There is a growing resentment across the world that placing all our eggs in the American software development basket just did not work. People talk about the kind of like Japanification of industrial economies in the post-recession period as being a lost decade. I think what they had hoped for in the 90s was a global market for American goods and a global suppliers of low-wage labor to put those goods together. What actually happened is that especially Chinese companies end up competing with a kind of leaner and meaner capitalism that Americans did.
Paris Marx is joined by Shoshana Wodinsky to discuss the unconvincing arguments being made for a TikTok ban in the United States, then by Daniel Greene to explore how the turn against Chinese technology signals a shift in US policy on the internet and technology.
Shoshana Wodinsky is a freelance reporter, previously at Marketwatch and Gizmodo. She writes the Tubes newsletter. Daniel Greene is an assistant professor at the University of Maryland’s College of Information Studies and the author of The Promise of Access: Technology, Inequality, and the Political Economy of Hope. Follow Shoshana on Twitter at @swodinsky and Daniel at @Greene_DM.
Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.
The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.
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