 |
| Pix credit: Generated by ChatGPT (tech innovation bending space and time under the direction of political leaders) |
The White House has posted a quite interesting speech delivered 14 April 2025 by Michael John Kratsios (Princeton University and a managing director at Scale AI, and Mr. Trump's chief technology officer during the 1st Trump Administration) and entitled "The Goldern Age of American Innovation--Remarks by Director Kratsios at the Endless Frontiers Retreat."This was an important speech for Mr. Kratsios, one designed to set the tone for his role as the head the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) (reported in The Hill here). The speech was reported in Fortune this fairly conventional way:
In his first public remarks since his Senate confirmation, Donald Trump’s newly-confirmed director of tech and science policy, Michael Kratsios, accused the Biden Administration of leading with a “spirit of fear” and laid out a plan for how America could do “more with less” over the next four years. * * * In emphasizing a commitment to the deregulation of business, Kratsios said the “chief barrier” to supersonic aircraft, high-speed rail or flying cars has been a “regulatory regime opposed to innovation and development.” But, he said, another focus of the Trump administration will be making “smart choices” and being “more creative” around how the government allocates its public research and development dollars. * * * Kratsios said the government could make use of prizes, advanced market commitments, and fast and flexible grants like those used during COVID, to multiply the impact of government-funded research and quicken the research process. * * * What Kratsios didn’t mention was how he plans to navigate these academia partnerships as the Trump administration simultaneously cuts grants to universities and makes sweeping cuts across various agencies, including to science departments. (Fortune)
The remarks are worth reading for what they are--an expression of the aspirational operational coding of his function within the bureaucracy. Nonetheless, the remarks may be of far greater interest for the foundational structural premises and worldview on which they are based. The following reflections on Mr. Kratsios speech is divided into 8 parts: 1. The Mimetic Character of the Marching Orders; 2. The Mimetic Narrative of Objective, Mimicry as a Return to a Golden Age; 3. Renewal through innovation-modernization; 4. Protecting the Productive Masses Along the American Path Against the Corruption of Left Error; 5. The First American Sutra: We are Capable of So Much More; 6. The Structures of American Modernization; 7. The borders of the Golden Age State Must be Protected; and 8. The Second American Sutra: There is No Substitute for Victory.
1. The Mimetic Character of the Marching Orders. Mr. Kratsios' remarks ought to be read in the shadow of President Trump's 26 March 2025 "A Letter to Michael Kratsios, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy," also posted to the White House website. It also follows below. The marching orders are fascinating if only because of its mimetic character; the President replays the origin story of the last golden age transformation that (sort of) worked--that of President Roosevelt near the end of his leadership, the institutional structures of which, of course, President Trump means to demolish. What is to be saved, though, are the narratives of tech.
"The triumphs of the last century did not happen by chance. As World War II drew towards a close, President Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote a letter like this one to his science and technology advisor, Vannevar Bush, charging him to explore new frontiers of the mind for the sake of national greatness and pioneer science in peacetime. . . So, just as FDR tasked Vannevar Bush, I am tasking you with meeting the challenges below to deliver for the American people" (A Letter to Michael Kratsios).
The interesting thing here, among others, is the sort of liberal democratic Leninism that also marked Mr. Trump's golden age as engineered by the democratic Party, its leadership and its "brain trust" in the 1930s-40s: state leadership of strategic economic development towards specific ends for which the market will served as both incubator (and risk bearer) and operational level apparatus for the realization of state policy. At its edges, it is hard to distinguish this from the fundamental premises of Chinese 3rd Plenum articulations of socialist modernization (e.g. here) but with American characteristics. And the framing questions that serve as direction?:
First: How can the United States secure its position as the unrivaled world leader in critical and emerging technologies — such as artificial intelligence, quantum information science, and nuclear technology — maintaining our advantage over potential adversaries?Who better to approach these questions from the perspective and interests of the state than the person who might well had a hand in the formulation of both question and preferred approach during the 1st Administration of President Trump, when "we made unprecedented advances in America’s scientific and technological leadership." (Ibid.).
Second: How can we revitalize America’s science and technology enterprise — pursuing truth, reducing administrative burdens, and empowering researchers to achieve groundbreaking discoveries?
