Strategic autonomy in the global tech order: A case study of European Union's technological sovereignty vis-a-vis US and China

Abstract

The evolution of European Union's strategic autonomy has been can be traced to its historical dependence on the United States through economic and security guarantees. However, in the last two decades, there has been a shift in EU's strategic thinking in terms of anticipating a scenario of potential American withdrawal from the continent. This strategic orientation has also been extended to the domain of technology where global interdependence on the same has been used to expand geo-strategic influence. This study traces the evolution of European Union's technological sovereignty as a part of its ambition to achieve strategic autonomy vis-à-vis the strategic technological competition between the United States and China. The case studies for this dissertation include (a) The analysis of Platform governance in Transatlantic relations and (b) EU's technological discourse vis-à-vis dependencies on 5G technologies in the domain of telecommunications and cybersecurity respectively. The study will be based on the theoretical perspective of strategic triangle angle approach in the context of EU's bilateral ties with both Washington and Beijing and discourse analysis will be methodology in practice with regards to the EU being the central object of reference for the study. Keywords: Autonomy, China, EU,...