Debating the Chicken or the Egg? Evaluating the Cloud or the Dragon?Dragon?

According to the discussions so far in this chapter, the advancement of Cloud Computing and the emergence of iDragon pose two significant questions for the discourse on the state’s roles in high-tech development, specifically in the technology-upgrading process: whether the roles of the state are shaped by the advancement of technology (instrumentative) or the advancement of technology is determined by the roles of the state (substantive).

Beginning this section with these two opposed perspectives is like viewing technology from two different angles and as much as such a debate does not seem to be realistic, it is a useful heuristic device. It does not seem to be realistic because we

have advanced technologically to a point where we are used to the presence of technologies in ubiquitous and pervasive ways. This blurs the line between the active and passive interplay between technological advancement and the state’s roles, especially in technology-developing economies. However, the questions are realistic because in reality the roles of the state and the evolutionary advancement of technology do interact in just such a diametrically opposed manner, just in different phases, contexts and stages along the lines of technological change.

Additionally, depicting things using such polarised opposites helps to ground the analysis in this section in two ways. First of all, the questions reflect a conventional polarity-theme characterising how relations between the state and high-tech industrial development are studied systematically. Industrial scholars have analysed the experiences of historically technologically backward economies (both in general or sector-specific senses) - particularly the East Asian Newly Industrialised Countries - who managed to transform out of such backwardness through the role of the active state, such as in the concept of the developmental state, and its younger sibling, the neo-developmental state, and achieve recognition by the global community for their success. Analysing industrial-technology development in such a manner is looking only in one direction. Even though sectoral analysis exists that advocates that the relationship between the state and technological development is sector-specific, there is considerably more analysis of the state’s characteristics and its apparatuses that shape different paths in technological achievement rather than vice versa. In opposition to the view that the state has a determinant role in hi-tech industrial development, the study of science and hi-technology policy focuses on the crucial implications posed by new types of technology, or by the further advancement of already existing technologies that require reconsideration from policy makers. Good examples of this body of work include those from whom this

thesis has drawn earlier in this chapter in relation to Cloud technology (for example Yoo 2011 and Kushida 2011).

This reflection on the conventional polarity characterising this field maps out a gap that can be bridged in the study of state-industrial development relations. This chapter argues that the state’s roles and the advancement of information technology are reciprocal, to be given the same importance. Information technology is advanced by a knowledge- advancement driven strategy on the one hand (a common example of this is the evolutionary development of the computer and computer machines) and by a socio-cultural driven strategy on the other hand (there are plenty of examples for this, such as the case of Amazon’s EC2). Furthermore, this chapter contends that, based on fieldwork findings, the technology upgrading carried out by the Vietnamese state acted in both a technology-instrumental way, at the very first stage when the Cloud was initially being recognised by the state for production purposes; and in a substantial way, later on at a technology-diffusion stage after the iDragon’s Cloud platform was implemented.

In relation to the Cloud as an instrumental technology for the Vietnamese state, the gradual developmental process of the Cloud along with its increasing global popularity was free of the Vietnamese state’s social influence. Even though the Cloud had already been adopted locally by Vietnam’s domestic firms prior to the announcement of iDragon, this did not contribute to the advancement of the Cloud as a technology itself. The crucial point is that when NISCI first realised the potential technological changes posed by Cloud technology, it was well aware of the Cloud’s technological impact as well as possible socio-cultural and political implications for Vietnam. All of these implications had later on shaped NISCI’s decision to select the Cloud as its technology of choice. As NISCI is the state’s

apparatus, its technological choice is also the Vietnamese state’s choice. At this stage, the influences from the Cloud technology’s features determined the state’s choice of technology in a deterministic way.

Nevertheless, I do not in any way put forward an argument based on technological determinism to cover all the processes involved in technology development. The point I am trying to communicate is rather how the features of Cloud Computing were instrumental when the Vietnamese state first recognised its determinant tendency. This is just one of the starting points in Vietnam’s IT industrial development history where the notion of technological determinism is applicable; however, Mackenzie and Wajcman et al. (1999) offer a series of arguments about and evidence on how social contexts shape both the adoption and the emergence of technologies. In one of their editorial works, Kline and Pinch (1999), question whether applying the logic of technological determinism to the state’s first recognition of the political disadvantages coming as a package with the advancement of Cloud Computing oversimplifies or overlooks the logic of socio-cultural influences in such circumstances. As Kline and Pinch posit, the identities of social groups are arguably significant in an analysis of technology-society relations (1999: 114). Following on from this, the identities of the Vietnamese state create the diversity in the recognition of Cloud Computing’s potential exclusive only to Vietnam’s social and political contexts, which are not necessarily valid in other, different social and political contexts. This can be considered an application of technological substantivism rather than technological determinism, as I have claimed.

