Once upon a time, the big idea was simple: work from anywhere! Thanks to technological advances, you didn’t have to be tied to your office desk to collaborate with your coworkers (or exchange memes with them). As long as you had your laptop and a good Wi-Fi connection, you could be poolside on a tropical island, with a drink in hand and a gorgeous sunset in the background.
Forward-thinking companies would recognize that talent can be found in the most unexpected places. Employees can mix and match their work with the life they love. Governments would allow this with special visa offers for digital nomads. The whole world would become one big, friendly workplace.
Hold that thought. Before you trade in suits for flip-flops, you need to recognize that the future of work might not be what you imagined. An alternative future is taking shape, in which geopolitics are shaping who works, the location of work, and the type of work. Driven by national security concerns and a propensity to support “their” companies at the expense of “others,” governments are reshaping the future of work.
YOUR remote job (Can YOU do the job remotely?)
The first promise of remote work was that work could be democratized. More people around the world could access jobs in a much more distributed talent and collaboration model. Ideas flow around the world and organizations benefit from more global intelligence. But that promise collides with geopolitical reality.
Take the case of Apple. When the company began moving some of its manufacturing operations to India, it needed to hire workers on a large scale. According to a Economic times According to the report, Apple’s ecosystem in India was expected to create 600,000 jobs. But who works at these facilities is an increasingly complicated geopolitical question.
Initially there were hundreds of Chinese engineers and technicians supporting Apple’s expansion in India. But more than 300 of them were recently asked to return to China. The withdrawal of engineers, the second in recent months, was seen as an attempt by China to slow the transfer of technology to Indian operations and prevent manufacturing from leaving the country. To continue operations, Apple suppliers have turned to engineers from Taiwan.
Driven by geopolitical objectives, government restrictions increasingly determine who can work on leading or cutting-edge projects, the people a company can hire, and how long they can stay in those roles.
Global companies are taking a close, hard look at their workforce and making tough decisions about who works on different types of projects. Silicon Valley technology companies are increasing security screening of potential recruits to keep business information safe. Changing tariff rates could put millions of jobs at risk in Asia and elsewhere. Thai workers who make solar cells are hardest hit by the trade war between China and the United States. A large-scale study of foreign directors at listed Chinese companies found that as political relations deteriorated, foreign directors were more likely to leave their roles. On the other hand, scientists at US federal agencies facing layoffs (especially those with expertise in artificial intelligence) were recruited for research operations in China.
your work REMOTE (Can you do the work REMOTELY?)
The second promise of remote work is that you can work from anywhere. As technology continues to improve, employees don’t need to be in the office or even in the field. Digital nomads traveled across cities, countries or even continents. You could sign in to work while visiting family in another country. You adopt a more flexible lifestyle. But geopolitical reality strikes again.
As countries emphasize sovereignty, data security, and the protection of strategic interests, the data, models, and technological resources that can be used from other countries become more limited. financial time reported that foreign universities and research institutes lost access to China’s largest academic database. More and more countries are adopting data localization laws, which require companies to store certain types of data within the country to protect national security. The United States restricts the transfer of citizen data to countries of interest.
These requirements make it difficult to access data and information from another country, even for employees of the same company. American business travelers to China, for example, may not have access to their work email. Financial analysts working at a fanatical pace to evaluate deal opportunities may find that they need to be on the ground in a given market to access relevant data, not because the technology does not exist to transfer that data to another country, but because political interests prevent the transfer of such data abroad. Some companies are asking staff traveling to certain countries to use temporarily borrowed phones and not bring company laptops. Without your trusty laptop, expect disruptions to work and productivity.
your remote JOB (Can you do the JOB remotely?)
The ultimate promise of remote work is that technology will allow you to do your job; that is, perform the same tasks that you would have performed when everything was normal. But geopolitics has changed the job description for many employees.
Focusing on a company’s teams, operations, or finances used to be a typical manager’s mandate. With the right routines in place, these tasks could even be completed from a remote location. But today’s managers have to take on different tasks. Consider Jensen Huang, CEO of the most valuable company in the world, NVIDIA. For years, Huang avoided the hectic world of lobbying in Washington, preferring the company of video games.
But when the company’s AI chips became embroiled in global politics, Huang’s job changed. He traveled the world convincing politicians to facilitate sales of his company’s chips. He became a geopolitical superstar, convincing leaders from the United States to China about his company’s role in their vision.
Mr. Huang is not alone. Fortune reported on how companies formed teams to follow political developments and quickly present options to leaders, but that those team members completely abandoned their day jobs. Given the need to be attentive to the terrain and interact with political actors, remote work becomes increasingly challenging.