Details: In Canada and the U.S., smart cities face obstacles including skepticism of Big Tech, privacy concerns, outdated infrastructure, and the difficulty of aligning stakeholders.

• The U.S. is developing 40 smart cities, less than 4% of the globe's total.
• In the meantime, over 80 cities and counties in the U.S. are suing the FCC over new rules designed to accelerate the buildout of America's 5G infrastructure, which is expected to be the backbone of advanced internet-of-things technology.
• Alphabet's Sidewalk Labs is attempting to transform a neighborhood in Toronto into "the most innovative district in the world," but hurdles including protests and lawsuits have delayed plans by 6 months, and construction hasn’t begun.

Meanwhile, China's political system and extraordinary rate of rural-to-urban migration work together to fuel the country's full-speed advance.

• China's urbanization offers opportunities to deploy advanced technologies.
• China owns over 60% of the globe's 1.5 billion cellular connections that use the most promising IoT technology standard.
• In Shanghai's Jing'an District, China Telecom has installed more than 500,000 sensors — on everything from fire hydrants to manholes.
• Hangzhou's smart city technologies have reportedly increased traffic speeds by 15% and reduced ambulance arrival time by 50%.
• But China's sensors and cameras also create a data dragnet, offering China's surveillance state unprecedented omniscience.
• China has an estimated 200 million surveillance cameras, while the U.S. has 50 million.

The bottom line: When it comes to building smart city infrastructure, China is at a clear advantage, as many of North America's greatest obstacles are irrelevant for the Chinese government.

Graham Allison is the Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at Harvard University, where he has taught for five decades.

Details: Rare earths are the 17 elements that separate the 21st century from the 20th, and China supplies 80% of them. Although the U.S. government has called them "essential" to the military, America has only 1 rare earths mine, which is partially Chinese-owned and sends its output to China for processing.

Between the lines: Trump may have hoped his Huawei order would force Beijing’s hand, but Xi can’t tolerate a hit to such a prominent firm.

• On Monday, Xi toured a Chinese company specializing in rare earths. Notably by his side: Liu He, Beijing’s chief trade negotiator.
• If China throttles supplies to America (or its manufacturing chains), production could halt for gadgets from iPhones to F-35s.

Flashback: After Japan detained a Chinese captain who sailed into disputed territory in 2010, Beijing hit Tokyo with conventional diplomatic and economic sticks. Japan refused to release him, but then China squeezed its exports of rare earths and Tokyo folded just two days later.

What to watch: If Trump completes his attack on Huawei, Xi could retaliate against U.S. tech titans that rely on rare earths, such as Tesla and Apple.

Graham Allison is the former director of Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

Background: The largest supplier of telecommunications and internet equipment globally, Huawei sells more smartphones than Apple, employs twice as many people as Google, and leads the world in 5G technology development.

• Of the top 4 telecoms equipment brands, 2 are Chinese and none are American.
• Although Huawei is banned from U.S. 5G networks, rural American markets often depend on the company’s equipment.

The arrest comes on the heels of a broader U.S. effort to undermine Huawei's influence, in the form of a lobbying campaign to persuade other governments — including those of Germany, Italy and Japan — to drop the firm, offering potential payment as an incentive. As U.S.-China ties grow increasingly strained, the Trump administration may consider a stricter ban on the company.

• AT&T execs have said Huawei was 70% cheaper than competing suppliers. Excluding the Chinese giant amounts to a tax on domestic telecoms that will cost the biggest players billions.
• For a quarter of rural wireless carriers, dropping Huawei would incur tens of millions in switching costs. And it would take a decade to implement the change.

What's next: The U.S. now has to decide what it's willing to do to prevent a company with tight ties to China's NSA-equivalent from owning the network that delivers 5G to Americans. If Huawei is able to deliver 5G to other nations years before and for a cheaper price than U.S. alternatives, few, if any, countries will wait.

Graham Allison is the former director of Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.