The scope of legitimacy of commercial competition

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This essay examines strategic changes derived from the response by governments and industry to large social changes occurring in many high-technology/low-public-interest sectors of national polity. This new competitive environment is identified with a term - the competition of the immaterial - that, according to the concept of meta-war, is in some ways a higher form of war. The study intends to map the strategic change that follows from the rise of immaterial competitive power. It shall offer a general framework for determining the efficacy of global economic competition as a vehicle for national strategy. Because the concept of immaterial competitive power is a military one - properly a meta-war concept - we move from the general to the particular, and describe how immaterial competitive power is raised in biotechnology, aeronautics, and space prior to integrating the forces of bureaucracy and democratic discourse into a single competitive enterprise. While military power is still critical for national security, intangible commercial values assume strategic authority and credibility in global competition for operational dominance. This chapter will discuss this significant change. The first part will focus on the theory of commercial competition. Is commercial competition an exercise of real military power? What are the implications of the meta-war view of commercial competition? The second part will catalog the tactics of commercial warfare; the last two sections will focus on the dynamics of commercial competition. Evidence will be reviewed to discuss three areas: trends detected in the strategies and tactics of commercial competition; areas where commercial competition is likely to expand most visibly; potential pathways to successful integration and resolution of the most critical commercial problems.

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