Perez's Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital makes the point that when a technological revolution occurs, gains are frequently concentrated in a small number of locales that are the first to adopt the new technology and adapt their local industries to the new structure of the economy. This results in significant economic (short term), military (medium term), and geopolitical (long term) power. The changing power balance usually sparks a war and a realignment of the global order.

In the industrial revolutions of the 19th and early 20th centuries, though, nation states usually adopted the new technologies en masse, with the whole nation sharing in the gains. So you had rising nations like Britain, America, Prussia, and Japan which could challenge declining empires like Austria-Hungary, Russia, China, and the Ottomans.

This technological revolution is different, because you have specific parts of nations that are adapting to the new technologies and thriving, while other parts get left behind and see the power they had wilt away. There's relatively little historical precedent for this; the only ones I can think of might be the decline of the Roman empire (where the Eastern Mediterranean remained up-to-date and civilized, while the Northern European hinterlands disintegrated and broke up) and the American Civil War (where the industrial North conquered the agrarian South). And this pattern isn't just U.S-based: China also has a dramatic disparity in wealth & power between coastal cities and the inland hinterland, as well as one between the high-tech South (centered around Shenzhen and the Pearl River Delta) and more politically powerful North (around Beijing).

I don't know exactly what it means, but I don't think it bodes well for either of the major global superpowers.