base and downstream suppliers to India.

The ability of just a few global investors to help India integrate into global supply chains (GSCs) should not be underestimated. For example, the market value of the hardware Apple produces in China was nearly $220 billion in FY2019, of which it exported $185 billion, dwarfing India’s total electronics exports of $8.8 billion in the same year. Apple has over 800 production facilities globally, over 300 of which are based in China. Even minor relocations of these value chains to India will be beneficial. The reported relocation of certain processes to India by Apple contractors Wistron and Foxconn, among the largest and most sophisticated Taiwanese electronics manufacturers, will bring with them their own secondary supply chains.

Such opportunities will multiply for India — such as the Britain-proposed ‘D10 alliance’ (a club of 10 democracies) on 5G and emerging technologies — begin to reorganise patterns of trade to favour nations ‘politically trustworthy’. The logic driving disengagement with China on crucial supply chains is obvious. Beijing’s economic statecraft underpins its efforts to shape the world in its own image through territorial aggression, debt-trap diplomacy and institutional capture. Part of India’s response to this reality will be political muscularity along the border and in the oceans. The other, more durable, response will be an obsessive nurturing and growth of the economy.

This must be dictated by a strategy that enhances India’s ability to integrate into the production and manufacturing of strategic technologies, to secure value from global data flows, and to grow Indian platforms and digital propositions for the world. Growing and new investments from US blue-chip tech giants like Apple and Facebook into India’s manufacturing base and digital platforms augur well.

But these ventures are also a litmus test for GoI’s resolve for reform. In 1982, GoI’s integration of Suzuki into the domestic market for automobiles spawned a new wave of investments into this sector making it one of the world’s most competitive. As the realignment of supply chains accelerates post-Covid-19, investors from around the world will be closely watching the performance of these major global corporations in India before making their own decisions.

This commentary originally appeared in Economic Times.

• COVID19
• ORIENTALISM
• PANDEMIC

“…And, above the packed and pestilential town, Death looked down.” – Rudyard Kipling

The reordering of global power relations with the emergence of the East has begun to alter the West’s imagination, narratives and processes of self-identification. One discernible and strengthening trend arising from this changing political landscape is the increasing deployment of reductive stereotypes in the Western media, reminiscent of the colonial era when the West appropriated to itself the “burden of civilising the savage” East.

This effort to devalue, deplore and defame the East is now a recurrent theme and, perhaps, is an attempt to define oneself as distinct from the “other” in these troubled times. More insidiously, it is also deployed as a method of control and as a projection of a superior agency for achieving definitive economic and political goals. Simply put, the West seeks to tower above all by diminishing the East.

With its increasing economic influence (the pandemic notwithstanding), greater presence in world affairs, and an emerging and louder identity (with passionate supporters and detractors), India’s actions and policies have come under close and often critical scrutiny in powerful sections of the liberal media in the Atlantic system. This, by itself, is both natural and unsurprising.

What is disturbing is the near universal, vicious and negative portrayal of a land that is proud of its democratic politics (just as many other nations are), with a loud, disruptive and often aggressive media, and mobilisations led by communities that have toppled governments and, sometimes, catalysed perverse outcomes. It is a far from perfect, largely low-income country, with its fragilities debated with gusto at home and judged at the hustings repeatedly. What is curious about the naked aggression of the liberal Western media is its visible conflation of the domestic debates of their land with those in foreign lands; their sense of loss of their old place and space and the externalisation of grievance onto the “outsider”; and, their weaponisation of differences in much the same manner as their far Right counterparts.

Many a time, this “reduced” portrayal of India or other lands may be just journalistic or editorial carelessness. When it does happen, it must be called out and now is a good time to engage with this trend. The distasteful grammar, and gloomy imagery that dominates Western coverage on India says less about the country under the scanner and more about the malaise within media organisations as they move from editorial and ownership structures of the past to the digital and decentralised realities of today. The ugly underbelly of a section of the media continues to reveal itself as it engages with India and its efforts in coping with the Covid-19 pandemic.

Over the last two months, organisations such as the BBC, the Atlantic , the Washington Post and the New York Times, among others, have run series of reductive commentaries on the state of India’s preparedness and its capacity to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic. If we are being honest, they are being biased and blasé about it.

From alarmist commentaries (one report hypothesised that half of India could be infected!) and ridiculing the capacity and agency of the government, to deriving vicarious delight by focusing on well-known social inequities, their reporting has been “misery porn” with the spotlight being on India’s vulnerabilities and shortcomings in the fight against the pandemic. These are embellished through a cleverly selected presentation of events and facts; compelling images of poverty, denial, and deprivation; and, an overdose of virtue showboating.