Third: How can we ensure that scientific progress and technological innovation fuel economic growth and better the lives of all Americans? (A Letter to Michael Kratsios).
2. The Mimetic Narrative of Objective, Mimicry as a Return to a Golden Age. Return is necessarily mimetic--it is not just a striving for time traveling back to the past to pick up where a point of interruption occurred, but also to bring forward the lebneswelt of that time before the interruption. In this case the interruption of the Democratic Party Administration of President Biden and his apparatus of "error" and "deviation." One gets back on the path--not China's Socialist path toward the establishment of a communist society, but the American Path toward "the Golden Age of American Innovation" and progress toward where ever it is that Progress takes us. Mr. Kratsios starts with the invocation of a narrative trope--"the renewal of our nation" (Remarks by Director Kratsios)-- that is almost indistinguishable from a core element of contemporary Chinese policy/principle, “中华民族伟大复兴” the great rejuvenaiton of the Chinese nation tied to what General Secretary Xi had embedded in the more general concept of the Chinese Dream. The resonance between the Chinese and American political elites at least in this respect is unavoidable. Both speak in terms of recovering past glory and returning both states to the proper pathway toward the realization of national perfection. The only difference, and it is a big one, appears to be the path toward perfection--the Chinese socialist path and the American path toward its golden age do not appear to converge at any point (at least as theory) though their objects in terms of national welfare are similar. Renewal is as strong a discursive element of the Trump Administration as it appears to be under the leadership of Xi Jinping.
3. Renewal through innovation-modernization. In the current era of American historical development, Mr. Kratsios tells us, it is necessary to focus on innovation within the leading fields of economic development. "I know, and I think you know, too, that such a renewal will require the reinvigoration of American science and industry. Over the last few decades, America has become complacent, forgetting old dreams of building a wondrous future." (Remarks by Director Kratsios). Again, there is a looking back and a springing forward--a return to the ways of thinking of an earlier era ("American pioneer spirit still seeks the exploration of endless frontiers" Ibid.) the pathways of which were disrupted through corruption and misdirection. And that pathway is marked by the objects that evidence a modernizing embrace of innovation, and is as inevitable as the Socialist Path toward communism; it is, in Mr. Krastsios' words, a manifested destiny that is unavoidable even in the face of corruption and dangerous deviation ("our technologies, and what we do with them, will be the tools with which we will make the destiny of our country manifest in this century." Id.). And also, like the socialist path is inextricably linked to politics--and therefor to a proper alignment of public power and mass innovative capacity:
Yet this American hope in the possibility of progress and the power of science and technology does not allow builders and innovators to retreat from politics. Indeed, quite the opposite, which is what brings me here today. A Golden Age is only possible if we choose it. (Remarks by Director Kratsios).
The convergence isn't one of ideology; far from it. But it suggests a convergence of form and objective within quite distinctive cognitive cages. These conceptual cages (the systems for collective shraed meaning and the baseline rationalization of the world through principles of perceiving and knowing) are similarly constructed, and the way in which such cages, when fully articulated, provide the forms, structures, frameworks and approaches both for rationalizing collective challenge, to articulate collective objectives, and to operationalize the principles around which the rationalization of collective realities are structured. Mr. Kratsios has nicely deployed the central elements of the American imaginary and pointed it toward quite specific ends which, given his reading, are unavoidable and inevitable if the U.S. is to realize its promise. But. . . .and this is a big but and the focus of the rest of the remarks--to those ends the masses must be organized ("only possible if we choose it)" within the parameters for such mass management compatible with the American political-economic model-.
4. Protecting the Productive Masses Along the American Path Against the Corruption of Left Error. One way of shining a light on the correct path is to identify error. And in the case of the United States since 2016 that has become an easier proposition as its elites have divided themselves, at least at the level of official discourse, between the discursive vision articulated by the Obama-Biden Administrations, and that of the 1st Trump Administration. For those who hold to the Trump path, the Obama-Biden vision is painted as the archetype of "left error." For the Obama-Biden camp, the Trump Administration is the epitome of "right error." The political language is of course much more intemperate, each drawing by analogy on earlier examples of the apotheosis of these errors by invoking the worst characteristics of the totalitarian regimes of the first half of the 20th century. Mr. Kratsios does not do that; instead he invokes the more traditional and moderate language of error in its theological and perhaps ideological senses, as a deviation which if uncorrected can imperil the immortal soul of the nation. The error is all the more threatening because the masses are free to be guided either toward the light or into darkness in every generation.
