Books: “The Digital Silk Road” by Jonathan E. Hillman
Posted By RichC on March 10, 2022
It looks as if the next book on my reading list will be Jonathan E. Hillman’s “The Digital Silk Road: China’s Quest to Wire the World and Win the Future.” It was release last October (2021) and after reading a review (and WSJ recommendation), I decided 
to download the digital e-book.
I’m not an expert on world trade, finance, infrastructure or expanding influence China the ruling Communist party has around the globe, but without question their expansion has been rapid and systematic. As information goes digital, it is increasingly obvious that those who control the flow of data and networks could become the dominate influence in the world. As the the author reveals, China continues to expand its digital footprint in nearly every country and warns that we will soon be facing the “consequences of a future in which all routers lead to Beijing.”
While this has steadily been happening for the past couple of decades, we are currently watching the democratic western powers (and 
our own President Biden) display weakness at every turn. Communist adversaries and dictatorships are quickly swooping in to take advantage of our weakness and the opportunity to expand their influence, reach and perhaps even territories. Europe is now dependent on Russia and their oil and gas, North and South America relies on Asia (and primarily China) to supply much of our manufactured goods, digital devices and chips … and way too much of our mined raw materials.
Europe and America didn’t pay attention when this started to happen 90 years ago and leaders either ignored (“it is not our problem”) or tried to avoid by diplomatic appeasement. Let’s learn from history and deal with aggressive adversaries in the only way that has proven to work … the Reagan Doctrine that ended the Cold War.
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