SMEs, the global challenge is not to remain on the sidelines in accessing technology

(Sole24Ore-Radiocor) - More than the tug-of-war over tariffs or, even, global scenarios of armed conflict, what is holding back Italian SMEs and the fabric of family businesses could be, looking at the long term, the war, not even too underground, to control the technology of the future. That is to say, on the one hand expertise on algorithms, artificial intelligence, supercomputing, and on the other the control of the so-called rare earths that allow technological knowledge to be grounded. A war in which they risk being crushed and ending up on the sidelines.

Andrea Colli, professor of economic history at Bocconi University, is convinced of this: 'Companies operating in sensitive sectors now find themselves acting in markets distorted by geopolitical strategies. Selling, buying or disposing of productive assets is increasingly subject to institutional constraints, with direct repercussions on company fundamentals'. "The case of Nvidia, which suffered a stock crash due to export restrictions to China, clearly illustrates these dynamics. It was news just a few days ago that the Trump administration suggested to the British government that it should block an investment in Scotland by a Chinese company, a leading manufacturer of windmill turbines, on the basis of 'power generation safety' issues," he explains.

There is also a reverse dynamic to prove this. In the past, precisely where technological expertise has been freely allowed to circulate, with a view to globalising markets and reducing costs, a flywheel of growth has been set in motion, even beyond expectations. Colli goes on to explain: 'The virtuous cases of Taiwan and South Korea bear witness to this. Taiwan has leapt to the technological frontier since the late 1980s, thanks to the massive transfer of semiconductor-related technology from the US. Since the mid-1950s, South Korea, thanks to decisive public policies in sectors with frontier technology for the time - for example, automotive, steel, consumer electronics, has gone from a per capita gross domestic product (in 2010 dollars) of just over a thousand dollars, to 9 thousand in 1990, and 34 thousand today'. "These countries, thanks to often authoritarian governments and targeted industrial policies, have strengthened their national sovereignty through technological specialisation, resulting from the almost free circulation of the latter," he says.

What is happening today, behind real armed conflicts and in a climate of increasing tension and division between good guys and bad guys, is 'a nationalist version of technological knowledge with anti-global and protectionist connotations. Advanced technologies, such as artificial intelligence, have become real 'areas' of geopolitical competition, to be protected and consolidated in order to damage rivals,' Colli explains.

Effects that risk spilling over into the economies of countries that remain, or are relegated, to the sidelines. And tariffs, rather than an end, would act as a means. "This new approach translates into policies of sabotaging global value chains, with the use of tariff and non-tariff barriers, and in driving away foreign investors considered risky," says the Bocconi professor, "An emblematic example is China's recent decision to impose controls on exports of rare earths, a critical resource for the western technology industry. Conversely, the number of interventions by the US government aimed at blocking foreign takeovers of companies deemed strategic, for example in the microelectronics sector, has grown progressively in recent years'.