The current regulatory and legislative infrastructure is poorly suited to address the new challenges to U.S. leadership and innovation in key technology sectors. This paper uses the semiconductor industry as a case study to advance a proposal for a strategic approach to technology policy capable of enabling long-term leadership. This proposal, rooted in structural changes to the federal technology policymaking process, would allow the United States to respond more effectively to strategic technology policymaking of China and other rising economic competitors. Initial steps to advance strategic technology policy should aim to revitalize targeted scientific research, grow the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) talent development pipeline, and expand highly skilled immigration.

Bios: Anja Manuel, Pavneet Singh, Thompson Paine

China systematically extracts advanced technology from the West. It does so legally, by mining open source databases, investing in our most advanced companies, and compelling technology transfer as a condition for doing business in China, as well as illicitly, through cybertheft and industrial espionage.

How we choose to react will define whether the United States continues to lead in—and reap the benefits of—technical innovation and whether we will be able to set the global norms and standards for technology development and use. Previous U.S. presidents of both parties engaged China in dialogue on IP theft and market access for U.S. firms, among other issues. They were unable to correct China’s behavior. So far, the Trump Administration has focused on trade negotiations and on “defensive” measures: from Congress reforming CFIUS in 2018 and a proposed tightening of export controls, to scrutinizing and slowing cross-border collaboration, and discussing restricting Chinese student visas to the United States. i Yet instead of closing the U.S. system, as we are beginning to do, we can and must compete with China, and in some cases, find ways to collaborate. 

Bio: Anthony Vinci

The next presidential term will confront an increasingly urgent question of how to compete with China, economically and militarily. Simply increasing national security funding or R&D spending will not ensure victory against a competitor able to outspend the United States. Instead, we will need once again to revolutionize public-private partnerships to meet the challenge, harnessing more efficient ways of developing and implementing new technology. This paper proposes a novel approach for such partnerships, leveraging a joint venture model to share proprietary federal data with industry—on a limited basis, with appropriate safeguards—to catalyze faster development of new national security technology applications. 

Bio: Amy Webb

Despite an abundance of technical experts across its agencies, the federal government lacks a centralized office charged with long-range, comprehensive, streamlined planning to address critical science and technology developments. The status quo risks misalignment between agencies and redundant strategic work. At the outset of the next presidential term, the President should create a new, centralized office championing strategic foresight. This will involve leadership in strategic processes using data-driven models to analyze plausible futures, continually evaluating macro sources of change, finding emerging trends, and mapping the trajectory and velocity of changes. Focused on providing authoritative, unbiased insights to the executive branch, it should facilitate forward-leaning research, knowledge dissemination and capabilities building via ongoing strategic conversations, experiential learning, and rigorous quantitative and qualitative proceedings that result in concrete actions.