At the forefront of global thought leadership on technology and geopolitics in the global economy, Olaf J. Groth, PhD, is a renowned professor, strategist, and founder whose work guides leaders through the complexities of an era defined by rapid transformation. With over 25 years of international experience spanning the tech, communications, aerospace, energy, and education sectors, Olaf has advised governments and Fortune 500 companies alike. His work is deeply rooted in shaping intelligent, forward-thinking strategies for navigating the “cognitive economy”—a future where artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and cyberinfrastructure redefine how we live, work, and govern.
Recently, World Future Awards had the honor of reviewing Olaf’s co-authored book, The Great Remobilization: Strategies and Designs for a Smarter Global Future, alongside Mark Esposito and Terence Tse. The book provides a strategic roadmap for leaders grappling with geopolitical instability, climate change, and technological disruption. Through frameworks like FLP-IT and interviews with global decision-makers, Olaf and his co-authors argue for nothing less than the redesign of our institutions to meet the demands of a new global order.
Now, in this exclusive two-part interview, Olaf delves into two of the most urgent topics of our time: the geopolitics of innovation and the rise of techno-globalism.
Questions:
PART I: Geopolitics of Innovation – Who Will Lead the Tech Future?
World Future Awards: What do you see as the major technology-driven forces shaping the global economy of tomorrow?
Olaf J. Groth: These are what we describe as the 6Cs – (1) Cognitive Technologies, like AI, data science, quantum and brain-computer interfaces will increasingly provide the cybernetic command and control functions across psychological, social, economic, biological ecological, and infrastructural domains in societies; (2) CRISPR and pandemics because they shape our social, biological and ecological relationships; (3) Crypto as an attempted governance revolution; (4) Cybersecurity where we’re seeing a double evolution upstream in supply chains and through tracking outside the firewall; (5) Climate change as the existential threat of our time for all; and (6) China-US rebalancing, because it impacts every facet of the first five forces above.
World Future Awards: In your view, what are the main forces currently shaping the global race for leadership in AI, quantum computing, and digital infrastructure?
OJG: The first is data, and it is usually under-estimated. We tend to talk about the shiny new thing – AI and how models might demonstrate human-like general intelligence – but we forget that data is the fuel for everything. It may be a dry topic for non-experts, but it’s the lifeblood for the cognitive economy. For example, data constructs like digital twins and their convergence with agents will allow us to create the future of the Agentic Twin Economy, which will power the entire global economy one day. Then there’s technical talent, increasingly scarce and expensive, which is why we’re seeing bidding wars between OpenAI and Meta, for instance. Energy is another critical one. We can’t build AI-powered data centers without lots of it, and it needs to be clean and cheap because we should create healthier, less extractive, and more regenerative societies with AI, quantum, etc. Then there’s the geological mercantilism for critical minerals. We will see many more deals in that area, but increasingly ones that bring higher-end processing capabilities to countries that sell rare earths. All of it will be dominated by geopolitics for the foreseeable future, as we slowly find our way to new plurilateral arrangements that will govern all of these inputs into the future of AI and quantum, or even infrastructure like sub-sea cables, satellites, etc. Digital sovereignty is here to stay. But that doesn’t mean digitally sovereign hubs can’t interconnect with special monitoring and safeguarding protocols.
WFA: The U.S., China, and the EU are each staking claims in the tech frontier. How do you assess their comparative advantages and vulnerabilities?
OJG: Between the US and China, advantages are converging with some nuances. Both are leveraging massive amounts of data; in China, it’s national consumer data, whereas in the US, it’s data from its global consumer and enterprise hyperscaler platforms. China has also been converging on the US with respect to the quality of its universities, which matters for science-driven deeptech. Against this picture, it is concerning that the current US administration is crippling its science establishment at exactly the wrong moment. The US is still ahead on pure number of professors and PhD students as well as startup creation in – say – AI, but China is ahead in publications and patents now. The US shines on the professionalism, vibrancy, and efficacy of its venture capital system, but China’s advantage is speed and velocity of venture standup and scaleout. Europe, meanwhile, is looking good in areas of innovation that are highly regulated. For instance, its user base in fintech and crypto services far exceeds that of both the US and China, and its life sciences and biochemicals corporations are top-notch. But it suffers from overregulation in other digital services, doesn’t have a coherent data market or sufficient capital, and hence makes it hard for entrepreneurs to scale across 27 member states. Like the US, Europe has a very strong science establishment, and we’ll hopefully see that bear fruit in quantum computing as well as new materials, because of the greater strength of its manufacturing sector. Here it will likely meet China head-on, because it too is very strong there, and materials are one of the key areas in its five-year strategic plans. That central coordination, paired with pragmatic but also spotty and somewhat discretionary enforcement of regulations, contributes to China’s agility and speed, which is hard to match for democracies like the US and Europe. If Europe could apply just half of all the recommendations of the Draghi report, it could turn that focus on individual dignity into a stronger advantage in personally sensitive areas like finance and health.
WFA: Government institutions often have trouble keeping up with the ever-accelerating tech developments, and that may affect how well they deliver benefits to their constituents. What can we do about that?
OJG: Deng Xiao Ping said about government (I paraphrase), “It doesn’t matter whether the cat is black or white, so long as it hunts mice.” The two sets of institutions – tech and gov (whatever form) — will increasingly be “tied by their hips,” as it were. Governments that can harness the tech-entrepreneurship vigor in their economies most effectively will “hunt mice” and excel. Those who stifle will increasingly become irrelevant. But how do you do that without democracy or effective stakeholder governance being overtaken by tech? – You innovate in government and governance, so enable it to keep pace with tech. For the US, that means we need to infuse more AI, data science, and cutting-edge computing into the administration on all levels. That is the one thing about DOGE that is a helpful provocation. I’m not justifying its style or saying scrap humans by any means. And yes, governments, especially democratic ones, should sometimes slow things down to solicit all stakeholders’ inputs. But there’s no real excuse for the government resisting a thorough self-overhaul to get better at that when it relies on everybody else in society to have a growth-mindset and do exactly that. Only a government that leads by example can credibly require others to make sacrifices and change. So, innovate yourself to stay relevant.
