The companies that manage flows of water, energy or communications aspire to be reliable and a bit dull. The Chinese telecoms equipment provider Huawei has become anything but, with allegations of fraud in the US, the arrest of its founder’s daughter in Canada and arguments over its role in the UK’s 5G network.

What is at issue is whether the company is a vehicle for spying by the Chinese state. Experts in the west’s security services offer conflicting assessments. Looking to the future, it’s easy to imagine similar arguments on the boundaries of geopolitics, security and commerce rumbling on for decades, with ambiguous allegations, tit-for-tat responses and rising distrust.

The alternative lies in creative multilateralism of a kind that has become unfashionable in the age of Donald Trump, the US president, but may be essential if the world is to navigate the many dilemmas of the so-called fourth industrial revolution. This would apply methods that have worked well in areas like atomic energy to the integrity and reliability of communications infrastructures.