G7 Hiroshima Process for developing international AI standards, which notably excludes China (Habuka and Osa, 2024). At the same time, it recently drove the adoption of the UN’s first resolution on AI governance, which calls for international standards for AI interoperability.
To the extent that the United States intervenes to restrict China’s ability to standardize its technologies through formal bodies and mobilizes connections between US state institutions and platform giants to head off Chinese competition, Chinese firms and state agencies would seem all the more likely to double down on whatever de facto standardization avenues remain open. This implies a potential for greater fragmentation of global standards, and bodies such as the BRI’s Standards Organisation – yet to get off the ground – may be mobilized more actively. This would mean that China establishes a series of de facto standards, while the United States remains able to set de jure standards. If this happens, which set ofstandards will be more widely used, how they will interact with one another and what the impact will be for the internet as a whole will become ever more intensely contested fields.
8 Smart Cities
The mutually reinforcing trends that have propelled SPC – state capitalism and the platformization of ever grater spheres of economy and society – have also shaped contemporary urbanization. UN Habitat, the supranational body’s division that is focused on cities, finalized the New Urban Agenda (NUA) in 2016 after an extensive consultation process with UN member states and civil society stakeholders.<sup>8</sup> By ratifying the NUA, national governments began to reassert authority over urban policy that they had significantly relinquished during neoliberal reforms. Most importantly, the NUA obliges national governments to establish a national urban policy, whose implementation is delegated to local authorities. In other words, national governments are to make urban policies and city governments are to enact them.
National urban policies increasingly leverage technology in pursuit of sustainable urban development. Indeed, the NUA committed states to the rollout of smart city programmes. Smart cities employ information and communication technologies to gather data about the circulation of people and things within cities. Various types of sensors are typically used to collect information, which is acted upon, sometimes in real time, by automated systems. For example, traffic lights can adjust to alleviate gridlock and clear the way for emergency vehicles. Alternatively, people may monitor incoming data in control centres, and they are alerted to anomalies by smart city systems. They can review security camera footage and dispatch emergency services if necessary.
State Platform Capitalism
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<sup>8</sup> The UN General Assembly ratified the New Urban Agenda in December, 2016. The full text of the agenda can be found here: https://habitat3.org/the-new-urban-agenda/.