There is nothing predestined about technological progress and scientific discovery. They require the efforts and energies of men and women, the collective choice for order and truth over disorder and opinion. The last century was called the American Century, as—despite wars and domestic conflict—the United States stood at the forefront of science and technology, building the future.* * * Today we fight to restore that inheritance. As the failure of the Biden administration’s “small yard, high fence” approach makes clear, it is not enough to seek to protect America’s technological lead. We also have a duty to promote American technological leadership. * * * Stagnation was a choice. We have weighed down our builders and innovators. The well-intentioned regulatory regime of the 1970s became an ever-tightening ratchet, first hampering America’s ability to become a net-energy exporter and then making it harder and harder to build.* * * But we are capable of so much more. (Remarks by Director Kratsios).
Most interesting, perhaps, is the recognition that in a political-economic system driven by markets (understood as the aggregation over time of the individual choices and decisions of autonomous individuals with collective and political-social consequences) some sort of guidance is needed; and that guidance must come, in some form and with whatever level of accommodation is can tolerate, of the core of leadership of the political order. That is, that the operating system must be coded, and that this operating system, grounded in the choices that give it form, direction, and analytical power (what is preferred over what is to be avoided) is inherently both collective and political.
5. The First American Sutra: We are Capable of So Much More. Mr. Kratsios very briefly suggests the outlines of operational innovation--the forms that new or high quality productivity will both produce on on which it will move the U.S. to the next stage of its historical development. "Our technologies permit us to manipulate time and space. They leave distance annihilated, cause things to grow, and improve productivity." (Remarks by Director Kratsios). These will be deployed, Mr. Kratsios reminds us, quoting Vice President Vance, toward goals that are meant, in part, to improve the lives of the working masses: "of extending human ability so that more people can do more, and, more meaningful work"(Ibid.). But the fundamental distinction between the correct path and left error now becomes clear in the light of advancing productivity--left error "borrows from the future," the correct path requires "doing more with less"--that is both a fundamentally curious approach to sustainability, and a hint of the objectives of technological innovation within the parameters of the Trumpian golden age ideology. But note the key element here--it is not that innvation has ceased, it is that innovation has gone underground, to other places, or is otherwise misdirected, where direction ought to come from the political-policy center (the latter point one that both the Trump and Obama-Biden visions share): "Advances have not stopped, but something has gone wrong." (Ibid.).
6. The Structures of American Modernization. If, as Mr. Kratsios suggests, the American ideological operating system requires direction (its coders and quality control functionaries) , and that this direction is both collective and political, then analysis can narrow down to the precise expression of that guidance in any stage of national historical development. Here Mr. Kratsios gets down to some directional detail:
"Our first assignment is to secure America’s preeminence in critical and emerging technologies. This administration will ensure that our nation remains the leader in the industries of the future with a strategy of both promotion and protection—protecting our greatest assets and promoting our greatest innovators. (Remarks by Director Kratsios)
Market driven innovation has political consequences, those consequences are the responsibility of the political hierarchy, the apex hierarchs have a responsibility for developing policy (mandatory and nudging) as a current expression and application of core principles bent toward the realization of ultimate goals. Here the political goal is to shape the market, and the direction of individual or private, activities within it, toward a metrics accessible (assuming agreement on the principles on which the metrics are based and the forms of measurement) goal--(1) preeminence, in (2) critical and emerging, (3) tech, (4) built around, (5)industries of the future, (6) through a national political strategy , (7) of promotion and protection, of (8) the critical factors of its production. It is in this objective that the failures of "left error" become most apparent to Mr. Kratsios:
To the degree it even tried to accomplish this, the Biden administration failed on its own terms, led by a spirit of fear rather than promise. The old regime sought to protect its managerial power from the disruptions of technology, while promoting social division and redistribution in the name of equity. They secured American technology poorly, and failed to strengthen our leadership at all. (Remarks by Director Kratsios)
To overcome this left error, Mr. Kratsios suggests, the state apparatus must be burdened with three responsibilities:
