Amazon, Alibaba, Google, Baidu — all of these digital players have become global giants thanks to the platform economy and its network effects. The more users they have, the more data and information they obtain, the more tailored services they can offer and more efficiencies they gain. This in turn brings more users, and the cycle is repeated. Bigger becomes better — size does matter.
You can shut down your Facebook account, but if all your friends are on it, you’ll miss out on what’s happening in their lives. You can stop using Google, but your search results are likely…
“America is back” — only two months ago President Biden toured Europe with this slogan. The G7, NATO and EU-US summits were all meant to reassure European allies. “America is back” stood for America’s got your back. Rest assured, the wild and unpredictable days of the Trump presidency are over. The transatlantic alliance is stronger than ever.
To lend credence to this narrative, Washington DC and Brussels even found low-hanging fruits, such as temporarily suspending all tariffs linked to the Airbus and Boeing dispute.
And it worked. The Biden tour made great headlines. European partners breathed a sigh of relief…
We are potentially entering the beginnings of a new tech age. Politics is fast-tracking a positional clawback. Power is transitioning away from big tech.
This is a tale of two cities reclaiming lost leverage and organising their tech sectors for the systemic struggle between democracy and autocracy.
In Beijing, the Chinese Communist Party is cracking down on big tech. It stopped Ant Financial’s IPO in its tracks, forced Alibaba founder Jack Ma to disappear for several months, placed record fines, investigated its biggest ride-hailing app Didi straight after its IPO, and announced sweeping regulatory changes for the online education sector…
In the midst of the grand systemic conflict between democratic and authoritarian systems, Germany wants to have its cake and eat it too. It wants the American security dividend but also the autocrat’s economic dividend. Berlin is unwilling to antagonise authoritarian governments such as Russia and China, fearing it will hurt its good economic ties and export business.
Nord Stream 2 is a particular case in point. This German-Russian gas pipeline has been a long-standing intra-European and transatlantic soar point. …
A former high-ranking government official in Belarus, Pavel Latushka has witnessed President Lukashenko’s system of power from the inside.
After a sham election triggered widespread protests, he joined the ranks of the resistance to the regime. Now in political exile, Latushka speaks about the struggle to keep the Belarusian pro-democracy movement alive.
The Belarusian protests began before the contested August 2020 election but exploded in size after it became clear that Lukashenko had rigged the results in his favour. Can you explain how the democracy movement emerged and gathered momentum?
Pavel Latushko: Artem Sakov, Dzmitry Popau, Pavel Seviarynets, Aliaksandr Shabalin…
Kermit the Frog put it best when he sang: “It’s not easy being green.” Greens have often been overlooked and undervalued, to say the least.
Today, however, this is no longer the case.
In Germany, the Greens are dominating the political landscape. For the first time in history, the party has put forward a chancellor candidate. Early opinion polls by Germany’s public broadcaster gave the Greens a slight lead over Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union. Having worked for Green Party leaders and served Germany’s only Green state premier, I know the party inside out. …
Climate protection cannot be separated from the battle for hegemony taking place between the United States and the People’s Republic of China. Within the context of this high-intensity geopolitical conflict, climate protection has taken on a well-defined geopolitical dimension. The Franco-German tandem should encourage the European Union to confront this reality, in order to pursue a climate realpolitik that combines cooperation and competition.
Global warming poses a challenge to the planet as a whole. In fact, that goes without saying-greenhouse gases don’t stop at borders. Climate protection thus concerns the global community. And because international cooperation is vital to curbing…
In a world increasingly divided by rising tensions between the US and China, what role do India-Europe relations play? From their democratic traditions to shared interests in technological development, Europe and India have much in common and to gain from cooperation. I spoke with Dr. Jagannath Panda on India’s role in the hegemonic conflict between the US and China, its position on the upcoming climate change negotiations, and the role of democracy in its outlook on the world.
Roderick Kefferpütz: During the Cold War, India was part of the non-aligned movement, refusing to formally align itself with or against any…
Before the pandemic hit, Greens in Germany were on an upward trajectory, reaching historic highs in terms of membership and electoral success. Key to their emergence as the preeminent progressive force in the country was the party’s capacity to set out a forward-looking vision that resonated with society. But as Germany enters a Superwahljahr — with regional elections throughout the year and federal elections in September — where do the Greens currently stand? As Merkel readies to leave office and the pandemic continues on, are the Greens still carrying the political momentum?
It was the classic David vs. Goliath story. A bunch of renegade small time retail traders that got together and took on Wall Street’s big boys, giving the short-sellers a bloody nose. As this story broke, more and more traders got in on the action and joined the bandwagon.
A couple of posts on reddit and you got yourself a herd stampeding on the stock market. Reddit’s Wallstreetbets led to wild gyrations, significantly pushing the share value of stocks such as GameStop upwards. It demonstrated the power of individuals coming together in a group. …
