The paper examines the so-called U.S.-China “tech war” of 2017–2020 in the sphere of cutting-edge digital technologies, its origins, factors, and other aspects, with a focus on the American strategy to limit China’s opportunities for technological development. The purpose of this study is to conceptualise the American tech war strategy and to assess the character and prospects of technology conflicts. The article represents the study with the use of comparative, historical approaches, the elements of systematic economic analysis, and some elements of neorealist and constructivist approaches. Based on the examination of key drivers of the tech war (with regard to the U.S. position), as well as the comparative historical analysis of the observed processes and the instruments implemented to fight for technological leadership, it concludes that technology conflictis a new phenomenon, determined, among other things, by the specifics of digital technologies and economic changes of recent decades, which at the same time preserves natural continuity in relation to the past geopolitical and economic conflicts and existing strategies and tools. Taking into account the peculiarities of the new conflict and digital technologies it deduces that it is possible to describe the U.S. policy in the framework of an adjusted concept of neo-techno nationalism (strengthening national technological potential and sovereignty through global economic instruments). It is noted that in the context of the digital revolution and in the analysis of the clash of superpowers this concept implies that goals are achieved through providing preferential access to such specific development resources as global human capital and big primary data, the formation of systems of standards, etc. In the conclusion, it is highlighted that the U.S. strategy under Trump, which led to a tougher American course in the tech war with China, was determined by objective circumstances as well as by personal traits of the president. In particular, such circumstances include the need to break old ineffective practices to design new solutions and approaches. The author draws a conclusion that in the future the United States will focus on building techno-economic regimes as a more systemic strategy for waging a technology conflict considering adjusted neo-techno national logic.

With the New START treaty extension, Moscow and Washington are on course for new arms control negotiations. The unprecedented breadth of the strategic bilateral agenda issues means that any future talks would entail extensive linkages and trade-off s in various spheres. The article explores two of the domains that would inevitably have to be addressed in future negotiations – missile defense and strategic conventional weapons. Missile defense was an integral part of U.S.–Russian arms control from early on, most prominently reflected in the ABM treaty of 1972. However, a deep look into the current state and trajectory of U.S. missile defense developments suggests that instead of focusing on the “strategic” interceptors in the continental U.S., the aim should be on regulating new mobile systems, which pose a more significant threat to the strategic stability and might be more amenable to limitations. Strategic conventional weapons are less clearly defined, and there is less arms control experience with dealing with them. On occasions where they were subject to arms control regulations, they were either banned or included in the strategic nuclear forceslimits. With many types of strategic conventional weapons, it does not seem that a one-size-fits-all approach is feasible. Some of the newer systems might remain too niche to have an impact on strategic stability. With the most ubiquitous strategic conventional weapons – long-range cruise missiles – a framework of asymmetric limits might be considered.

This paper explores the idea that developments in Conventional Prompt Global Strike (CPGS) systems degrade nuclear security. The United States is developing such weapons for niche conventional use on the surface, but the line between tactical and strategic weapons is becoming blurred. What is more, while there have been discussions in Congress surrounding the problem of missile ambiguity, there is a multitude of other problems, with the largest being that CPGS weapons inherently degrade nuclear security. By looking at the behavior of critical states and actors involved in the emergence of CPGS weapons and combining this with pre-existing literature and insight on similar topics within international relations, we then can conduct a thorough investigation on the impact of these CPGA systems. When compared to nuclear missiles, the increasing usability of these weapons is inherently dangerous, as it increases both the likelihood of their use and the likelihood of a first strike against another state’s nuclear deterrent. Traditionally, conducting a first strike has been all but impossible because it entailed using nuclear weapons, which come with ethical and environmental consequences. If nuclear weapons can be replaced or substituted with CPGS weapons, then a first strike becomes an actual possibility. Hence, as a result, the nuclear doctrine is changing to reflect this conventional danger and has led to a lower threshold for nuclear use. This fact then demonstrates clear signs that CPGS technology degrades nuclear security and thus increases the chance of nuclear use.

Although information is nothing new to war or conflict, the speed at which it reaches a much wider target audience, and thus its potential impact and consequences, is changing due to the rapid development of information and communications technology. Regime change and information warfare have been around for a very long time in the history of organised human societies. An undertaken review of academic literature demonstrates a great interest today to these concepts in academic, policymaking and practical terms. The present article attempts to track the evolution of the Western conceptual and theoretical thinking on the use of regime change and information warfare, seeking to understand the factors that precipitate it. In the paper I address the following, what is the relationship between information warfare and regime change? The high level of information and communications technology development and persisting leadership globally have allowed the United States to engage in regime change and information warfare more effective, although not without risks. The author considers the most illustrative examples of such engagement and, based on them, concludes that we have seen a shift in motivation from an offensive stance (the desire to spread influence) to a defensive one (the desire to prevent other international actors from gaining influence and power) on the global level. The theoretical method chosen for the analysis is phenomenology, as a means of the reading and analysis of a lived experience as well as a qualitative method will be used to analyse the data, where the goal is to capture the complexity of the object of study.

