By: Noah Azzouzi

Once anchored in a relatively predictable triangle of “American innovation – Chinese imitation – European regulation”, the global governance landscape for emerging and disruptive technologies (EDTs) is currently in a state of flux. The economic scale of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) now “inevitably spills over its borders”, reshaping global rules and eroding the once unchallenged technological hegemony of the United States (US). At the same time, the European Union’s (EU) ambition to build a democratic technological order is compromised by its ongoing struggle not to fall behind in the face of Sino-American rivalry, prompting Brussels to trade in its traditional role as global referee for a deregulatory sprint, as exemplified by the 2025 Competitiveness Compass and Omnibus Simplification Packages. 

Yet, these disruptions are not solely driven by great-power rivalry and strategic competition. They also stem from a deeper normative contestation taking place inside an increasingly polycentric world order. The post-war liberal international order, still anchored in an old liberal script, now co-exists with a “patchwork of international institutions” and overlapping coalitions such as the BRICS, IBSA and BASIC. This “explosion of organisational pluralism” reveals a fractured, dynamic, and contested world order in which EDT governance has become a site of ideological competition rather than liberal consensus, ultimately redistributing authority across states, firms, cities, standards bodies, and epistemic networks.

The Classical Triangle: American Innovation, Chinese Imitation, European Regulation

The “innovate-imitate-regulate” triangle that structured global EDT governance from the 2000s onwards rested on three distinct yet interdependent roles. Through a combination of government subsidies, military research and development (R&D) and venture capital, the US emerged as an innovation hub via public-private ecosystems such as DARPA, Silicon Valley and later GAFAM. China, whose industrial policy was liberalised in the late 1990s, pursued a strategy of techno-industrial adaptation by leveraging state-owned enterprises, absorbing foreign technologies, and importing labour-intensive capabilities, hence mirroring earlier Asia NIE’s techno-globalism. Meanwhile, lacking integrated, consumer-facing big tech conglomerates, the EU projected power normatively, asserting global regulatory leadership through the General Data Protection Regulation and, more recently, the AI Act. 

Although this tripartite model appeared stable and globalist beneath the surface, it was fraught with contradictions from the outset. Western multistakeholderism tolerated asymmetric governance, such as China’s firewall, and overlooked the EU’s early discomfort with subsidised Chinese technology, as demonstrated by the Huawei 5G spin-off. Over time, as digital rents rose and the global tech race intensified, all three actors began to become more involved, marking a realignment of the underlying order. Thus, even in its so-called stable phase, the triangle was never timeless and represented a period of functional disequilibrium rather than equilibrium, in which its coherence was maintained by overlapping networks and compatible ideologies that are now visibly retreating.

Drivers of Disruption

Currently, the global governance of EDTs is pressured by five interlocking factors that together disrupt the traditional triangle:

• Velocity-capacity gap: Technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution act as a cross-sectoral “platform” whose data, capital and services extend across all jurisdictions. This mismatch between technological speed and legal capacity is exacerbated by the rise of “flexible accumulation” in network capitalism, where the market uses rapid innovation to circumvent rules, such as the “black box” models of AI, which render rules written for yesterday’s systems obsolete for tomorrow’s adaptive code.
• Authority shift: As states lose their regulatory monopoly, authority shifts to private, hybrid, and multi-stakeholder spheres, transforming governance into polycentric competition. Indeed, state-driven regulation is weakening in the face of “exit options” granted to corporations through deregulated capital markets, while Big Tech companies are expanding their de facto regulatory power by controlling data as the most strategic resource. This “crazy quilt” of overlapping regimes produces new governance silos in which power beyond states (e.g., markets, networks, epistemic communities) acts as a co-ruler.
• Geoeconomic contestation and systemic fragmentation: Economic interdependence has become a coercive tool that fragments innovation and regulatory networks. Practices such as export restrictions, sanctions, subsidy races, and visa restrictions weaponise supply chain chokepoints into coercive tools, pushing Beijing toward a “     sovereignty by design” model that further fragments global R&D. At the same time, rising powers’ selective integration into finance and knowledge chains, reconfigure supply chains into parallel ecosystems as geopolitical levers. What emerges is not coordination, but forum-shopping, duplication, and contested, inherently unstable governance infrastructures without an ultimate arbiter.
• Realignment of order: Beneath disputes over tariffs and controls lies an epochal normative shift. Western “techlash” ethics (integrating ethical intentions and social goals into digital innovations) collide with China’s digital authoritarian model (a path to harmonious world stability), all fueled by neo-mercantilist statecraft that weaponises trade itself. As each interdependent yet inter-influential actor pursues divergent techno-sovereignty agendas, multilateralism fractures into overlapping rule-making centers without hierarchy of norms or enforcement. This normative conflict is not just about governance preferences, but about irreconcilable worldviews, where one values cooperation and the other favors resilience and sovereign control, an epistemological contest between techno-globalism and techno-nationalism, between liberal universalism and a “multiplex world” of coexisting normative frameworks. This trend is visible not only in China’s model, but also in broader coalitional narratives, such as those promoted by BRICS, which emphasise “global bricolage” rather than convergence toward Western norms.
• Legitimacy collapse: Competing claims to legitimacy, both normative (i.e., the right to govern) and sociological (i.e., belief in the appropriateness of authority), result in a full-scale legitimacy erosion that collapses the classic “innovate-imitate-regulate” triangle. Without the public-trust dividend of clear, enforceable rules, EDT adoption falters and governance loses its empirical anchor. Simultaneously, Western “techlash” further erodes faith in liberal frameworks and divergent cultural values block any universally accepted ethics baseline.

