Digital Cold War

Here’s one vision of the future: In half the world, driverless cars built by Baidu and connected by Huawei’s 5G wireless networks carry passengers who shop online with Alibaba and post selfies on WeChat. In the other half, those activities are dominated by companies like Amazon, Google, Facebook, Tesla and Ericsson. On one side, the internet is tightly controlled; on the other, it’s freer. For some policy makers and academics, the tensions between the U.S. and China are pointing toward a “Cold W