Winning the great race on technology 

How do you win a race?   

You can hobble and try to slow down your opponent.   

Or you can run faster yourself.   

In the effort to lead – and define the values of – critical technologies, the United States and China are engaged in a great race.    

The United States has the most innovative society on earth, and can continue to lead if its scholars and researchers are given the right incentives. So far, the U.S. government and Congress have focused most of their energy on slowing China down through ever more stringent export controls, and preventing U.S. companies from investing in Chinese technology. The bipartisan desire to “hobble” China has made important inroads, but the strategy is fast reaching its limits.  

There is an alternative way to lead: jumpstarting our own innovation ecosystem by – among other things – fully funding the science portion of the CHIPS and Science Act. 

A year ago, the Biden administration and U.S. Congress – in a welcome show of bipartisanship –tried to help America’s most innovative scientists and companies run faster.  

Congress passed the CHIPS and Science Act with huge bipartisan support in July 2022. It authorized (but did not appropriate) $174 billion over the next five years for scientific research, especially into artificial intelligence, robotics, quantum computing, and a variety of other technologies. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) hailed the legislation, saying it will “go down as one of the major bipartisan achievements of this Congress.” 

Yet, for all the self-congratulatory talk – the science portion of the measure is not funded.  Significant gaps remain: Fiscal year 2023 funding was nearly $3 billion short of the authorized targets to go towards the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, while the 2024 request for these agencies falls over $5 billion short.   

Fully funding the Science Act would be money well spent.  Several studies have shown that every dollar spent on government R&D has at least five dollars’ worth of positive effects on society. 

Funding for the Science Act would not be particularly generous or out of line with U.S. history. In the 1960s, the federal government spent almost 6 percent of the total federal budget on non-defense R&D. That amount has dwindled dramatically since 1968, and for the past few decades, has hovered at less than 2 percent. Even with the Science Act, R&D would constitute just about or a little over 2 percent of the budget – a modest and worthwhile investment.  

This strategy has paid off handsomely in the past. Science-related investments made during the Republican Eisenhower administration trained a generation of the world’s best scientists, helped the U.S. win the Cold War, and resulted in enormous societal benefit that went beyond geo-politics. The internet, GPS satellites, the Google search engine, and the life-saving COVID vaccines all began with federal R&D dollars, to name just a few examples. 

Limited additional investments could have a transformative impact: for example, in AI, universities and government labs alone don’t have the resources to train large language models – so U.S. progress in this field is dependent on a few large companies. With some investment, a National AI Research Resource could unlock huge leaps in fusion technology or rapid, life-saving drug discovery. In biology, some public investment could jump-start our synthetic biology manufacturing sector, create high-quality jobs domestically, and avoid past mistakes such as the rapid off-shoring to China of US-invented battery technology.  

The U.S is in danger of letting a transformative opportunity slip away. After passing the CHIPS and Science Act, some now argue for drastic cuts in the proposed spending, claiming that it is less critical because it is not directly related to defense, and that it is cheaper to constraining China’s technological capabilities. Many in Congress are understandably worried about deficits, but it would be shortsighted to cut back on our national R&D efforts. 

There is no better, more efficient way to protect U.S. national security than to ensure that – in this technological race – we have what it takes to lead. Let’s not let the impressive, bipartisan achievement of the CHIPS and Science Act go to waste.  It’s time to run faster. 

Anja Manuel is the executive director of the Aspen Security Forum.