Beijing’s efforts to dominate ‘new generation technologies’ like artificial intelligence are spurring fears that the U. S. will fall behind.
A common thread is running through nearly every tech debate in Washington these days: fear that an ambitious China is poised to win the next wave of technology.
The worry that China is preparing to eat America’s lunch is the subtext for nearly all policy discussions on next-generation tech like quantum computing that can break encryption, artificial intelligence that can spy on or supplant humans, and super-fast wireless networks that can power an advanced digital economy. And it’s causing rattled U. S. policymakers to flirt with some of the same top-down, regimented strategies that Beijing is pursuing.
Last month, the House passed a bipartisan bill establishing a 10-year plan to advance the nascent field of quantum computing, seeking to keep pace with China. Earlier this year, an official on the White House National Security Council floated a plan to nationalize the country’s still-emerging 5G network, in a China-style, government-led approach.
The United States has long put faith in its much looser approach to technology development — where government, industry and academia play off each other — which gave birth to the internet and turned Silicon Valley into a global economic powerhouse.
But the emerging technologies carry such powerful national security implications that some American policymakers wonder if the federal government needs to take a firmer hand, as it did during the U. S.-Soviet space race of the 1950s and ’60s.
Some in the tech industry disagree — saying that while Washington’s China obsession is justified, the governing class has become too quick to doubt America’s own technological strengths or the wisdom of its historically hands-off approach.
“The U. S. has managed to build an ecosystem that other nations haven’t been able to replicate,” said Dean Garfield, president of the Information Technology Industry Council, a Washington-based trade group that represents companies like Apple, Google and Qualcomm. It’s true that China is rising as an economic power, he said, but the American fears are often “grounded in hysteria” that the U. S. is losing its edge on innovation.
President Donald Trump has fueled the trend by putting technology at the center of his escalating trade war with China. Trump talks about the need to protect the U. S. tech industry’s intellectual property, which he calls the “crown jewels for this country,” citing that as one of his motivations for imposing tariffs on some $250 billion worth of Chinese products.
But Washington’s China fixation goes much deeper and broader, reflecting American perceptions that China’s government, under the leadership of President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang, is marshaling the country’s vast resources to gain advantage over a range of innovations that could prove destructive to the U.
