For the first time in a long time, we can say that there are positive signs in the American competitive response to China–not just a superficial trade response, but positive changes in the very structure of American and allied industry. Intel, Samsung and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company all have announced major chip plants in Ohio, Texas and Arizona, respectively. General Motors and Ford Motor have announced billions of dollars worth of investments in building electric vehicles–in the United States.
And then there is the legislation now approved by both the House and the Senate to spend $250 billion to $300 billion on supporting the semiconductor industry build-out and on new funding for new technologies such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing.
The rhetoric accompanying this legislation goes like this: “To outgrow, out-innovate, and outcompete China, we need to work together to take the fight to the Chinese Communist Party,” said Senator Todd Young, the lead Republican sponsor of the Senate bill.
What no one seems to be talking about, however, is that China has turned us into a AAA farm league baseball team that comes up with good ideas, which it then steals and commercializes. It has learned to harvest our ideas. There are so many angles we are not addressing:
–The Chinese government and the Advanced Persistent Threat groups it supports have deeply penetrated America’s computers. If any secret is in a computer connected to the Internet, the Chinese can get to it.
–We haven’t fundamentally begun to address the problem of so many Chinese researchers in our labs. This is an incredibly sensitive issue because as Americans, we are committed to non-discrimination on the basis of race or color. But the Chinese government is using at least some Chinese researchers in American labs as conduits for knowledge. If they have families back in China, they are vulnerable to government pressure to make their technology secrets available to Beijing. Academic leaders are particularly adamant in insisting that nothing be done to limit the large amount of revenue they are deriving from 370,000 Chinese students. But how do they explain that some of these students were recently expelled because they worked at universities that support the People’s Liberation Army?
–Chinese companies continue to either buy small American technology companies or try to force them to license their technology to Chinese partners.
–China’s 1,000 Talents Program continues to target even non-Chinese academics, such as the head of Harvard’s chemistry program who had worked on promising nanotechnology research and was persuaded to open a shadow laboratory in China to work on the same technology. He was arrested.
The point is that just enacting the scientific research and development bill will not necessarily mean that Americans race ahead technologically unless we take action to stop the leakage of our knowledge. The bill may increase funding for research but there is also a crucial need to develop and commercialize new technologies faster. That’s where the Chinese are beating us with our own ideas. We have to put an end to the rot.