The recurring portrayal of marginalised communities and migrants lacking economic, social, and political agency is presented as distinct from the values of esteem, equality and harmony, which form the bedrock of a “civilised” society. This narrative deliberately ignores the universal acceptance of these “ideals” to meet its singular objective — the perpetuation of a needless discourse of discord instead of a more worthwhile debate on the failure of globalisation and the extant economic models, something which is on stark display around the world.

This media narrative on India is perhaps not meant to only highlight inequality within the country because inequality is all prevalent around the world, more dazzlingly so in the West. It appears to be an attempt to distance a country and its mainstream from the civilised “self” which resides in the moral and emancipated world of publishers, editors and reporters. India and its large population are being painted as the proverbial “other” even as New York, the beacon of Western civilisation, is being scorched by the scourge.

Incidentally, and expectedly, many of these reports have been penned by native authors. This old trick affords plausible deniability to the publications against any allegations of White bias or racism, which is still resplendent in each of these reports. Nobel Laureate professor Amartya Sen and renowned pan-Africanist and political philosopher Frantz Fanon have argued how centuries of colonial subjugation and cultural infantalisation have left deep imprints on the self-image of the colonised, with the natives often viewing themselves and their cultures through the coloniser’s prism of prejudice. This phenomenon is one of colonialism’s most dehumanising byproducts and has now achieved viral potency alongside the pandemic.

Literary critic and linguist Namvar Singh, in his essay Decolonising the Indian Mind, alluded to this desperate urge that resides within Indian English-language writers to be accepted and understood by Western audiences as being part of their own identity continuum. The absurdity of the writings are, therefore, astounding. Just how absurd can be guessed from the assertion that a country with a per capita income of $2,000 must have the governance infrastructure and attributes similar to those with multiple times the resources and capacity — the leitmotif of much that is published on India. What is often forgotten in the “one village” discourse perpetuated by this class is that this village never was and never will be. This pandemic is the story of “millions of villages” seeking their own salvation as the “global ethic” promoted by the liberal media was the first victim of, and culprit-in-chief for, the pandemic and its heavy toll.

For a nation the size of a continent with many inherent challenges, India’s response has been bold and feeble at the same time, just as it has been universal and differentiated. While states such as Kerala and some others appear to have contained the crises well, other states with more complex and complicated politics are battling to keep this virus in check. There are shortcomings galore but most importantly, there is resolute intent across society and politics to fight the pandemic. States are adopting different models — unique to their local situation — drawing heavily from aspects as diverse as their specific cultural practices, topography, information systems and technology, along with government intervention.

Arguably, some states in India have outperformed some of the developed nations. A fair and balanced reportage should have presented these myriad experiences in combating the novel coronavirus, rather than just those narratives that build stereotypes and biases. In fact, the odd positive story out of India has the focused objective of establishing chaos and disorder as the norm — the outlier province with West-like predisposition, the snake-charmer and the bazaar magician, the bandar and the bandarlog, and other such notions lurk among words and between lines. This is reminiscent of the debates in 19th-century Britain with its praise of some quaint developments in India and its resolute determination to tame the East.

Celebrated political thinker Edward Said situated this impulse in the colonial domination of the non-West by the West, and the attendant perceptions of superiority that accompanied such domination. He argued that the West was able to manage, and even produce, the non-West by projecting itself as progressive, rational, civil and humanistic as opposed to the non-West. This reductive narrative was a purposeful one, created to morally justify the colonial enterprise and legitimise the civilising mission which was the “White man’s burden”.

This civilising purpose perpetuated through literature, popular culture and politics for over two centuries has not only informed and influenced the trajectory of colonial politics and popular Western imagination, but has also become embedded as the indisputable truth, forever colouring Western understanding of the Orient.

Starting with James Mill’s influential History of British India (1817) to Katherine Mayo’s Mother India (1927), diminished narratives on native agency, Professor Amartya Sen argues, have informed the views of generations of the Western intellectual and political elite, from Alexander Duff to Theodore Roosevelt and beyond. Works such as Rudyard Kipling’s White Man’s Burden, whom George Orwell called the “prophet of British Imperialism”, are considered reflective of this seemingly benign ethnocentric trajectory of colonial discourse.

French Jewish thinker Emmanuel Levinas traces this bias to the West’s philosophical bearing, where identity is sought in the indurate logic of the self, rather than the expression of self in relation to difference. This predisposition manifests in a skewed representation of non-Western experiences. It is the cornerstone of the age-old identity debates that have troubled and defined human interactions. The sense of “Us versus Them”, or our superior agency versus theirs, proliferates the reports around Covid-19. The articles in the New York Times deploy a lack of empathy to create the “identity distance”. The Atlantic deploys lack of agency as a missing virtue, and social inequity defines the coverage of the BBC and the Washington Post in this instance. Unfortunately, the pandemic has a different tale to narrate.