First, we have to make the smart choices of creatively allocating our public research and development dollars. Second, we have to make the right choices in constructing a common-sense, pro-innovation regulatory regime. And third, we have to make the easy choice to adopt the incredible products and tools made by American builders and to enable their export abroad. (Remarks by Director Kratsios)Strategic use of research funds by the state, high quality innovation in regulatory regimes bent toward the fulfillment of policy goals, and then the aggressive export f the products of this model elsewhere (both the model of innovation and its products). These then suggest a large range of recent actions undertaken by the Trump administration against officials, institutions, and intergovernmental relations that are viewed as either remnants of left error or that are in the way of the state undertaking these strategies as they understand them. Mr. Kratsios summarizes with respect to these three State objectives what has already been widely reported in the press: taking back and re-arranging State research funding to align with State objectives; regulatory reform also tied to State objectives and the rectification of the techno-bureaucratic establishment so that its working style will align with State objectives; and the re-invigoration of a re-imaged 19th century form of American merchant diplomacy and integrated economic order.
7. The borders of the Golden Age State Must be Protected. That this new golden age is not meant to be globally hegemonic is made clear by the focus, a critically important one for the Trump Administration, of borders and sovereignty. That focus, in turn, is grounded in a cognitive order that sees adverse interests among peer states, and opportunity among the rest.
First, we must safeguard U.S. intellectual property and take seriously American research security. Second, we must prevent rival nations from infiltrating our infrastructure and supply chains, as well as from embedding themselves in the infrastructure of our allies. And third, we must enforce export controls and other measures that keep American frontier technologies out of competitors’ hands. (Remarks by Director Kratsios)
To those ends, there is an impulse both to project benignly into the rest in well ordered socio-commercial engagements, and to decisively construct well managed borders against the rest. In this case the object is China, the only real peer state at the moment and one which shares the core structural elements of both the rationalization of global spaces and their roles in it).
China in particular has grown into both a geopolitical rival and technological competitor. This threat requires us to protect our science and technology resources with heightened vigilance, and defend the vital work American researchers do in public and corporate contexts alike from misuse, theft, and disruption. (Remarks by Director Kratsios)
Border, of course, are meant to keep things people, objects, tech, etc. both in and out. Mr. Kratsios emphasized both elements especially in the context of the Chinese relationship. Chinese products are to be kept out (these are now understood as a form of subsidized dependency--and thus inverting the core of the project of globalization and its own imaginaries in a world view that now rejects both the possibility and the value of global convergence based in part on the gifting of national advantage as either driver of convergence or reparation).
8. The Second American Sutra: There is No Substitute for Victory. Mr. Kratsios ends by bringing this tech based project back to its place within the broader elements of the Basic Line of the Trump Administration. First it requires rectification of the errors of the Obama-Biden error to restore the nation to its march along the American path to the realization and perfection of its political-economic system. That realization is measured, in turn by the strength of its ability to protect the nation and to make the lives of its masses better while perfecting the political-economic system within which, with political guidance, that is made possible: As Mr. Kratsios puts it: "the task ahead of us is to adapt to new realities without destroying the American way of life or dis-inheriting the American worker. We seek, in the most basic terms, to secure our economy, restore our middle class, and uphold America as the planet’s best home for innovators." (Remarks by Director Kratsios). And what is the measure of success? Victory!
But there is no substitute for victory. ** * In a world so shaped by politics as well as technology, we must take action in both of these domains. We need all Americans to continue to rise to the occasion, to make full use of their talents, and to build.(Ibid.)To those ends the masses must unite under the leadership and guidance of the center to ensure that individual effort can be aggregated, in the fundamental working style of American markets driven organization, to "preserve the inheritance of the American Century to share with posterity, and to ensure that the technologies that give shape to our world help the American people secure the blessings of liberty we received from our forebearers * * * and drive us further into the endless frontier." (Remarks by Director Kratsios). That, anyway, is the theory and its expression.
