Finally, the dam has broken and someone is talking sensibly about how the United States should respond to China’s stated intention to dominate many of the world’s emerging technologies by 2025, such as autonomous driving and Artificial Intelligence. Tariffs are not the answer. They have zero chance of working.
Instead, Americans should out-innovate China, as this article in the Times suggests. Technology writer Farhad Manjoo argues that the U.S. government could increase funding for key technologies, just as it did after the Soviets shocked the world by launching Sputnik in 1957. That’s exactly the type of shock we are experiencing from the Chinese, although their ambitions are far broader than anything the Soviets dreamed of.
Even without increasing funding, the U.S. government could tweak the way the National Institutes of Health, the Pentagon, Energy Department and other agencies devote billions of dollars to R&D every year. The key would be to mandate that more of the research should be “translational,” meaning having real value in the real world.
The U.S. government also would have the power to convene. One of the fears holding back facial recognition technology in the United States is the fear of everyone’s privacy being invaded. The Chinese have no such compunctions and are distributing millions of cameras that are watching faces in restive regions such as Xinjiang Province but will soon cover the entire country. What policies should govern facial recognition? If we had a set of policies, we might be able to move ahead.
Same for genetic editing. The Chinese have started editing human genes using Crispr tools. We haven’t. We are greatly concerned about the ethical implications of this. It could be a tool that eliminates disease, but it also could be a tool that is misused and creates biological freaks. Why are the Chinese moving ahead faster on it that we are? What are the set of policies that need to be put in place? It may not be a matter of legislation, but if a key federal agency summoned the top 20 thinkers in the field and started a conversation, it could have lasting impact.
One of the lessons of American economic history is that we are flexible institutionally. We can have government-business partnerships and consortia, as with Sematech, which helped save the American semiconductor industry from the Japanese. It can take the form of the space program or support for the Internet, which emerged largely with surpport from the Department of Defense.
In recent years, these types of arrangements have been demonized as representing “industrial policy” or “corporate welfare.” Mistakes can be made, to be sure. But as Manjoo writes, “If the United States is worried that the Chinese will win the future because they’re actually spending money to win the future, why aren’t we doing the same?” It’s time to start a serious discussion about winning the future. It can’t be done through tariffs.
