There is a technology that will become ubiquitous in everyday life and completely transform our world, our technological capabilities, and the way information is transferred. And no, it’s not artificial intelligence. It’s actually 6G technology.
You wouldn’t be crazy for thinking AI will be the defining technology that affects your life over the next few years. It dominates the news and, frankly, has become the foundation of much of the American economy. But despite all the hype, we’re never given a clear answer as to what AGI will actually look like or exactly how it will change the world. It’s a massive bet that AGI, however it’s ultimately defined and whatever it ends up doing, will live up to the expectations surrounding it. The chances of it fulfilling that hype over the next few years are arguably just as great as the chances of it being a major disappointment.
6G, on the other hand, isn’t speculation. We already know its applications and its potential. This technology will transform our world. The leap from 5G to 6G is exponential and cannot be compared to the upgrade from 4G to 5G. With ultra-high speeds being hundreds or even thousands of times faster than 5G, and distributed networks capable of bringing fast, reliable computing power everywhere, the possibilities are enormous. To put the difference in connectivity into perspective, take a look at this image below.
When we think about 6G, we naturally imagine how it will affect us personally. We picture the signal bars in the top-right corner of our phones and the little “5G” icon. 6G just seems like a similar next step, perhaps just super fast internet speeds and ubiquitous rural connectivity. While that is certainly impressive, it may not initially seem as revolutionary as something like AI, especially in China, where 5G is already highly effective.
But the mistake is focusing only on what you’ll experience on your personal phone. The real transformation won’t happen on the consumer side, it will happen on the commercial and industrial side through its ability to supercharge enterprise. Think about the rapid development we’ve seen in recent years in autonomous vehicles, drones, smart buildings, and intelligent infrastructure. All of these technologies require a similarly massive leap in connectivity, and 6G is more than capable of providing it.
As computing capacity increases, 6G will enable enormous amounts of data to be transmitted almost instantly. Complex 3D renderings or ultra-high-resolution content, for example, could be transferred from one location to another without effectively no latency. Devices embedded throughout industrial facilities, autonomous vehicles, and smart cities could coordinate themselves with minimal human intervention. A powerful way to think about 6G is that it will effectively fuse the physical and digital worlds together.
Here’s the most exciting part: this future technology isn’t years away, it’s already being rolled out and you can expect this technology’s impact to define the 2030s. China has just begun large-scale delivery of gallium chips for its space-ground 6G network, laying the foundation for widespread deployment by the end of the decade. As described by Science and Technology Daily, “It will function as the fundamental backbone supporting next-generation 6G communications, commercial space programmes, the low-altitude economy, and emergency response communications.” So what does this actually look like in the real world?
The key phrase to pay attention to is the low-altitude economy. If you’ve been following my work, or Chinese technological development more broadly, you’ll probably already be familiar with China’s dominance in drone technology. This goes far beyond the small commercial drones you can buy at Walmart or Target to film your vacations. China is producing much larger industrial drones that are already being deployed around the world to spray crops across African farmland, deliver heavy construction materials to remote building sites, extinguish fires on the upper floors of high-rise buildings, locate missing people deep in rural environments, and transport critical medical supplies between hospitals within cities. All of these applications fall under the umbrella of the low-altitude economy. As 6G becomes ubiquitous, it will massively expand the potential of this entire sector. Imagine designated drone corridors running throughout major Chinese cities, reducing delivery times to just minutes. During natural disasters or search-and-rescue operations, drones could be dispatched immediately in virtually any conditions, directly making the difference between life and death. Imagine enormous infrastructure projects in the mountainous regions of Xinjiang and Tibet being supplied not by trucks making long, difficult journeys across mountain roads, but by fleets of heavy-duty drones continuously delivering solar panels, construction equipment, and raw materials. Project timelines could be dramatically reduced while enabling infrastructure projects that would otherwise be impractical. All of this technology at scale is only made possible by 6G.
The race for AI is often presented as an existential competition between China and the United States over which country will dominate the defining technology of the future. The U.S is making the same argument for this technology as the Trump administration released a statement outlining its goal of winning the 6G race. But while there may be genuine competition between China and the United States in AI, the United States can largely forget about competing with China in 6G for several key reasons.
First, just as rare earth minerals are critical for American weapons systems and China’s restrictions on supplying certain rare earths exposed America’s dependence on Chinese supply chains, the same strategic minerals are essential for building ultra-fast 6G infrastructure. Those supply chains are overwhelmingly controlled by China.
Second, Huawei has pursued a far more aggressive rollout of 5G, not only across China but throughout Europe and in many densely populated or geographically challenging regions across Africa and South America. Through this deployment, companies like Huawei have positioned themselves at the forefront of both 5G and the development of future 6G technologies.
Meanwhile, American telecommunications companies such as AT&T and Verizon have become comparatively complacent in research and development, benefiting from a domestic market dominated by only a handful of major competitors. Innovation has slowed, and the expansion of 5G infrastructure has largely stagnated.
The third, and perhaps most important reason, ties into a much deeper structural issue: the lack of American industrial applications. As I explained earlier, the primary driver behind 6G investment is not consumer use but industrial use. The technologies that justify massive investment in 6G are autonomous industries, smart cities, autonomous vehicles, advanced logistics, and especially the low-altitude economy. If you’ve been following developments in both countries, you’ll know that the overwhelming majority of the industrial development and deployment of these technologies is taking place in China. When 6G becomes widely available in China, companies like DJI, along with countless other industrial firms, will immediately begin deploying it across large-scale commercial operations. The United States simply lacks an equivalent industrial ecosystem creating comparable demand because many of those companies either don’t exist or exist at a much smaller scale. The American economy is overwhelmingly centered on finance, information technology, and services. The absence of a large industrial base means fewer practical applications for 6G and, consequently, less incentive to invest aggressively in the technology. In that sense, the slow pace of American 6G development is just another consequence of the long-term erosion of the country’s industrial base.