The text of A Letter to Michael Kratsios, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policyand of Remarks by Director Kratsios at the Endless Frontiers Retreat follow below.
Pix credit ChatGPT (instruction: create image protecting the border of an opulent golden age against invadors
March 26, 2025
Dear Mr. Kratsios:
Scientific progress and technological innovation were the twin engines that powered the American century. The Manhattan Project fueled the atomic era. The Apollo Program won us the space race. The internet connected us to a digital future. Today, we will usher in the Golden Age of American Innovation. We will make America safer, healthier, and more prosperous than ever before. We will create a future of American greatness for every citizen, restoring the American Dream.
The triumphs of the last century did not happen by chance. As World War II drew towards a close, President Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote a letter like this one to his science and technology advisor, Vannevar Bush, charging him to explore new frontiers of the mind for the sake of national greatness and pioneer science in peacetime. Dr. Bush’s response laid the groundwork for the uniquely successful American partnership of Government, industry, and academia that built the greatest and most productive nation in human history.
But today, rivals abroad seek to usurp America’s position as the world’s greatest maker of marvels and producer of knowledge. We must recapture the urgency which propelled us so far in the last century. The time has come to return to our roots and renew the American scientific enterprise for the century ahead. So, just as FDR tasked Vannevar Bush, I am tasking you with meeting the challenges below to deliver for the American people.
First: How can the United States secure its position as the unrivaled world leader in critical and emerging technologies — such as artificial intelligence, quantum information science, and nuclear technology — maintaining our advantage over potential adversaries?
We need to accelerate research and development, dismantle regulatory barriers, strengthen domestic supply chains and manufacturing, spur robust private sector investment, and advance American companies in global markets. Rival nations are pushing hard to overtake the United States, and we must blaze a bold path to maintain our technological supremacy.
Second: How can we revitalize America’s science and technology enterprise — pursuing truth, reducing administrative burdens, and empowering researchers to achieve groundbreaking discoveries?
We need new paradigms for the research enterprise, including innovative models for funding and sharing scientific research, redefining how America conducts the business of discovery. We must build an ecosystem that attracts top talent, celebrates merit, protects our intellectual edge, and enables scientists to focus on meaningful work rather than administrative box checking.
Third: How can we ensure that scientific progress and technological innovation fuel economic growth and better the lives of all Americans?
During my first term, we made unprecedented advances in America’s scientific and technological leadership. We launched the American Artificial Intelligence Initiative, vaulting the United States to the front of the pack in the development and deployment of artificial intelligence. Our National Quantum Initiative established the foundation for national quantum supremacy. We created the United States Space Force and charted a new and daring course for America’s further exploration of space. All of this buttressed our security and bolstered our prosperity, and it reaffirmed America’s place as the world’s preeminent technological superpower.
Now, after 4 long years of weakness and complacency, we must set our sights even higher. I am calling upon you to blaze a trail to the next frontiers of science. We have the opportunity to cement America’s global technological leadership and usher in the Golden Age of American Innovation. We are not just competing with other nations; we are seeking, striving, fighting to make America greater than ever before.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Trump
* * *
Remarks by Director Kratsios at the Endless Frontiers Retreat
THE GOLDEN AGE OF AMERICAN INNOVATION
AS PREPARED FOR DELIVERY
Endless Frontiers Retreat, Austin, Texas
April 14, 2025
THE DIRECTOR: Thank you for the kind introduction. It is a pleasure to speak to you all this evening, here in the early light of the new Golden Age of America.
President Trump has given all of us who serve in his administration a monumental task—the renewal of our nation.
I know, and I think you know, too, that such a renewal will require the reinvigoration of American science and industry. Over the last few decades, America has become complacent, forgetting old dreams of building a wondrous future.
But we know the American pioneer spirit still seeks the exploration of endless frontiers. Our technologies, and what we do with them, will be the tools with which we will make the destiny of our country manifest in this century.
Yet this American hope in the possibility of progress and the power of science and technology does not allow builders and innovators to retreat from politics. Indeed, quite the opposite, which is what brings me here today. A Golden Age is only possible if we choose it.
