Intellectual Property And Future Technologies
Pervasiveness And Saliency Of Technology
This article is part of the “New G2 Global Order” series, which examines how energy, finance, technology, and governance are restructuring global power.
Key Thesis
In the contemporary global economy, technological power flows less from invention than from control over systems — data, platforms, energy, compute, and intellectual property regimes. States and regions that fail to align innovation with infrastructure and governance risk structural dependency, regardless of their creative capacity.
Preface - Technology as a System of Power
Human history has always been shaped by technological change, but the current moment is structurally distinct. Multiple technological revolutions — digital, biological, computational, and artificial intelligence — are unfolding simultaneously, compressing timeframes and overwhelming institutional adaptation. Technology is no longer a sector of the economy; it is the substrate through which economic value, political power, and social organisation are now produced and contested.
Unlike earlier industrial revolutions, today’s technologies are deeply interdependent. Software, data, energy systems, networks, and intellectual property form tightly coupled ecosystems in which scale, interoperability, and control matter more than individual innovation alone. These systems can expand rapidly, but they are also fragile, capable of sudden collapse when trust, energy supply, or institutional legitimacy erodes. Power increasingly resides not in invention itself, but in the capacity to stabilise, govern, and extract value from these complex technological environments.
Yet political and legal frameworks remain rooted in an earlier era. Intellectual property regimes, competition policy, and institutional governance were designed for tangible goods and slower innovation cycles. They struggle to accommodate a world where value is derived from data, algorithms, user behaviour, and platform coordination. This mismatch has contributed to rising concentration, geopolitical competition, and growing tension between openness and control.
For Europe in particular, the challenge is acute. Innovation thrives in universities and small and medium-sized enterprises, yet often fails to scale into globally competitive systems. Fragmented IP regimes, high enforcement costs, and limited access to capital push many European innovations outward, where protection and monetisation are more viable. By contrast, the United States and China have aligned intellectual property, industrial policy, energy, and compute at scale, reinforcing technological sovereignty.
This article examines how technology, intellectual property, and future innovation are no longer neutral drivers of progress, but central arenas of power. It argues that the decisive question is not whether innovation occurs, but who controls the systems through which it is deployed, protected, and scaled — and on what terms.
Human history has always been shaped by technological change. Each major wave of innovation has reconfigured production, altered social relations, and redefined power. What distinguishes the present moment is not simply the speed of innovation, but its simultaneity. Multiple technological revolutions — digital, biological, computational, and artificial intelligence — are unfolding at once, compressing timeframes and overwhelming the capacity of institutions to adapt. Technology is no longer a sector within the economy; it is the infrastructure through which economic value, political authority, and strategic power are now exercised.
Unlike earlier industrial transformations, contemporary technologies are deeply interdependent. Software, data, energy systems, networks, and intellectual property form tightly coupled ecosystems in which scale, interoperability, and control matter more than individual invention. These systems enable rapid expansion and coordination, but they are also fragile. Digital economies can collapse abruptly when energy supply tightens, trust erodes, or governance fails, exposing the vulnerability of societies increasingly reliant on intangible assets.
This structural transformation has outpaced ideological and institutional change. Twentieth-century political frameworks continue to underpin global governance, even as societies confront far more complex, interconnected, and volatile systems. Rising political polarisation, authoritarian tendencies, and economic insecurity reflect not only political choices, but institutional lag. In this environment, competition increasingly takes the form of control over technological systems rather than rivalry over discrete products.
Technology as Power, Not Innovation Alone
The dominant narrative of technological progress continues to focus on innovation — new ideas, startups, and breakthroughs. Yet in practice, power now flows less from invention itself than from the ability to stabilise, scale, and govern complex technological ecosystems. Control over standards, platforms, data flows, and interoperability increasingly determines who can participate, compete, or extract value.
This shift has profound implications for intellectual property. Traditional IP frameworks — patents, trademarks, and copyrights — were designed for tangible goods, slower innovation cycles, and clearly bounded ownership. They struggle to govern a digital economy where value is derived from data aggregation, algorithmic optimisation, user behaviour, and network effects. In such systems, ownership of ideas is often secondary to control over infrastructure and access.
As a result, intellectual property increasingly functions less as an incentive for innovation and more as a mechanism of exclusion. Enforcement costs, litigation risk, and contractual complexity disproportionately burden smaller actors, while large platforms internalise these costs as part of their operating model. Innovation continues, but its rewards are increasingly concentrated.
Europe’s Structural Technology Gap
Europe illustrates this asymmetry clearly. The continent remains a major source of scientific research, engineering talent, and early-stage innovation. Universities and small and medium-sized enterprises generate a steady stream of new ideas. Yet relatively few of these innovations scale into globally dominant systems.
