Great Protocol Politics

For example, GoTo Group, parent company of the ride-sharing service Gojek, now powers more than 2 percent of Indonesia’s over $1 trillion GDP, creating millions of jobs and bringing nearly 2 billion annual transactions into the taxable formal economy. This gives Gojek a massive base of public support. Second, these companies won’t remain companies ... See more

We do not argue that states are irrelevant; rather, they will be more relevant if they embrace the arrow of history and work with the network and less relevant if they attempt rearguard actions against it. Such is the nature of great protocol politics.

About 75 percent of the world’s population, more than 60 percent of global GDP, and around 50 percent of all billionaires are neither Chinese nor American. Those two superpowers may well fight, but it’s not obvious if the rest of the world will want to align with either party. Indeed, with the rise of decentralized protocols, we anticipate that man... See more

1. Network proximity is now on par with physical geography: Within this cloud continent, the unit of distance between two people is not the travel time between their positions on the globe but rather the degrees of separation in their social networks.

10. Power is decentralizing away from the United States and China

2. National currencies will face digital monetary competition: We are about to enter an age of global monetary competition, where national currencies must earn their place in someone’s wallet portfolio every hour of every day, even among citizens of their own countries. The digital version of the Japanese yen will be plunged into head-to-head globa... See more

In a pair of recent essays, political scientist Ian Bremmer contends that Big Tech companies will reshape the global order, while FP columnist Stephen Walt’s friendly rejoinder is that states will remain predominant. We take a third view: Not only has technology already changed the global order, but it is also changing the nature of both companies ... See more

4. Bits are finally reshaping atoms: A government that doesn’t understand the digital may not be able to control the physical. Less capable states will attempt to maintain control by making futile, reactionary attempts to regulate emerging physical technologies back into the garage from whence they came while more capable jurisdictions will embrace... See more

the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was set up to regulate Merck and Pfizer, not 1 million biohackers; the Federal Aviation Administration was built for Boeing and Airbus, not 1 million drone hobbyists; and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission was created to go after Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, not 1 million Web3 developers.