Bloomberg reported (January 1) that the British Ambassador to the U.S., Ms Karen Pierce had said in an interview that China and Russia must not emerge as the winners from the coronavirus pandemic. She urged the West to show that more open societies thrive and said the U.K. and the U.S. will need to work closely to counter the strategic challenge of China and Russia as the world recovers from the pandemic. She highlighted the risk that China, in particular, could set the rules for future technological developments in areas such as artificial intelligence, likening it to the spread of nuclear technology in the 1950s. “We don’t want to wake up one day and find that there are Chinese standards on things like AI and cyber”. She said that would be “too authoritarian” and new technologies must benefit “open markets”.