A study of infection patterns in New York, for instance, presents vivid glimpses of elite depredations. The Black and marginalised communities have been significantly more affected than the rest, with one report assessing that Black Americans were thrice as likely to die from the infection than their White compatriots. The virus has indubitably driven a wedge between the economic haves and have-nots in the US, with significantly higher than average infections and deaths even among caregivers, who are people of colour, than their White counterparts. This isn’t very different from the Indian experience where the more impoverished are facing the fury of the pandemic.

Universally, and without exception, catastrophic events such as the raging pandemic tend to disproportionately affect the economically and socially marginalised more. In India, struggling migrants seek a path back to their hamlets. In the US, the rich and powerful escape to the Hamptons. This is an identity discourse of another variety that poses the same question for all humanity on the form and format of our economic agenda and priorities.

Colonial biases and stereotypes form an intractable part of the Western subconscious. However, the representation also needs to be viewed within a grander scheme. Beyond the articulation of the reductive occidental logic, it also offers a convenient moment for some to mobilise the newly dispossessed intelligentsia against the new nationalist urge that is shaping India’s political and economic discourse.

The story of the media reportage on India’s response to Covid-19 is, perhaps, not about the country’s efforts and its successes and failures. It is a narrative of perverse politics where the increasingly under threat elite opinion makers — the post-colonial custodians of virtue — are expressing (through their media) their contempt for those who do not see their path as either divine or preordained. This is political coverage, not one on the pandemic, and it has been scripted with the ink of exclusion.

This commentary originally appeared in Newslaundry.

Processes that were once subject to national jurisdictions – be it political conversations, trade and commerce, or national security considerations – are increasingly migrating to ungoverned digital spaces, creating what I have earlier called a “platform planet”. It is clear that the coronavirus will accelerate this process and more permanently fuse our technological and
social systems while encoding inequities and cleavages therein.

Most pertinent to this is the issue of access to digital technologies. Think of the pressure on governments today to deliver governance and services in the age of social distancing, the clamour from parents whose children cannot access educational opportunities, or demands from historically marginalized groups who may not be able to work remotely. Life, protection, and livelihood will all need to be guaranteed virtually and most capitals around the world will struggle to provide these.

Some positive transformations will be driven by technology companies looking to break new ground and compete for consumers among the millions of social and commercial interactions that will now be permanently online. Videoconferencing platforms, for instance, have emerged as the go-to technology keeping governments and businesses running even as social distancing is being practised. And still more change will be driven by governments adopting digital tools to carry out health surveillance measures or to enforce quarantines. Evolving debates and assumptions on user agency, privacy and data protection may be significantly altered in the year ahead.

Undoubtedly, the most important structural change will be in the form and format of the relationship between technology and society. Over the past two decades, there have been two fundamental notions that have shaped this ever-evolving relationship. The first, roughly corresponding to the first decade of the 21st century, was a near universal belief in the emancipatory potential of emerging technologies and a social willingness to accept new technologically induced disruptions. The second perspective, corresponding to the second decade, was the antithesis of the first – a “tech-lash” or scepticism about the role of emerging technologies in our social lives and a growing degree of suspicion about the intent and actions of “big tech” and “strong states”.

The coronavirus outbreak will demand a synthesis of these, and other, perspectives under extraordinarily compressed timelines. The many decisions that will be made over the coming year will either become entrenched or will reinforce certain pathways in the decade ahead. Technologies that society would have once expected greater regulatory scrutiny around –such as the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare – will likely be fasttracked and deployed. Meanwhile, consumer technologies that are scaling rapidly, such as videoconferencing and fintech platforms, will face additional scrutiny from consumers and states as they become more utility-like in their deployment.

As this process of synthesis unfolds over the coming year, the international community will be confronted with a new set of opportunities as well as risks. Perhaps the first and most visible risk emanates from a largely ungoverned digital public sphere. Indeed, this pandemic has also been accompanied by an “infodemic”, with misinformation and disinformation flooding most social media platforms, which for all practical purposes play the role of both traditional media and discussions rooms of yore that shaped public opinion.

Fake news alone, however, is not the only dimension of this risk. The response to it may be equally dangerous. The COVID-19 outbreak may end up creating stronger censorship regimes in an attempt to curb the spread of disinformation. Equally worrying is the power of technology platforms to mediate these spaces during times of crisis and the dangerous collaboration or confrontation brewing between technology companies and governments. For instance, certain technology platforms took down content by President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil because they deemed it spread disinformation. But should platforms have the ability to censor the content of a head of state? On the other hand, should they partner with governments and dilute freedom of expression through new measures that may outlast this pandemic?

