One effect of coronavirus is that it reorders the value of what is physical and what is virtual. To sketch crudely, in the pre-coronavirus era the blueprint for prosperity was to have as much of your economy as possible engaged in knowledge work: live in the realm of ideas and IP and outsource as much of the messy business of the physical world as possible.
Of course, almost the opposite calculus applies to companies. Anyone who can run their business entirely virtually has a major advantage in the era of coronavirus.
Cloud computing is the ultimate abstraction of physical -
if not political - messiness. It’s not a new trend, but coronavirus amplifies the tension between increasingly economic nationalist states and ambitiously globalist tech companies.