Op-Ed: Canada and the world vs the hidden risks of tech infrastructure and supply chains

The more garish aspects of new tech are easy enough to see and almost impossible to avoid. Trade realities are infuriating but obvious. Far less obvious and likely to be the bedrock issues for global tech are technological supply chains and infrastructure dependence.

In a commendably clear article, Ms Nancy Wilson CPA spells out the Canadian situation for small businesses on Rabble.ca. She points out that Canada’s heirloom relationship with the US created an automatic dependency for Canadian small businesses which is now a problem.

Citing infrastructure and front- and back-end supply issues, from shopfronts to platforms and costs, she explains that a vast number of core business operations flow through this environment.

Everything from hosting to cloud storage, accounts operations, e-commerce, payment systems, and other fundamentals are entangled in the old US relationships and resulting current cluster. Wilson also gives an example of the broader issues, like the Canadian Loonie getting poleaxed in relation to the US dollar as another reality bite.

The necessary evolution of infrastructure and trade

The major issue is that Canada and the world are now having to dig their way out of the general mess. This is necessary to achieve any level of sovereignty and mobility within the infrastructure.

AI has also rewritten the playbook. Used properly, AI can drastically reduce operational costs for suppliers and businesses through sheer efficiency. These are AI’s strong suits.

Forget agents, chatbots, and other ornaments. They’re third wheels, interfaces, and in most cases just higher data load capacity respectively. The real value of AI is likely to come in do-everything packages, like China’s instant software and support business models.

These are the likely outcomes for sustainable business, and they must be competitive in their markets. Just sign up and you’re ready to go.  International trade is global whether anyone likes it or not. This is globalization the reality, as opposed to globalization the easy target for illiterates.

That doesn’t solve the risk factors, though. A data-centre-dependent environment could generate a lot of outages. It could create monopolies where cost is “at will”, not based on competitive principles. It’s an evolved and much more complex version of the same issues Wilson describes, magnified exponentially.

Supply chain issues, trade relationships, and solutions

The supply chains underpin trade and the conduct of daily business from the top to the bottom. These supply chains are almost invisible in daily life. Every transaction, every social media post, every online ad, and every move is dependent on these supply chains working properly.

As AI moves in, which it must, the sheer clunkiness of current AI is likely to be a risk to critical supply chains. Who actually needs billions of unpredictable AI agents for daily personal business?  

They’re a novelty, not a necessity, unless you actually are that lazy and hands-off on your own business. The platforms will be AI anyway. Why add layers and costs of unnecessary, unreliable AI operations to basic business operations?

This is the rationale that is likely to reinvent supply chains. “Get rid of the middlemen” applies just as forcefully to AI as it does to third parties in transactions. Data centre modernization is already a default search term as AI catches up with its new iterations and updates current infrastructure simply to manage energy realities and new technologies.

Supply chains have to respond to demand. Business will dictate the infrastructure as demands diversify far beyond current technologies and their current issues.

The trade and sovereignty issues sing from the same hymn book. Adam Smith pointed out in The Wealth of Nations that trade is about doing real business and making money, not supporting old trade models.

Canadian trade issues are a good agar plate for defining the fixes. If nations take a hands-on approach to ensuring their own local supply chains, things have to change for the better.

One of the biggest issues of America’s antiquated trade worldview of trade relations is its bad habit of imposing obsolete trade practices on the world. These policy fossils can’t survive. Nor can the trade, on these terms.

Different trade and economic relationships began to emerge worldwide almost immediately as US trade barriers were created. Nobody is even slightly interested in a supply chain that seems to have no ideas except to be an obstacle course for doing basic business.

Canada joining the EU in some form is a noisy but extremely interesting canary in the coal mine. This is how trade relationships change the world. Other countries, like Australia and Japan, are doggedly evolving their relationships.

The EU and China are inching towards a rapprochement of sorts, wading through the minutiae of doing business. Similar repositioning is going on worldwide.

Here’s the twist: The US isn’t even involved in these evolutions on any level. The US also apparently perceived that the world was dependent on it, and wrote itself out of the actual trade simply by its own actions.

Adam Smith noted that all obsolete trade practices simply disappeared as the new trade realities took over. It’s happening again on a gigantic scale.

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Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in this Op-Ed are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Digital Journal or its members.