Chas W. Freeman's article "China's Real Three Challenges to the United States" predicts:
By the end of next year, the number of broadband users in China will be double that of the United States. At the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, Americans will have a chance to see the extent to which Chinese and other Asians have become world information technology leaders.
Hotel dispatchers, traffic lights, electronic billboards, GPS navigation devices, police and taxis will be networked to speed visitors to and from the Olympic sites.
The Internet will also control all the facilities - everything from security cameras to the lighting and thermostats — and events will be broadcast live over it and so forth. That’s nice, you might say. You already knew that it was written that “the geek shall inherit the Earth.” So what if the geek lives in China?
But the implications of the system China is designing and installing go much beyond just solving traffic problems and adjusting building temperatures.
It will, for example, affect freedom of speech on the Internet — which is going to be much harder — and capabilities for information warfare, which is going to be much easier, at least for the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.
It is fair to say, however, that these specifics are dwarfed in importance by the power shift implicit in our potential loss of the huge competitive advantages that our leadership of the information revolution has brought us.
It is now almost certain that the next phase of this information revolution will be led by Chinese, Japanese and Koreans. This means that they, not Americans, will own and control the intellectual property and “killer apps” that power it and its evolving technology. We will be paying royalties as we try to catch up with them.
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