***
There is nothing predestined about technological progress and scientific discovery. They require the efforts and energies of men and women, the collective choice for order and truth over disorder and opinion.
The last century was called the American Century, as—despite wars and domestic conflict—the United States stood at the forefront of science and technology, building the future. With the strength of our industry and ingenuity, we created the largest middle class the world has ever seen. As President Trump said to me in his letter laying out the science and technology agenda of this administration, “The triumphs of the last century did not happen by chance.”
Ours was the Atomic Age. Ours the victory in the Space Race. And ours the invention of the Internet, collecting and connecting the multiplicity of human knowledge.
Today we fight to restore that inheritance. As the failure of the Biden administration’s “small yard, high fence” approach makes clear, it is not enough to seek to protect America’s technological lead. We also have a duty to promote American technological leadership.
***
A gap lies between our moment and the speed of transformation America experienced midcentury. Progress has slowed. Yes, large language models astonish us, rockets still turn our eyes upward, and satellites envelop the globe. But as we look forward to America’s 250th birthday celebration next year, our progress today pales in comparison to the huge leaps of the 20th century. Consider the country of fifty years ago.
As the nation approached its bicentennial, Americans looked forward to electricity too cheap to meter. By the end of 1972, 30 nuclear plants were operational, 55 were under construction, and more than 80 were planned or ordered. That same year, the Apollo 17 astronauts became the 11th and 12th men to walk on the moon. Five years before, the X-15 rocket plane had set a speed record for a crewed aircraft of Mach 6.7. America was flying higher, faster, and farther than ever before…
Today, however, energy prices still burden producers and consumers alike, and the grid remains precarious. Over the past 30 years only three commercial nuclear reactors have been built and 10 have been closed. Despite spending almost twice as much on healthcare as peer nations, we have the lowest life expectancy. Apollo 17’s steps on the lunar surface have proved mankind’s last. The X-15’s record still stands, and the Concorde was decommissioned more than two decades ago. Our passenger planes are slower than they used to be. Our trains crawl compared to those in other parts of the world. Our cars do not fly
Advances have not stopped, but something has gone wrong.
***
Stagnation was a choice. We have weighed down our builders and innovators. The well-intentioned regulatory regime of the 1970s became an ever-tightening ratchet, first hampering America’s ability to become a net-energy exporter and then making it harder and harder to build. We seem to have lost focus and vision, to have lowered our sights and let systems and structures and bureaucracies muddle us along.
But we are capable of so much more.
Our technologies permit us to manipulate time and space. They leave distance annihilated, cause things to grow, and improve productivity.
As Vice President Vance said in a recent speech, the tradition of American innovation has been one of increasing the capacities of America’s workers, of extending human ability so that more people can do more, and, more meaningful work. But unrestricted immigration, and reliance on cheap labor both domestically and offshore, has been a substitute for improving productivity with technology.
We can build in new ways that let us do more with less, or we can borrow from the future. We have chosen to borrow from the future again and again. Our choice as a civilization is technology or debt. And we have chosen debt.
Today we choose a better way.
***
Our first assignment is to secure America’s preeminence in critical and emerging technologies. This administration will ensure that our nation remains the leader in the industries of the future with a strategy of both promotion and protection—protecting our greatest assets and promoting our greatest innovators.
To the degree it even tried to accomplish this, the Biden administration failed on its own terms, led by a spirit of fear rather than promise. The old regime sought to protect its managerial power from the disruptions of technology, while promoting social division and redistribution in the name of equity. They secured American technology poorly, and failed to strengthen our leadership at all.
Promoting America’s technological leadership requires three things of government. First, we have to make the smart choices of creatively allocating our public research and development dollars. Second, we have to make the right choices in constructing a common-sense, pro-innovation regulatory regime. And third, we have to make the easy choice to adopt the incredible products and tools made by American builders and to enable their export abroad.
In a moment of strategic significance, we must be more creative in our use of public research and development money, and shape a funding environment that makes clear what our national priorities are. Whether in AI, quantum, biotech, or next-generation semiconductors, in partnership with the private sector and academia, it is the duty of government to enable scientists to create new theories and empower engineers to put them into practice. Prizes, advance market commitments, and other novel funding mechanisms, like fast and flexible grants, can multiply the impact of government-funded research.
