Lunch to be provided for registered attendees. Registration closes Saturday, October 12.

About the Event: When scholars and policymakers consider how technological advances affect the rise and fall of great powers, they draw on theories that center the moment of innovation—the eureka moment that sparks astonishing technological feats. In Technology and the Rise of Great Powers, Jeffrey Ding offers a different explanation of how technological revolutions affect competition among great powers. Rather than focusing on which state first introduced major innovations, he investigates why some states were more successful than others at adapting and embracing new technologies at scale. Drawing on historical case studies of past industrial revolutions as well as statistical analysis, Ding develops a theory that emphasizes institutional adaptations oriented around diffusing technological advances throughout the entire economy.

Examining Britain’s rise to preeminence in the First Industrial Revolution, America and Germany’s overtaking of Britain in the Second Industrial Revolution, and Japan’s challenge to America’s technological dominance in the Third Industrial Revolution (also known as the “information revolution”), Ding illuminates the pathway by which these technological revolutions influenced the global distribution of power and explores the generalizability of his theory beyond the given set of great powers. His findings bear directly on current concerns about how emerging technologies such as AI could influence the US-China power balance.

About the Speaker: Jeffrey Ding is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at George Washington University. He primarily researches U.S.-China competition and cooperation in emerging technologies. His book, Technology and the Rise of Great Powers: How Diffusion Shapes Economic Competition, was published in 2024 with Princeton University Press. Previously, Jeff was a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.