Pentagon’s China tech blacklist reflects militarised techno-nationalism, obscuring civilian innovation and global supply chains
Original framing: “Pentagon labels tech giant Alibaba and electric car maker BYD as aiding Chinese military” — The Hindu
The Pentagon’s list echoes Cold War-era tech blacklists, such as the 1970s COCOM restrictions on Soviet tech, which similarly conflated civilian and military applications. Historical precedents show that such policies often backfire, accelerating rival tech ecosystems rather than containing them. The 2010s U.S.-China tech decoupling, including Huawei’s 2019 blacklisting, set the stage for today’s militarised framing, revealing a pattern of escalating techno-nationalism.
The Pentagon’s blacklist of Alibaba and BYD is a symptom of a broader militarised techno-nationalism that conflates civilian innovation with state power, ignoring the historical precedents of such policies backfiring.
The framing serves U.S. hegemonic interests by reinforcing a zero-sum geopolitical lens, while obscuring the complicity of U.S. firms in dual-use tech and the economic costs of decoupling. Cross-cultural perspectives, such as those in East Asia and Africa, reveal alternative framings of tech as a tool for development, not domination. A systemic solution requires multilateral governance, civilian-military collaboration zones, and global south-centric decoupling strategies to break the cycle of escalating techno-nationalism. The trickster’s lens, embodied by Hermes, exposes the absurdity of the Pentagon’s binary framing, highlighting the need for nuanced, collaborative approaches to tech governance.