Introduction
The focus of this book is on the scientific and practical problem of transforming the international technological order amid increasing geoeconomic fragmentation, the expansion of sanctions regimes, and countries’ fight for technological sovereignty. The problem is that technologies, which were historically considered a neutral factor in global economic growth and scientific cooperation, have become tools of geopolitical influence and strategic restraint. This creates a completely new environment in which the processes of globalization of technological standards and regionalization of technological ecosystems, openness to innovation and export-control limitations, digital interdependence, and striving towards autonomy coexist.
The described problem is most acute in developing countries and countries with transitional economies, which find themselves between the competing centers of technological power: the USA, the European Union, China, and Eurasia's regional hubs. These countries have to adapt to the extraterritorial influence of sanctions simultaneously, requirements of international technical standards (ISO, IEC, ITU, IEEE), and the necessity for the formation of their own digital and industrial policy, which ensures sovereignty in critically important technological domains: semiconductors, artificial intelligence, 5G/6G telecommunications, quantum computing, biotechnologies, cyber security, and cloud infrastructure.
To solve this problem, the book suggests an original conceptual solution – considering the interconnection between standards, sanctions, and sovereignty as a unified analytical triad, which forms the modern geopolitics of technology. Standards are viewed as a soft infrastructure of power, sanctions — as a strict tool for limiting technological flows, and technological sovereignty — as a strategic response by countries to the risks of unilateral dependence. The book proves that sustainable national and regional technological policy is possible only with coordinated work across these three dimensions simultaneously.
The book is notable for containing comprehensive scientific and practical solutions that encompass international law and export control regimes, the economics of sanctions and counter-sanctions strategies, the policy of standardization and certification, industrial policy, digital and cyber diplomacy, and the management of critical technology supply chains. The authors' solutions, presented in the book, support the achievement of SDG 9 (Industry, innovation and infrastructure) and SDG 16 (Peace, justice, and strong institutions), contributing to the formation of a more sustainable, inclusive, and multi-polar architecture of technological management.
The book explains the theoretical foundations of the geopolitics of technology, discloses the mechanisms of the formation and promotion of international technical standards as a tool of geoeconomic influence, analyses the effects of secondary sanctions and export controls on technological markets, and designs models for achieving technological sovereignty at the national and regional levels. Serious attention is paid to regional prospects – Central Asia, the EAEU and CIS countries, South-East Asia, and BRICS+ - where new models of technological cooperation and parallel standardization institutes are being formed. The book also contains multiple cases of corporate and government strategies for adapting to sanctions pressure and for the fight for leadership in critical technologies.