A second related risk is the data-sharing  practices that technology companies, health institutions and governments are adopting – with little oversight or accountability – to combat COVID-19. This trend will not only be about the data generated today. Instead, the COVID-19 pandemic will likely create a new battlefield, one that will be defined by the datasets generated by the fusion of our biological and digital worlds. Indeed, one set of technologies that were already being deployed rapidly before the virus outbreak were those related to genomics. The practices around genetic privacy – and the institutions that manage them – in the year ahead may well create new and unexpected risks to our fundamental rights as unique living beings.

A third risk likely to challenge our technological futures are efforts to undermine the integrity of the cyber realm. While most nations remain worried about threats to critical infrastructure (the United Nations has already called for a digital ceasefire) the COVID-19 outbreak will also exacerbate “petty” cyber-crimes. These are minor cyber incidences; those that may not pose systemic national security threats but will affect the financial and social lives of individuals dramatically. The sudden uptick in COVID-related phishing scams, telemedicine scams and attacks on medical institutions all point in this direction. Trust in technology will be undermined at a time when the digital is the ether for globalization to survive.

The fourth risk is of individuals being permanently left behind as the process of digitalization continues to accelerate. Inequality has been the defining political zeitgeist of our generation – one that digital technologies have often accentuated. In countries without full or robust access to the internet, citizens are suffering from multidimensional socio-economic challenges as the pandemic snatches away their access to essential public goods.

But the challenge goes beyond this. Just as individuals are beginning to learn that not all work requires formal office spaces, businesses may well realize that not all operations require humans. The rapid adoption of AI and robotics energized amid the pandemic could accelerate a process that governments and policy-makers have been concerned about for years – technology-induced unemployment.

The final risk could end up being a product of how states actually respond to these various challenges amid a rapidly digitizing global society. No two societies are the same – they are defined by different political values, social practices and economic priorities. With COVID-19 forcing more of our social lives, business operations and governance online, the race to infuse the global digital world with a particular set of values and technological standards will only accelerate. Digital “code wars” may well be this century’s ideological confrontation that may partition the world in the end.

Think of the UN, the centrepiece of the liberal international order, partnering with Tencent, the digital champion of a vast surveillance state, to conduct its remote work operations. This has become a cause for concern for many countries. Reports indicate that the UN is already backtracking from its decision under pressure from human rights groups and democratic nations. Indeed, the varied digital societies that are emerging may fuel loud “geotechnological” competition.

That said, policy-makers may also see in the COVID-19 crisis an opportunity to reform political and administrative practices that were earlier hobbled by legacy institutional constraints. The most obvious, perhaps, is the accelerated adoption of what the UN calls “digital public goods”. These are the common digital “railroads”, which act as force multipliers for a range of business and governance operations.

For instance, India’s Digital ID system has helped the country navigate the pandemic by ensuring cash transfers and digital payments for a range of essential goods. The demand for similar architectures has been growing around the world. Singapore had already signed an MoU with the Indian government, even before the virus outbreak, to develop such a system. Similarly, Google has cited India’s digital payments infrastructure to call on the Federal Reserve to enable similar innovations in the US. These trends could see universal strengthening at this time.

This moment offers an opportunity for states to respond to the needs of a growing global informal workforce. The informal labour force and the “gig economy” workforce need new systems of social protection. The absence of this has placed them at great risk and at the frontline of this pandemic. These political reforms may not be ignored much longer. The idea of a universal basic income – a measure that is supported both by the Pope and The Financial Times – could also find favour and catalyse a new dimension for the future of work.

Perhaps the most significant opportunity will be for states and individuals to realize the potential of a truly global digital society. Responding to COVID-19 has compelled governments and communities to share sporadic information, some best practices and critical technologies rapidly. Consider for, instance, a rapidly growing community of entrepreneurs sharing opensource 3D printing designs for ventilators. Perhaps civil society organizations and policymakers can use the COVID-19 moment to push for new pipelines that will enable the transfer of technologies and innovations and encourage them to rethink rigid intellectual property regimes, which hindered this earlier.

Over a century ago, when individuals were isolating themselves amidst a far deadlier Spanish Flu, many (primarily Americans) turned to the telephone to stay in touch with friends, family and colleagues. Of course, it was a nascent technology at the time and services promptly broke down because of the rapid rise in demand. But rather than crippling the industry and the technology forever, the Spanish Flu only served to underscore how essential it was to modern society. Over a century later, it is clear that the telephone was instrumental in shaping our global village.

We are at a similar junction today. And decades later, historians may well scrutinize the decisions made in the year ahead when studying how the digital shaped individuals, communities, nations and the world they inherited.

This essay originally appeared in World Economic Forum.