Middle Powers: A New Path for Deep Tech Advancement

While China’s Deep Tech strategy illustrates the scale a global superpower can bring, LATAM countries face a dilemma: reliance on a single dominant partner risks overdependence and limits strategic flexibility. At the same time, partnerships with the United States are increasingly constrained by trade tensions, export controls, and shifting priorities.

In this context, LATAM can diversify its partnerships to access advanced technology, patient capital, and know-how without compromising autonomy. This is where partnering with "middle powers", technologically advanced, non-superpower nations such as Israel, South Korea, Singapore, Canada, Japan, the Gulf states and Australia, offers a strategic path forward. These countries occupy a sweet spot: technologically sophisticated and financially robust without the baggage of superpower status. They need partners, not dependants.¹⁵⁵

Currently, private-sector R&D funding in Latin America accounts for only 43% of total R&D expenditure, a sharp contrast to the 80% seen in a hub like Israel.¹⁵⁶ LATAM faces three fundamental challenges that middle-power partnerships can address directly: capital, specifically the patient kind that allows Deep Tech to mature;¹⁵⁷ knowledge transfer, connecting the region’s strong research talent to global innovation networks; and strategic autonomy, spreading risk across multiple partners. These partnerships succeed because they are built on mutual need rather than charity.

LATAM does not need to choose between the United States and China to build its technological future. By working with a diversified portfolio of middle powers, the region can access world-class innovation ecosystems, patient capital, and targeted knowledge transfer while maintaining strategic independence.

# Comparative case studies of middle-power strategies

# Implementation frameworks

Each partnership highlights a different strategic lever: the UAE brings patient capital and infrastructure; South Korea offers industrial innovation tied to energy transition; Canada demonstrates co-funded R&D; Japan aligns technology transfer with value-chain upgrading; and Singapore provides a bridge to rule-based digital and trade frameworks. The case of Airbus can serve as a historical precedent for a consortium created for industrial and technological sovereignty, what began as a European response to American dominance in commercial aviation became one of the world’s most successful examples of multinational industrial cooperation.¹⁷²

Joint investment vehicles

Co-financing and blended-finance mechanisms are essential. Models like the Canada–Brazil CIIP illustrate successful bilateral co-investment; multilaterals such as the IDB Venture Lab or CAF could co-host innovation funds with Singaporean or UAE capital.¹⁷³

Technology transfer mechanisms

Formal R&D partnerships, secondments, and co-located labs accelerate capability building, Chile–Korea on hydrogen and smart mining, Canada–Brazil in nanotechnology, and Japan–Brazil on mineral processing and semiconductor policy.

Talent mobility and ecosystem integration

Exchange programs, fellowships, and targeted visas foster skill development, the Korea–Chile technical committee, Canada–Brazil joint research fellowships, and Japan’s JICA-backed training initiatives.

Success will require new forms of technological diplomacy, coordinated regional action, and the political will to think beyond traditional alliance structures. The convergence of global technological competition, shifting geopolitical alignments, and LATAM’s growing capabilities creates a unique window of opportunity.