Renewed great-power rivalry will suppress employer demand for ‘citizens of the world.’
With the apparent end of history and of serious geopolitical competition in the 1990s, patriotism became an embarrassing relic of earlier times to large chunks of American business. Technology, finance and manufacturing companies operating in what Thomas Friedman called the “flat world” of the post-historical era increasingly saw themselves as citizens of the world rather than American companies with a stake in the success of the American project.
In that kind of world, companies like McKinsey and Google didn’t necessarily want a bunch of superpatriotic American employees. On the contrary, the ability to function in a global and cosmopolitan culture mattered more for corporate and therefore individual success than the depth and degree of an employee’s patriotism or commitment to American civic values and norms.
That world is dying, nowhere more quickly than in the tech industry, where U.S.-China competition is the name of the game. The idea that software engineers would refuse to work for the Pentagon or only do so under duress might once have been tolerable, but no more. This isn’t only because defense contracts are and will remain important to many Silicon Valley firms. It’s also because the greatest threat to many enterprises is intellectual-property theft by Chinese firms. Tech CEOs losing sleep over IP security want patriotic workers who wouldn’t dream of selling out their country or employer to bad actors overseas.
In finance, the change is coming more slowly, but as banks approach opportunities in China with caution, patriotism is beginning to matter more on Wall Street. It will likely matter more as international frictions increase along with the reputational costs and financial risks associated with business in China. In manufacturing, as Mr. Friedman’s flat world yields to the more rugged landscape of our time and supply-chain security looms larger as a factor in corporate investment, we are likely to see a similar intellectual reshoring of the American elite.
