BOOK REVIEW: Reigning the Future: AI, 5G, Huawei and the Next 30 Years of the US-China Rivalry
by Dennis Wang
Reviewed by Terence Check
Terence Check is an attorney in the federal government, and works on data privacy, biometrics, counterterrorism, criminal law, cybersecurity, information-sharing and technology-related matters. All opinions and statements are his own.
From the outset of his new book Reigning the Future: AI, 5G, Huawei and the Next 30 Years of the US-China Rivalry, former Huawei and CCTV employee Dennis Wang intends to give the reader “new information to navigate the changing world.” For readers with anything more than a passing interest in this subject area, Reigning the Future provides little in the way of “new information.” For the uninitiated, Wang’s clear writing does a good job of summarizing the major trends and forces in this new theatre of technological competition. Unfortunately, Reigning the Future contains so much “spin” that the general reader would struggle to separate fact from fiction.
Structurally, Reigning the Future is a quick read, containing thirteen chapters that survey subjects like recent Chinese history, the basics of 5G, and Huawei’s international expansion. Such breadth means that the book barely skims the surface and would have benefited considerably from a more limited scope. I wish Wang would have spent more time explaining in depth why Huawei is such a successful company, particularly because his anecdotes from his time at the firm were among the most interesting passages of the book.
Despite Wang’s intent to bring a “fresh perspective” to US-China relations based on his multinational upbringing, the information flow in Reigning the Future is clearly unidirectional: Wang intends to communicate China’s capabilities to American audiences, and not the other way around. This “new information” that Wang promises in the introduction is not propaganda per se, but neither is it a neutral appraisal of the two countries’ strengths and weaknesses.
To illustrate, here is an actual quote from Chapter Two:
“The chorus booms as the parade marches through Tiananmen Square, the same place where, seventy years ago, Mao Zedong declared the founding of the People’s Republic after having driven out the Japanese. The sun is blinding in the blue sky, yet the soldiers remain unblinking. They salute in perfect unison, each with one white-gloved hand raised to their helmet and the other hand firmly gripping their weapon.”
Wang extends such descriptions to the mundane, like the Shenzhen airport terminals which are “vast and stunningly modern” or Huawei offices in Paris that “[put] even the museums to shame.” He proclaims a “new age where individuals are allowed to dream again after Mao’s dark era, with a return of traditional Chinese values.” On the other side of the ocean, Reigning the Future describes the West, once “lusting for [China’s] resources” now acquiescing to China despite using a “host of unscrupulous means” to tear down companies like Huawei.
Unsurprisingly, some of the most effusive praise in Reigning the Future is reserved for Huawei and its workforce:
“The young engineers and researchers strip down to their vests to continue working, occasionally splashing cool water onto their faces to remain energized. Each night, they share bowls of instant noodles and retire to their futons underneath their desks in the office, only to wake up again the next day to continue working.”
I surmise that such writing might be part of an effort to (re)create a national mythology, building up a class of heroes to play starring roles in a country’s collective memory. Perhaps China wants Huawei’s engineers to be remembered like cowboys in the Wild West or GIs liberating Europe.
Reigning the Future contains some inherent contradictions. In Chapter 12, Wang describes Huawei as “a bastion of Chinese national pride” while maintaining that Huawei is not a “Chinese” company, all in the space of a few pages. Similarly, Wang laments the “demonization” of Chinese students, researchers, and businesses while admitting that “war consists of many new dimensions” because “[s]tates now have many more resources at their disposal, with greater control in economics, technology, and media.”
But Reigning the Future made two interesting points that I had not heretofore considered. First, the author clearly views this new phase of technology-based competition as the latest phase of China’s quest to avenge its “Century of Humiliation” during a time of “waning” US power and leadership in the world. Second, Wang predicts that China will be able to field vastly superior technologies--particularly in AI--due to the quality and quantity of personal data available to researchers and engineers: in this way, Reigning the Future implies that the West’s penchant for individual privacy and civil liberties will pose a strategic disadvantage in a world where digital transformation will shape great power competition.
As an attorney who works on data privacy issues, I found that Reigning the Future describes a bleak possible future where the international order will devolve into a Hobbesian free-for-all where authoritarian regimes can re-engineer societies radically through a few tweaks to a social credit scoring algorithm or omnipresent visual surveillance.
With these considerations in mind, Reigning the Future can provide a useful introduction to this next phase of the relationship between the US and China. If nothing else, the book provides a window into an alternate vision for our increasingly digitized world. The next thirty years will likely determine if that vision becomes reality.
This book earns a mild two out of four possible trench coats.
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