CIA warns of Asian technological domination

China and India will increasingly set the standards for the global technology industry, according to a report from the CIA.

In its predictions for the world in 2020 the CIA's National Intelligence Council warned that these two global players will increasingly dominate the focus of the world economy.

The agency expects that the technologically literate populations of China and India will spread around the world, filling jobs currently performed by workers in Western countries.

"Among the drivers of the growing availability of technology will be the growing two-way flow of high-tech brain power between developing countries and Western countries, the increasing size of the technologically literate workforce in some developing countries, and efforts by multinational corporations to diversify their high-tech operations," the report stated.

"The gulf between the 'haves' and 'have-nots' may widen as the greatest benefits of globalisation accrue to countries and groups that can access and adopt new technologies.

"Rapid technological advances outside the US could enable other countries to set the rules for design, standards and implementation, and for moulding privacy, information security and intellectual property rights."

Countries currently behind the West in terms of technological development will be able to catch up more quickly than expected, as they will be able to leapfrog development that has already gone on, for example relying on mobile telephony rather than laying down landlines, according to the report.

It concludes with a fictional report of the 2020 World Economic Forum being held, at Asian insistence, in China rather than its traditional home in Switzerland.

The National Intelligence Council report can be seen here.