11 - 13 MAY 2026 Antwerp Belgium

How 5000 years of history is shaping the AI era (Overflow 2)

Room 9Wed 13 May • 17:15–18:15AI & AgentsIntroductory and overview
AI feels like a break from everything we know. But what if this revolution is less new than we think? In this keynote, Tom Van de Weghe (GeoTech expert for VRT NWS) takes you from medieval Europe to imperial China, where innovation has never been accidental but strategic. Through historical stories and modern examples (from gunpowder to DeepSeek) he shows how China has repeatedly used technology to build and sustain power. For developers and tech professionals, this keynote offers a fresh perspective: not just on where AI stands today, but where it is heading, and what that means for those building the systems of tomorrow.

About the speaker

Tom Van De Weghe

Tom Van de Weghe is a geopolitics and technology expert at VRT NWS, Belgium's public broadcaster, and one of Europe's sharpest voices on the US-China tech race. After more than twenty two years covering China's rise — first as VRT's correspondent in Beijing, later from Washington — he deepened his tech focus as a Research Fellow at Stanford University, where he studied artificial intelligence and deepfake detection. Today, Tom curates the Ghent-based innovation hub Wintercircus and works at the intersection of geopolitics, AI, and European resilience. He is the author of several books on China, including the latest bestseller Terug naar China, and co-hosts the award-winning podcast China voorbij de muur and Fixing Europe. At Techorama, he connects the dots between the technologies we build and the world they are reshaping.