IT Essentials: Autocracies...aren’t all bad?

Tech moves fast - democracy doesn’t

Tech success could mean taking lessons from autocrats.

While filming for our new AI in Action hub last week (stay tuned to hear a range of IT leaders speaking about the technology very soon), one conversation turned to the short-termism rife in Western politics.

I promise this is relevant to tech. Stay with me.

Democracies are bad at long-term planning and getting worse, as social divisions encourage politicians to be more bombastic. No sooner has one side won an election than they start to tear down the loser’s work.

The most obvious example is Donald Trump’s attacks on the CHIPS Act, a Biden-era programme to rebuild domestic semiconductor production. It’s been an unmitigated success, with support from both sides of the aisle. Most of the funding even goes to traditionally Republican states. Still, the President calls it “horrible.”

On this side of the Atlantic, the motivation is simply not there to commit large amounts of money to projects that will take years to complete (and can be claimed as a win for whichever side happens to be in power when it’s finished).

The alternative is an autocracy like China’s. Is it free and fair? Not at all. Does it make some very savvy long-term tech investments? You bet.

With a single party permanently in control, China is able to make serious long-term plans beyond anything most democracies could hope to achieve.

On AI, for example, China had a plan in place by 2017 – two years before the USA and four years before the UK. It started planning for electric vehicles and the growth of renewables 10 years ago, and now dominates supply of important components. The country even managed to revive ‘the most eroded place on Earth’ in about 15 years.

Of course, authoritarian regimes have their drawbacks. They can push through ambitious policies, but also risk inflexibility and unintended consequences (remember the one child policy?). Democracies allow for correction and adaptation, as well as the airing of dissenting views.

But if democratic nations want to continue leading the world, they need to start planning beyond the next vote.

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