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https://asiatimes.com/2020/11/china-challenge-report-signals-us-tech-war-retreat/

A new policy paper by an A-list of academics and former officials close to the Biden camp proposes cooperation rather than confrontation with China in a wide range of fields, including a role for Huawei in the global buildout of fifth-generation mobile broadband. Entitled “Meeting the China Challenge: A New American Strategy for Technology Competition,” the November 16 report may signal a major change in US policy under the incoming administration.

Most of the document is unremarkable, indeed modest in its recommendations. It proposes for example to increase the National Science Foundation’s annual funding for artificial intelligence (AI) to $1.8 billion from $1 billion. By contrast, the city of Shanghai alone plans to spend 270 billion yuan ($40 billion) during the next five years to support AI and the Internet of Things; the National People’s Congress in May proposed a $1.4-trillion technology budget. China fought the Covid-19 pandemic by linking its vast network of sensors to AI servers that helped to anticipate surges in infection and direct forensic testing to potential hotspots.

But the report’s authors, who include Professor Susan Shirk, a former State Department official under the Clinton Administration, former Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work and former US trade representative Charlene Barshefsky, depart radically from the Trump Administration by declaring that the US has to learn to live with Huawei and other Chinese telecom equipment providers. They write:

The United States should not attempt to win a race between Huawei and a new American  national champion. Instead, the United States should adopt a forward-looking strategy to  enable a variety of new entrants to enter the 5G innovation space successfully…

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16772/arabs-biden-islamists

“These observers pointed out that, behind the Council’s statement, there is a Saudi message saying that the Brotherhood’s rush to welcome and embrace Biden and its attempt to win his sympathy while inciting against important countries in the region will not change Saudi Arabia’s steadfast position of considering the group a terrorist organization and a real incubator for all militant groups.” — The Arab Weekly, November 12, 2020.

Abdullatif Al-Sheikh, the Saudi Minister of Islamic Affairs, responding to the Council’s statement, said …. that his warning came out of concern for “our religion, our country, our citizens, and all Muslims.” — Twitter, November 10, 2020.

The statement of the [Saudi] Council of Senior Scholars came after a long and careful study of the methodology and thinking of the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood organization, which views non-Muslims as infidels.”

“The group’s [Muslim Brotherhood’s] extremism and violence are an inherent feature of its ideology, and there is no point in reforming or changing it.” — Dar-Alifta.org, November 11, 2020.

The analysts and experts added that the world has realized that the existence of this terrorist organization represents a real threat to the identity and stability of states, and stress that the Brotherhood group does not represent the approach of Islam.

Several Arab political analysts and columnists, particularly in the Gulf, have voiced similar sentiments. The message they are sending to Biden and the Democrats: We do not want to go back to the bad old days when the US administration aligned itself with Islamist terrorist groups.

These Arabs are determined to prevent the Islamists from returning to power in Egypt or raising their heads in other Arab countries. It remains to be seen if the future US administration will cooperate in this effort.

In a clear message directed to a possible US administration under Joe Biden, Saudi Arabia and Egypt have warned against supporting the Muslim Brotherhood organization. They state that it gives birth “to extremist terrorist groups who wreak havoc on the country and the people.”

On November 10, Saudi Arabia’s Council of Senior Scholars, the kingdom’s highest Islamic religious body, issued a warning amid growing fear in some Arab countries that a Biden administration may return to former President Barack Obama’s policy of empowering and appeasing the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Saudi warning was immediately endorsed by Egypt’s senior Islamic religious institute, Dar al-Ifta, and prominent Egyptian writers and political analysts.