While I value Kline and Pinch’s suggestion, I want to emphasise that paying attention to this point (when the state was attentive to the political and economic

impact of Cloud Computing in a determinist way) highlights the contrast between the two theoretical thoughts underlining the different phases of the Vietnamese state’s Cloud invention. After the state recognised Cloud Computing, it intervened in technological developments according to the notion of technological substantivism. iDragon - which is a reflection of the Vietnamese state as an IT researcher – has moved on from being influenced by Cloud technology towards being an influence itself on further advancement of the Cloud technology’s features by inserting more technological knowledge, the state’s identities and political values into the process of research and development for iDragon’s innovation: the Cloud Platform. Once the Cloud is in the iDragon’s R&D processes, it is no longer merely an instrumentality. Along its R&D processes the Cloud has entered a larger technological conversation: substantivism. Through the iDragon, the state as an industrial innovator has localised Cloud Computing with great potential political implications: the Cloud as a means to control and as an expression of technological nationalism. Vietnam’s state-Cloud adoption is no longer viewed as ‘the development of Cloud technology that determines the state’s roles in Vietnam’s technology-upgrading process’, but is transitioning into ‘the state’s roles that determine the development of Cloud technology in Vietnam’s technology-upgrading process’.

In fact most imported technologies are to be localised, not only the Cloud.

Localisation has to be stressed more with technologies that are initially developed with the embedding of a specific culture or socio-economic contents once they arrived at the new locations, or are set up to target a different market with a different culture and socio-economic contents. Vietnam is a society with strong IT consumption, especially over the last decade which I term the period of the ‘initial technological localisation phase’. This is due to some characteristics of the decade

when the level of innovation was very minimal and most IT spending was on the primary adoption of IT at the implementation stage or as an enabling technology, such as the configuration of database systems in local enterprises.

This paragraph will explain how the Vietnamese state employs the Cloud as a means of control and an expression of technological nationalism. There are many reasons why Cloud Computing has been chosen to be the Vietnamese state's technology of choice. Firstly, there is the outstanding rate of growth of the software and the digital content industry; secondly, there is the global trend of currently important information technologies (especially as a transformative technology for the developing world); and, thirdly, as Vietnam is one of the emerging hubs for the global outsourcing business, there is a need for local firms to offer an outsourcing service with an enabling technology compatible with the rest of the global market.

Therefore, Cloud Computing is an inevitable, compulsory technological tendency for high-technology industrial development in Vietnam, which partly relies on other countries' technological circumstances due to its outsourcing business. This means that even if the Cloud was not selected as a government technology of choice, the local IT enterprises, especially those in the outsourcing sector, would eventually be compelled to adopt the practice of Cloud Computing without the government's persuasion. Nonetheless, there is another major concern that perhaps offers a legitimate explanation of the government’s technological push: the security and data privacy issues.

Cloud Computing appears on the list of the government’s high technology priorities.³¹ It comes in seventh place on a national list of high technology priorities for development investment. The first eleven entries, out of forty-six entries on the

31Prime Minister’s Decision No. 49/2010/QD-TTg ‘Approving the list of high technologies prioritized for development investment and the list of high-tech production eligible for development promotion.’

list, are from IT industries. It was stated clearly on the list that all the prioritised technologies are selected in accordance with the trajectory of socio-economic development, and defence and security requirements. Cloud Computing is obviously important for both. The Cloud can be used as a powerful implementation tool in the defence industry, however; this does not pose a new issue to be discussed since any security-related technologies can be used for defence purposes. Additionally, the economy of Cloud Computing adds a great security issue to its unique advantages as an information technology. With Cloud technology, the providers compute everything and delivery it to the users to consume. This means Cloud providers have full access to information and data storage live on the Cloud. This is the reason that has led NISCI to research and develop its Cloud solution. RD3, remarked during an interview:

[…]if you have important information on the Google Information Cloud, Google can see your information. It’s not fair and it’s not good, so Vietnam will have to build Cloud Computing. But you know Vietnamese companies now cannot do it by themselves.

(Interview with author, RD3, 2010)

The great advantages of Cloud Computing therefore come with a great dilemma for data security and protection. As the Cloud virtualises data storage and dismisses the conventional way of localising the data at the end-user side, this opens up a new gap for the regulation and implementation of new practices in data security and protection. This also stirs up a sense of nationalism in the Vietnamese state, who as much as they want to keep up with international technology trends by developing a parallel technology, strongly wish to prevent its national data - especially governmental data - being stored by and accessible to other Cloud providers, who