Fragmented patent regimes, high legal costs, limited access to late-stage capital, and rapid technological obsolescence discourage smaller firms from protecting and commercialising intellectual property. Many European innovations are therefore monetised elsewhere, where scale, capital, and enforcement are more readily available. This dynamic reinforces Europe’s role as a generator of ideas rather than a controller of systems.
By contrast, the United States and China have aligned intellectual property regimes, capital markets, energy availability, compute capacity, and industrial policy. In both cases, IP functions as part of a broader strategic architecture linking innovation to production, infrastructure, and power.
Platforms, Interoperability, and Chokepoints
In the digital economy, platforms have increasingly replaced markets as the primary coordinating mechanism. Rather than competing on products alone, firms compete by controlling ecosystems — app stores, cloud services, operating systems, and data infrastructures. Entry depends less on innovation than on permission.
As technology critic Cory Doctorow has argued, digital systems tend toward concentration through the progressive restriction of interoperability. Platforms often begin open to attract users and developers, then close over time, extracting rents, degrading service quality, and locking participants into dependent relationships — a process Doctorow describes as “enshittification.” This dynamic is not accidental; it is structurally incentivised by scale, data accumulation, and contractual power.
Legal doctrines such as “fair use” can promote innovation in principle, but when combined with massive datasets, proprietary infrastructure, and asymmetrical bargaining power, they can also reinforce dominance. Control over interfaces, standards, and access points becomes more decisive than formal ownership of intellectual property.
Rethinking Intellectual Property Beyond Ideology
Debates over intellectual property are often framed as ideological choices between capitalism and state control. This framing obscures the structural reality. Under purely market-driven systems, short-term incentives can discourage long-horizon research and public goods. Under highly centralised systems, strategic priorities may crowd out experimentation and diversity.
What is emerging instead are hybrid models. Open-source software, cooperative licensing, shared standards, and decentralised verification mechanisms represent attempts to balance collective benefit with individual rights. Technologies such as distributed ledgers offer tools for attribution, traceability, and authentication, but governance — not technology alone — determines whether these tools decentralise power or reinforce existing hierarchies.
Open technologies are not anti-commercial. They are foundational to artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, and advanced manufacturing. By enabling interoperability and reducing dependency on proprietary systems, they lower barriers to entry for SMEs and developing economies. European initiatives such as GAIA-X and IPCEI reflect efforts to reclaim digital sovereignty without replicating platform monopolies.
Energy, Compute, and the Limits of Digital Abstraction
The digital economy is often portrayed as weightless. In reality, it is increasingly constrained by material factors: electricity supply, grid capacity, cooling, and access to critical materials. Artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and data-intensive platforms depend on massive compute resources and energy inputs. This reality links technological power directly to energy systems.
As explored in Tech War as Energy War, competition over AI and digital supremacy is fundamentally a struggle over electricity, compute capacity, grids, and industrial infrastructure. Software advantage without energy resilience is ephemeral.
This brings the question of compute locality to the forefront. Early computing architectures — exemplified by modular, interoperable systems such as Unix — prioritised locality, redundancy, and composability. Contemporary digital systems, by contrast, concentrate computation in hyperscale data centres tied to global platforms. While efficient, this model introduces strategic fragility: dependence on distant energy supplies, cross-border data flows, and foreign-controlled infrastructure.
For Europe, compute locality is becoming a strategic issue. Energy constraints, regulatory fragmentation, security considerations, and industrial policy all point toward the need for more distributed, regionally anchored computing models. Localised compute does not imply isolation; it implies resilience. It enables innovation closer to production, reduces systemic risk, and aligns technological development with energy and industrial realities.
As with so-called rare earth “scarcity,” the decisive constraint in advanced technologies lies not in access to raw inputs, but in the industrial ecosystems required to process, integrate, and deploy them — a theme explored in the accompanying analysis of global value chains.
Technology, Finance, and Governance
The concentration of technological ecosystems also intersects with monetary and governance questions. Platforms increasingly function as quasi-sovereign infrastructures, shaping markets, extracting rents, and enforcing rules beyond effective national oversight. As examined in Digital Economy, Platforms and Currencies, digital payment systems and platform-based currencies extend this power into monetary space, further blurring the boundary between private infrastructure and public authority.
Where technological systems, financial channels, and legal regimes align, power becomes self-reinforcing. Where they diverge, fragility emerges.
Conclusion: Systems, Not Sectors
Technology cannot be contained within policy silos. It reshapes economies, institutions, and societies regardless of intent. The decisive question is no longer whether innovation will occur, but who controls the systems through which it is deployed, scaled, and governed.
Regions that fail to align intellectual property, energy systems, compute capacity, and governance risk becoming sources of ideas rather than centres of power. Balancing openness with protection, innovation with equity, and efficiency with resilience will determine whether the next technological era deepens existing divides or supports a more stable and inclusive global order.
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