The article is devoted to the study of the protest movement on social networks. The novelty of the study is in its comparative analysis of protests in different regions of the world. Its relevance is determined by the need to identify the main trends of the protest movement that began a few years ago and continues to play a huge role in the life of society today – particularly during this period of integration and digitalization – which is confirmed by the statistics given in this article. Special attention is paid to autopoietic organizations: loyal to the regime, limitrophe and radical communities. We emphasize that activism in social networks is characterized by cyclicality and orientation towards international recognition. The work presents universal patterns of the formation of lexical units, expressed in the form of hashtags. It provides information on specific political techniques for using social media platforms in the United States, highlighting the most effective ways of constructing social media posts and using slogans and text that attract the attention of the audience. The paper also reveals the vital role of social networks in the political agenda of African countries such as Uganda, Kenya, etc. The paper highlights the protest movements that took place in Muslim countries during the Arab Spring and provides a brief description of the Hong Kong Umbrella Revolution. And it is the totality of lexical units, expressed in the form of hashtags, that fully reveal the nature of protest movements, providing an opportunity to analyse a specific protest not by one word, but by a set of lexemes to view a subject in various ways.

In the course of rethinking how Muslim communities have historically reacted to progress and integrated its achievements into their lives, we tried to revisit the reasons why the Islamic world has preserved a deep rift between tradition and modernity. Looking at the debate in theological and near-theological circles amongst Muslim thinkers and theorists of the past, we conclude that one of the major issues in terms of philosophical grounds is that religion has become associated with tradition more than with the revelation. Religion teaches timeless principles, while tradition adheres to past practices, which are time-bound. When tradition is treated as religion, problems arise, for traditional practices can conflict with modern ones. A large portion of the Muslim world has difficulties in adapting to modernity, and this is related to the fact that religiosity has become associated with feudalism and ritual. While a strong suggestion is to discursively separate religion from politics, this article nevertheless begins by exploring how progress in the Muslim world is affected by the confluence of tradition and revelation, among other factors. The two case studies based on the analysis of the specifics of modernization in Turkey and Iran are highlighted the trends that hinder technological progress in the countries of the Islamic world.

The strategic importance of the pharmaceutical industry for the scientific, technological and economic development of countries determines its impact on international processes. The paper traces the current trends in the growth of innovative competition in pharmaceuticals and biotechnology, taking into account the factor of the COVID-19 pandemic. The following areas of increased competition are highlighted: diversification of supply of active pharmaceutical substances, regulators’ permission of the newest drugs to access the market, competition of pharmaceutical companies for capital and competence. The pandemic has also exacerbated long-standing problems: the efficiency of drug distribution to citizens, the dependence of large manufacturers on active substance suppliers from China, drug pricing, and the role of social insurance systems in developed and developing countries. The article analyzes the main problems of the industry and presents possible trajectories of further development of international relations in the context of pharmaceuticals and biotechnology, analyzing the progress of creation and market admission of COVID-19 vaccines. For all the high-tech trends, the pharmaceutical industry is a rather conservative industry in which regulatory issues play a significant role. Therefore, legal, ethical and practical issues related to the collection of sensitive patient health data may slow down the digitalization of the pharmaceutical industry. Much will also depend on the decisions of major regulators – in the U.S. and the EU – regarding telemedicine and digital health in general. A serious barrier for the pharmaceutical industry is also the lack of pharmaceutical companies’ own experience in developing software solutions, which makes them dependent on external suppliers of IT solutions, complicates the problem of sharing clinical patient data and particularly raises the issue of cybersecurity.

Taking the relative novelty of issues relating to the military use of AI and its influence on international relations into account, the author of this paper relies on the latest reports of international research centres, organizations and national programs on the issue. The paper considers the political consequences of the military use of AI, as well as the national and international approaches to mitigate its challenges. With great attention to the AI policies of two technological leaders in the field, the author concludes that a balanced U.S. policy will determine whether China and the United States will be able to create, despite the presence of competition, common rules for legalizing the use of AI systems in the military sphere and form common standards that include a high level of security in the use of these systems, including the proliferation of such weapons. The author points out that Europe’s concentration on the conflict with Russia and its exclusion from the environment created by the technical and ethical legal tools for using AI will increase unpredictability in relations. This is why it is in Europe’s interests to involve Russia in the development of a common platform and standards for AI. The development and establishment of common safety standards will help avoid problems with perception and introduce an element of predictability in international relations.

Developed in recent decades, the understanding of cyberspace as an environment in which a state can face serious threats to its security has contributed to a search for ways to prevent such threats. In the military and political spheres, the concept of deterrence has become one of the ways to solve this problem. During the Cold war, the policy of deterrence became central to the strategic thought in the leading countries, but the direct transfer of conventional approaches to a new reality turns out to be problematic. On the one hand, this opens up a debate about the ways to attain deterrence in cyberspace via traditional and new mechanisms. However, theoretical discussions on cyberspace deterrence highlight the limitations of this concept. At the same time, despite some uncertainties that stem from such a transfer, in practice, the leading states use the concept of deterrence in the context of their activities related to cyberspace, although they implement it differently. In this regard, the article suggests focusing on states’ interpretation of deterrence when designing and implementing their policies in this area, rather than on the problems of applying the concept of deterrence. Such a constructivist approach allows to reveal the peculiarities of the understanding of deterrence without considering them predetermined and identify common aspects of views. Using Russia and the United States as examples, we studied specific features of the application of the deterrence concept in respect to cyberspace in official documents and in the course of the practical implementation of their provisions. The analysis shows that countries interpret the concept of cyberspace deterrence in diff erent ways, with an emphasis on specific deterrence strategies. At the same time, Russia and the United States influenced each other while developing views on deterrence.

Bowen, Bleddyn E. War in Space: Strategy, Spacepower, Geopolitics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020.