At a time defined by the desire to build in America again, we have to throw off the burden of bad regulations that weigh down our innovators, and use federal resources to test, to deploy, and to mature emerging technologies. We know, for example, the greatest obstacle to limitless energy in this country has been a regulatory regime opposed to innovation and development. This, too, has been the chief barrier to pushing the envelope again in transportation, whether supersonic aircraft or high-speed rail and flying cars. The time has come to review the rules on the books and to ask whom they really protect and what they really cost.
For a future stamped with the American character, the federal government must become an early adopter and avid promoter of American technology. Our innovators make incredible breakthroughs, but consumers, government included, require products that meet their needs, not just the wide-open country of frontier technology. Our industrial might, unleashed at home, and our technical achievements from AI to aerospace, successfully commercialized, can also be powerful instruments of diplomacy abroad and key components of our international alliances. American progress in critical technologies will make us the global partner of choice and the standards setter to follow if we enable and encourage American companies to distribute the American tech stack around the world.
***
This approach to promoting America’s technological leadership goes hand in hand with a threefold strategy for protecting that position from foreign rivals. First, we must safeguard U.S. intellectual property and take seriously American research security. Second, we must prevent rival nations from infiltrating our infrastructure and supply chains, as well as from embedding themselves in the infrastructure of our allies. And third, we must enforce export controls and other measures that keep American frontier technologies out of competitors’ hands.
We face many dangers as a nation, but thanks to decades of feckless American leaders, China in particular has grown into both a geopolitical rival and technological competitor. This threat requires us to protect our science and technology resources with heightened vigilance, and defend the vital work American researchers do in public and corporate contexts alike from misuse, theft, and disruption. To safeguard our intellectual capital, we must restrict foreign access to sensitive data and strengthen oversight of international collaborators.
Our infrastructure, supply chains, and those of our allies must be secured, too. We cannot afford to remain dependent, as we are in too many essential industries, on Chinese inputs and products, nor can we allow our closest partners to become points of insecurity by relying on Chinese-controlled critical infrastructure, whether in telecom, the grid, or AI. We must establish and secure trusted supply chains, implement public-private partnerships to enhance supply-chain resilience, and create investment incentives to reshore more critical manufacturing.
Finally, after thirty years of subsidizing Chinese growth, it is time for us to stop helping a rival catch up with us in this race. Strict and simple export controls and know your customer rules, with an unapologetic America-first attitude about enforcing them, are central to stopping China from continuing to build itself up at our expense. We want peace between our countries, and that peace depends on keeping America’s bleeding-edge technology out of our competitor’s hands.
***
The Golden Age of American innovation is on our horizon, if we choose it.
In a changing technological environment, the task ahead of us is to adapt to new realities without destroying the American way of life or dis-inheriting the American worker. We seek, in the most basic terms, to secure our economy, restore our middle class, and uphold America as the planet’s best home for innovators.
For many years now the temptation for the kinds of people represented in this room—builders and discoverers—has been to withdraw from politics. In the face of burdensome regulation and inefficient government and the circus of election cycles, many of you have chosen retreat of various kinds.
But there is no substitute for victory. You and your fellow Americans cannot afford to give up on the nation. In a world so shaped by politics as well as technology, we must take action in both of these domains. We need all Americans to continue to rise to the occasion, to make full use of their talents, and to build.
All of us must labor to preserve the inheritance of the American Century to share with posterity, and to ensure that the technologies that give shape to our world help the American people secure the blessings of liberty we received from our forebearers. I bear that responsibility in my role as the President’s Science and Technology Advisor. You bear it, too, in exercising whatever powers and responsibilities you have, whether in business, education, or the laboratory—as Americans.
It is the choices of individuals that will make the new American Golden Age possible: the choice of individuals to master the sclerosis of the state, and the choice of individuals to craft new technologies and give themselves to scientific discoveries that will bend time and space, make more with less, and drive us further into the endless frontier.
No comments:
Post a Comment