My Take | Silicon Valley discovers ‘Thucydides trap’ for China and US
- Alarm bells ought to ring loudly when Eric Schmidt, former head of Google, and Tesla boss Elon Musk suddenly start talking about the technology contest leading to war
The Peloponnesian War, Thucydides.
“And the quarrel, though least in speech, I conceive to be the growth of the Athenian power, which putting the Lacedaemonians into fear necessitated the war.” (Thomas Hobbes’ translation).
“The real cause I consider to be the one which was formally most kept out of sight. The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Lacedaemon, made war inevitable.” (Richard Crawley’s translation).
This famous passage is the main source for what famed Harvard political scientist Graham Allison calls the “Thucydides trap” into which he argues China and the United States are inadvertently drifting. “When one great power threatens to displace another, war is almost always the result,” Allison wrote.
What fascinates me is that Silicon Valley seems to have suddenly discovered the Thucydides trap. Writing in The New York Times last week, Eric Schmidt, former head of Google and now a senior tech adviser to the Pentagon, warns America may be falling behind China.
“Now we are in a technology competition with China that has profound ramifications for our economy and defence,” he wrote. “Important trends are not in our favour … The government needs to get back in the game in a serious way.”