San Francisco, Manchester and Shenzen

With the largest concentration of geeks in the world, something like four hundred thousand hi-tech workers, the Bay area, centred on San Francisco, is a seriously interesting place.  Just sitting in cafés puts you in touch with the buzz of people putting ideas together. Sometimes they will manage to hook up with venture capitalists, angel investors and the like, ready to risk their money and a start up will be born. Everyone knows that around 90 percent of start-ups fail, maybe 95%., but everyone also has a story about those who succeed, or could have succeeded if they'd taken up the offer of stock instead of cash when offered by one of the founders of Google, Facebook, Twitter or Apple or the like. Those that have made it are the force to beat in a world where is difficult to find any city whose leaders aren't trying to build up its science park, or business start ups working with techies. 

Two hundred years ago it was Manchester that performed this role of being the most exciting place on the planet when it came to shaping its future.  The world's first industrial city, 'the city of a thousand chimneys', people came from around the world to be part of it.  Marx's collaborator Frederick Engels, was one of a thousand Germans who lived in the city.  Writers such as the French aristocrat, Alexis de Tocqueville, and novelists such as the future prime minister Benjamin Disraeli and Elizabeth Gaskell wrote about this amazing development.  What everyone commented on was the creation of such vast quantities of wealth in conditions of such appalling exploitation and squalor.

What a contrast to today's San Francisco. Homeless people on many street corners, the local press full of stories of the rising rents squeezing the less fortunate out of the city.  The inequality is there: California spends more on prisons than it does on education and the prison population is disproportionately black. The techies are overwhelmingly white and male.  But something is missing: no chimneys, no smoke and little dirt.   And the answer quite simply is that the chimneys and the dirt are in China.  The I-phone is produced by Foxconn, a Taiwanese company. Its largest factory is in Shenzen, not far from Hongkong employing around 300,000 workers (estimates vary).  So there's the contrast: two hundred years ago the techies worked alongside the spinners and weavers and all the other trades producing the textiles. Today these two groups are  on opposite sides of the globe.

Where does the power lie? With the interconnectedness, the likelihood is that even small groups of workers, whether in Silicon Valley or Shenzen, are potentially strong. But as I remember it, at Cowley, producing motor cars in the early 1970s, they used to say that the closer you are to the finished product the more powerful you are.  I would be surprised if that wasn't still true today.

'Speak softly and carry a big stick' US policy today, Puneet Talwar in San Francisco, April 2015

Visiting my daughter Laura in San Francisco, I'm determined to get my finger on the pulse. So reading over breakfast that Puneet Talwar, assistant secretary of state for political and military affairs and liaison with the Dept of Defense, is speaking to the Commonwealth Club is an opportunity not to be missed. Laura rings the venue, a hotel in the business district,  and registers me. I'm not on the list when I get there but, having given my my name again, I'm admitted to a rather grand reception room with cameras and lighting all in place, the event will be broadcast. The room gets about half full with maybe 120 people, some enjoying a free glass of wine. Most look well heeled, some are post graduate students. 

The president of the club, a retired general, welcomes us and introduces Puneet Talwar, formerly an adviser to Biden and much else, specialising in the Middle East. Talwar quickly sketches an overview of American foreign policy, unashamedly emphasising the importance of US dominance.  He quotes Teddy Roosevelt on the unavoidability of American leadership. He speaks firmly, a carefully trained delivery,  a straightforward presentation of the liberal superpower imperialist in the increasingly challenging twenty first century. 

Very non partisan, always  speaking from the standpoint of the White House, he progresses like a Cook's tour of  the world's trouble spots, starting with the Middle East and an apology that discussions with Iran are at such a delicate stage he can't talk about them. He's telling the truth here, the preliminary deal on Iran's nuclear programme is announced just two days later.

Speaking with a very hard edge, he describes how ISIL (Islamic State) is being dealt with.  We get a detailed military hit list: how many air strikes, what targets. It's a narrative of clear progress: while ISIL isn't beaten, 'the allure of the caliphate is shattered'.  I think, that isn't how it looks in Britain where young Islamists are still making their way to Syria.  Some of what he says is valid. He correctly challenges simplistic 'Sunni v Shia' analyses: there are other dimensions such as ethnicity.  

There is a need to confront the enemy ISIL ideologically but "those that go in that direction will have to be dealt with". Egypt has not been certified as "moving towards democracy" but is still being helped in accordance with  the legality laid down by Congress under a budget line for "security".

There are slips on our seats for questions but the friendly moderator  politely generalises with people have written so the reply can be in similarly general terms and there is no danger of being put in an awkward spot. So Talwar's talk of 'our values' is of a general commitment to freedom and democracy and there's no possibility of a challenge about Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden or Guantanamo.  His responsibility being for international security with a budget of $6bn, it's interesting that he's spent the earlier part of the day with Twitter. 

He claims the strength of the US is in its values but his talk is mainly about how the big stick is being used.  It is hard not to conclude that the US today hasn't shifted from when  President Teddy Roosevelt said 'Talk softly and carry a big stick and you'll go far'.