Table 1- Key Drivers of Disruption in Global EDT Governance. Table created by the author.

Future Trajectories for Global Governance of EDTs

Bifurcation: US–China Tech Blocs

In the most hostile scenario, the increasing rivalry between the great powers in two competing technological spheres crystallises, carrying the risk of fragmentation, the duplication of standards, and the fomenting of technological-nationalist blocs. The US and its allies would cement a Western bloc around trustworthy partners and further expand economic interdependence as a means of coercion. In response, China would build an alternative Sino-centric ecosystem through its “sovereignty by design” industrial policy and increased BRI investment. This would lead to a hegemonic decline and shift the global order towards a balanced-power geoeconomics, or even an “Asian Age” if Beijing uses market-based legitimacy.

Minilateralism: Coalitions of the Willing

A more pragmatic scenario brings together like-minded coalitions for shared interests. The US would use loan diplomacy, while the EU would bring together small coalitions and middle powers and, together with tech giants, seed cross-border R&D hubs. China, eager to shape global standards, could join these minilateral clubs and bring its dual-track approach of integration and standards export, insisting on a shared leadership role. Two-pillar frameworks that balance security and innovation will form the core of these formats, whereby partial successes can be muddled through and expansion is possible without the need for universal consensus.

Renewed Multilateralism: Re-founding the Global Compact

The optimistic scenario envisions actors rediscovering the value of broad-based multilateral institutions and reshaping them to include enforceable polycentric rules. China would throw its weight behind its “harmonious world” doctrine and Digital Silk Road partnerships as test cases for cooperation, while pushing for new AI and green tech chapters within the United Nations and G-20 frameworks. This would be complemented by science diplomacy, global credit pools and an EU-style IPCEI mechanism that would align incentives and prevent a subsidy race. Only then, when geopolitical tensions ease, could joint Sino-Western initiatives demonstrate new norms, with middle powers playing a crucial role by leveraging the credibility of their reputations and bridging East-West divides.

Table 2 – Scenarios for EDT Governance: Evolving Innovate–Imitate–Regulate Dynamics. Table created by the author.

A Polycentric Cure to Build Adaptive and Cooperative Tech Governance

With Washington and Brussels now confronting a confident Chinese techno-state that exports not only cutting-edge hardware but also the regulatory code that runs it, it leaves no doubt that the once-predictable triangle no longer captures the reality of EDT governance. Instead, a polycentric scramble has emerged, within which technology, standards, and norms circulate through all three poles at once, as each actor alternates between first-mover, fast-follower, and rule-maker. In this context, the velocity-capacity gap, shifting authority, geo-economic contestation and fragmentation, realignment of normative orders, and a mounting legitimacy crisis do not sink the triangle so much as transform it into a contested, unstable configuration.

While these pressures expose the limits of the old triangle, they do not necessarily doom global technology governance, provided outdated state-centric logics are abandoned to embrace polycentric solutions. The key challenge ahead is binary: actors can either initiate genuine, transparent, and participatory reforms to restore both empirical effectiveness and normative legitimacy, or rely on coercion, export controls, and market shortcuts, hence risking a permanent collapse of the triangle and accelerating instability. The path chosen will determine whether the “US-EU-China” triangle splits, subdivides, or is reborn in a cooperative and truly polycentric order.

Edited by: Karolína Hajná and Aiyana Vittoria Amplatz