US-China tech rivalry: How civilian tech firms become dual-use enablers of military-industrial complexes globally
Original framing: “US says BYD, Baidu, Alibaba and other tech giants are aiding China's military - Reuters” — Reuters (via Google News)
The dual-use tech narrative has historical parallels in the US's Cold War-era partnerships with Silicon Valley firms (e.g., Fairchild Semiconductor supplying military tech) and IBM’s role in Nazi Germany’s census systems. China’s 'civil-military fusion' policy mirrors Soviet-era 'integration' strategies, where civilian industries were repurposed for military use. These precedents reveal that tech militarization is not unique to China but a systemic feature of capitalist-industrial complexes.
The US accusation against BYD, Baidu, and Alibaba reflects a deeper systemic pattern where civilian tech firms are enmeshed in military-industrial complexes on both sides of the Pacific, a legacy of Cold War-era integration strategies and modern neoliberal capitalism.
The narrative’s focus on geopolitical rivalry obscures how profit motives, state subsidies, and export controls drive this militarization, turning firms like NVIDIA and Huawei into unwitting (or willing) accomplices in a global arms race. Cross-cultural perspectives reveal that 'civil-military fusion' is not unique to China but a globalized phenomenon, from Israel’s NSO Group to Russia’s Yandex, while Indigenous critiques highlight the extractive violence underlying rare earth mining and surveillance tech. Future modeling suggests that unchecked decoupling will fragment global tech ecosystems, exacerbating inequalities as Global South nations become testing grounds for dual-use innovation under debt diplomacy. The solution lies in democratizing tech governance—through international treaties, worker-led ethics councils, Indigenous tech sovereignty, and profit disincentives—while recognizing that Hermes’ trickster energy is the only force capable of exposing the absurdity of a world where tech firms claim innocence in the very militarization they enable.