Technology and The New Politics of Sovereignty: Perspectives from the Conservative Party Fringe
David Landsman shares his reflections after moderating a panel discussion at a fringe event at Conservative Party Conference on Digital Sovereignty.
In addition to a discussion on AUKUS, I also had the opportunity at this year’s Conservative Party Conference to moderate a panel on how the “new politics of sovereignty” play into our development of advanced technologies. The panel was organised jointly by the Conservative Party and the two main centre-right political foundations in Germany, the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (CDU) and the Hanns-Seidel Stiftung (CSU). Speakers were all current of former German and British parliamentarians: Dr. Wiebke Winter, lead CDU candidate for Bremen, and chair of the CDU Parliamentary Group in the Bremen City Parliament; Sir Greg Hands, former Energy and Trade Minister; Tobias Winkler, CDU member of the Bundestag for Fürth, and Ian Liddell-Grainger, former COnservative MP for Bridgewater and West Somerset.
In this blog, I try to give a flavour of the discussions among the panellists and in the Q&A session which followed.
There was a general agreement that sovereignty couldn’t be absolute and was not the same as autarky. The “ingredients” of the new technologies included compute, data centres and energy, but went beyond them to raw materials and rare earths. We needed to avoid sovereignty becoming a cover to accelerate protectionism which would harm our development of innovative technology and our economies more broadly.
Despite the current challenges in the geopolitical relationship between the US and Europe (writ large), the sentiment remained Atlanticist and we should aim to sustain the (actually) healthy collaboration with the US without surrendering our autonomy where it matters. However much Europe might bemoan US and Chinese dominance in AI, Europe was not a market leader in the new technologies and Europeans were not in general using European AI models. Europe had in general lagged in technological innovation and there was little point in lamenting the unachievable. Views predictably differed on regulation with British speakers more inclined to see the challenges to innovation, favouring a principles-based approach, and German participants welcoming the protection regulation provides to European values in AI.
China featured strongly in the discussion. While Europe had succeeded in substituting for Russian gas, it had not been able to replace the need for Chinese critical minerals. There were plenty of minerals outside China, but processing capacity remained an obstacle to reducing dependency. Europe needed to avoid the risk of being blackmailed.
Intriguingly, it was suggested that China might provide opportunity as well as threat. China had been (too) successful in using joint ventures to extract IP which it was then able to deploy more cheaply to compete with Europe. Now that China had advanced itself substantially in many areas, perhaps it was time for European companies to develop JVs with Chinese firms to enable technology transfer in the opposite direction?
Sovereignty wasn’t all about managing threats from other countries: there was also the question of what we needed to do to sustain the sector at home, to match the innovative skills of our universities with the ability to commercialise at pace and avoid our best brains leaving for the US. Part of the answer had to be more effective collaboration, both within the EU and with the UK.
As always in discussions of this kind, the Q&A took us in unexpected but interesting directions. The conversation about protectionism led to the suggestion that the EU might join CPTPP. Concern about the expectation that children would use AI in schools drew the response that we shouldn’t avoid the new technologies in education, but needed thought-through principles to guide their use. And a European debate on AI shouldn’t ignore the emerging dynamism of a young Africa.
Plenty of food for thought and ideas to sustain an ongoing discussion, including between the UK and Germany, not least with the links to resilience as a recurring theme for BFPG. We will be exploring the opportunities to continue the conversation. My thanks to all our Birmingham panel and participants.