The state telephone and high-tech autarchy

Hecho en Cuba, produced in Cuba. Gedeme, a Cuban public technology company, has produced a telephone with all the components entirely made on the Caribbean island. More than 6,000 copies of the smartphone will be distributed by the end of the month in the stores of the national telecommunications company Etecsa. Some Nokia and Alcatel models have circulated on the island over time but they didn’t last long, also due to the economic crisis that is hitting the island. The general manager of Gedeme, René Cano Diaz, told Radio Rebelde that he is aiming to “develop new projects to achieve greater computerization of schools. A team is transforming televisions into interactive screens at a very low cost and very few imported components ”. The speech must also be framed in the general politics of the country: the President of the Republic Miguel Diaz-Canel, is aware of the fact that the advent of Joe Biden to the US presidency will not lead to a softening of relations between two countries. For this reason, and to circumvent any other trade embargoes, it is intensifying its initiatives to make the country less and less dependent on foreigners. In this sense, Havana has developed its own vaccines against Covid and Cuba is the only Latin American nation to vaccinate its population without external aid. For several years all the great powers have been supporting a movement of commercial globalization with the development of a self-sufficient production and aimed at the self-sufficiency of the internal market, especially as regards the high tech sectors. Since 2015 China has been intensifying the national development of the technology industry with the declared aim of freeing itself from the dependence of other powers to support a future in full productive autonomy. Precisely in the face of this evident Chinese military effort, the United States has begun to feel the annoyance of the presence of Chinese technology in some sectors such as telecommunications and defense. The political and protectionist attacks on Chinese Internet infrastructures that began under the Trump government but are still present and in progress must also be seen in this sense. Beijing itself reacted to Washington’s protectionist measures by initiating a retreat from hardware and software to the stars and stripes that will lead to total autonomy in public institutions by 2022. India is also producing, under Modi’s government, a autarchic response to the Chinese and American technological domination that for decades has raged in the country through above all the construction of the country’s infrastructures. Now that Indian tech companies have developed a full maturity, the Modi government has initiated a series of maneuvers to override foreign control and promote India’s technological self-sufficiency. In short, the technological cold war has just begun and, on several levels, it no longer involves just two sides.