{"id":82275,"date":"2021-03-05T09:29:00","date_gmt":"2021-03-05T01:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mediaintel.asia\/?p=288474"},"modified":"2021-03-05T09:29:00","modified_gmt":"2021-03-05T01:29:00","slug":"the-u-s-is-quietly-mobilizing-its-economy-against-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/2021\/03\/05\/the-u-s-is-quietly-mobilizing-its-economy-against-china\/","title":{"rendered":"The U.S. is quietly mobilizing its economy against China"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"MediaIntel.Asia\"<\/a><\/div>\n

This week\u2019s report by a bipartisan commission on artificial intelligence is an early sign of what could become a major shift in America\u2019s economic strategy: Without much public debate, the United States is moving toward what amounts to a U.S. version of industrial policy to compete with China on technology. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), one of the commission\u2019s chief sponsors, put the new vision succinctly in a December 2019 speech . He said it was time to recognize \u201cthe perils of free-market fundamentalism\u201d in dealing with China and instead embrace \u201ca 21st-century pro-American industrial policy.\u201d That revisionist thinking now animates the Biden administration, senior members of Congress and some leading technology executives.Like some other big paradigm shifts, this one has become obvious only as it began to displace the old laissez-faire approach to China. Behind the scenes, there\u2019s broad congressional support for the activist stance in both parties: Nineteen of the commission\u2019s recommendations were quietly inserted in the defense authorization act passed in January, including what could be billions of dollars in spending for new semiconductor fabrication plants in the United States.The changes that artificial intelligence will bring to everything that touches digital technology dazzle even the most buttoned-down experts in the field. That\u2019s why members of the commission and others close to this issue are so agitated about the need for radically increased U.S. efforts: They literally think our future is at stake, militarily, economically and even politically.What\u2019s driving the move toward government-directed investment in technology is a fear that China\u2019s so-called civil-military fusion will overwhelm American effort, unless it\u2019s matched. Eric Schmidt, the former Google chief executive who chaired the commission, argued in congressional testimony last month that \u201cthe threat of Chinese leadership in key technology areas is a national crisis.\u201d Instead of leaving solutions to private companies, he urged, \u201cwe will need a hybrid approach that more tightly aligns government and private-sector efforts to win.\u201dThe commission\u2019s recommendations are important because the panel included many tech luminaries, such as Safra Catz, chief executive of Oracle; Eric Horvitz, chief scientific officer of Microsoft; Andy Jassy, the founder of Amazon Web Services who will become Amazon\u2019s chief executive this year ; and Andrew Moore, head of Google\u2019s Cloud Artificial Intelligence unit. The report recommended that, by 2026, nationally funded AI research and development spending should total $32 billion.The government\u2019s role in funding breakthrough technologies has been obvious in the past. The most obvious example is the Manhattan Project\u2019s development of nuclear weapons. Government money also drove the space program, developed the Internet and built the infrastructure for national and global commerce. Government intervention became anathema during the tech and financial booms of recent decades, but the pendulum seems to have swung.The scale of the proposed mobilization isn\u2019t another Manhattan Project, but it\u2019s similar. The commission recommends a new technology competitiveness council chaired by the vice president; a steering committee on emerging technology to drive change at the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies; and major changes in immigration and education policies to address what the commission calls \u201can alarming talent deficit\u201d with China.The Biden administration embraces the thrust of the commission\u2019s report but disagrees on some details. The White House would prefer to channel the new initiatives through the existing interagency structure of the National Security Council and the National Economic Council, rather than create an additional council. But the administration supports many specific policy recommendations in the commission\u2019s 756-page report.\u201cThis is the kind of bipartisan support we hope can drive new investment\u201d in AI and other emerging technologies, said a senior administration official. One sign of White House alignment is that Jason Matheny, a member of the 15-person panel, is expected to be appointed deputy director of Biden\u2019s Office of Science and Technology Policy.The Biden administration also shares the commission\u2019s enthusiasm for what the report calls \u201ca coalition of like-minded\u201d nations to advance the development and use of AI and emerging technologies \u201cthat comports with democratic values.\u201d But because some European and Asian allies have recently expressed anxiety about joining an explicit alliance of \u201ctechno-democracies\u201d against China, this coalition is likely to operate through existing structures, such as the Group of Seven; the \u201c Quad \u201d security partnership of India, Japan, Australia and the United States; and bilateral relations with the European Union and its member countries.The trick will be keeping the U.S. economy open enough that it continues to draw the world\u2019s most talented people, even as officials move to protect America\u2019s lead in key technologies.The industrial policy the AI commission recommends could unlock talent and innovation. But if officials aren\u2019t careful, government intervention could also afflict our best companies with the dead weight and dysfunction of our broken political system. We need government to spawn brainpower, not bureaucracy. Read more from David Ignatius\u2019s archive , follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook . Read more: Josh Rogin: How covid hastened the decline and fall of the U.S.-China relationship David Ignatius: Biden\u2019s ambitious plan to push back against techno-autocracies Jennifer Rubin: Biden sounds like he has made a choice on China Marco Rubio: China is exploiting U.S. capital markets and workers. Here\u2019s what Biden should do. Dana Milbank: Did the Pentagon wait for Trump\u2019s approval before defending the Capitol?<\/p>\n

This data comes from MediaIntel.Asia's Media Intelligence and Media Monitoring Platform<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week\u2019s report by a bipartisan commission on artificial intelligence is an early sign of what could become a major shift in America\u2019s economic strategy: Without much public debate, the United States is moving toward what amounts to a U.S. version …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":253,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[144,586,325,671,113,931,4,477,693,360,785,194],"tags":[10382,2263,8755,2086,10320,10424,3472,1696,10324,10352,1845,2461,2240,2172,7293],"class_list":["post-82275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-china","category-economy","category-education","category-finance","category-google","category-india","category-internet","category-investment","category-japan","category-microsoft","category-new-york","category-news-chinese-law","tag-activist","tag-amazon","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-australia","tag-biden","tag-china-general-news","tag-chinese","tag-congress","tag-covid-19","tag-european","tag-facebook","tag-immigration","tag-military","tag-national-security","tag-oracle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/253"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82275"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82275\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82276,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82275\/revisions\/82276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}