WFA: How do you see emerging economies participating in—or being sidelined from—the future tech power structure?
OJG: Emerging economies have a potentially valuable advantage. Their institutions are not yet mature and are hence more fungible. The only good part about this is that there are fewer legacy structures and processes to dismantle as change becomes necessary. But in order to do that well, they also need competencies. Some do. Take the examples of Singapore, the UAE, Malaysia, Taiwan, Vietnam, or Kazakhstan. You can get a lot done if you upgrade traditional production factors like labor or infrastructure continuously through tech that flows from international partnerships and openness to trade *while* at the same time educating your people. But today, I’d add the challenge of attracting data centers and large-scale AI compute to the picture. Malaysia, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia have done a good job in this regard. Kazakhstan is on its way. That requires leveraging existing positions like Malaysia’s place in the global semiconductor industry and its universities, or Kazakhstan’s natural resources, the Middle Corridor logistics artery, and its place in the space economy value chain into new high-tech ones.
WFA: What role do private sector innovators (such as Big Tech firms) play in shaping geopolitical outcomes today? Are they becoming more powerful than states?
OJG: They have always been powerful and will become much so, yes. Just consider China’s construction, engineering, and tech companies building infrastructure and laying transmission cables in the Belt and Road. Or the big energy, aerospace, and tech firms in the US, which – alongside its startup ecosystem – are two key pillars for competition with China globally. And they can significantly influence national economic or political outcomes, public sentiments, etc. But I don’t think they outright threaten the standing of the nation state, which is more alive and well today than it was 10 years ago. You are out of a job much quicker than you are out of a citizenship. Governments offer social nets and militaries and have more ways to shape and rally identities than corporations do, for better or for worse. Of course, that depends on which corporation and which government you’re talking about. Is it true that the largest energy, minerals, or tech companies in the world have more power to pull strings for flows of assets between countries than – say – Ecuador does? – Of course, the answer is yes. Which is why every government needs to ask itself, “What are the assets we have that exert leverage on the big players we need to cooperate with, and how do I wield those to exercise as much formative power as possible?” Take the case of Botswana and its negotiations with DeBeers ten or so years ago, for instance. Far from perfect outcomes, but a good start. Countries can do the same things with big data center providers today as they ask them to build or bring energy sources, train workers, or ensure that local business also gets supplied with computing power. What assets do you have as a country to ensure that both you and the provider get what they want and need?
WFA: Given recent export controls and tech sanctions, is decoupling between global tech powers inevitable—or is interdependence still too strong to unravel?
OJG: Full decoupling will not and must not happen. Partial decoupling is more likely. Some degree of redundancy and resilience in global tech supply chains is just smart. Overreliance on any one country or technology provider is unwise. As tech supply chains get diversified, they will become more complex and elongated as a result. That breeds inefficiencies that need to be recovered elsewhere in the global system of any given multinational. I think we’ll see new types of capabilities arise from that. Companies will become more geo-tech savvy with new strategies and designs. We will see the birth of new “smart logistics” providers and global trading platforms as well. They will likely build more intelligent, AI-infused regional and cross-regional operating systems for agile trade management. And we’ll see more bilateral and plurilateral accords that will try to address inefficiencies. Countries and countries alike will adopt more situational awareness that will not only help with trade wars, but also climate change and terrorism, just to name two other disruptive forces for trade routes.
WFA: How important is control over semiconductors and cloud infrastructure in determining geopolitical influence in this decade?
OJG: Very. But that doesn’t mean you should try to build it yourself. Rather, you’ll need alliances with the biggest chip producers and the government agencies overseeing them, and then build localized clouds with their help and potentially even national compute reserves and stockpiles. Remember also that not every application that generates significant value requires the highest-end NVIDIA chipsets.
WFA: From your experience, how can smaller nations or alliances leverage niche expertise to remain relevant in the global tech hierarchy?
OJG: Take some examples: Israel is fantastic at cyber solutions, whether offensive or defensive. Kazakhstan has just developed the first 150 billion token transformer model in Kazakh, Russian, and English, potentially establishing itself as a regional compute hub for Central Asia and also bringing its space technology assets to the emerging global space economy. And by the way, Putin had played it right; instead of this Godforesaken war, he could have built a world-class global super-ecosystem for space tech, given the Soviet legacy. If Ukraine gets peace, I have no doubt it will be a valuable global hub for frugal, smart defense tech. All of the countries of Central Asia could establish themselves as best-in-class for agritech, given that they supply so much. Vietnam has pockets of AI programmers that are well known globally, as does Canada – big country, small population, like Kazakhstan.
WFA: What are the risks of a fragmented digital world (i.e., “splinternets”) to innovation, security, and global governance?
OJG: That’s already happening. We need global AI and data accords, possibly a cyber accord tied to them. Nations need to start discussing what data can migrate beyond borders and what can’t, or under what types of safeguards, monitoring, and forensics protocols. This will become increasingly pressing because data is no longer a matter of consumer preferences and enterprise competitive intel. Now we’re talking people’s DNA, their phenoms, and even holistic simulations of their bodies, work, financial and social relationships through digital twins that allow predictions of where they’re headed next in life.
PART II: The Rise of Techno-Globalism – Can Governance Catch Up?
To be continued…
Visit Olaf’s LinkedIn profile for more information on his work.
