Rebuilding American Manufacturing Event
The decades-old dictum of “innovate here, produce there” has stymied our nation’s technological progress and prowess. As Japan, Germany, Korea, Taiwan, and China have realized the benefits of “manufacturing-led” innovation systems, our nation, without innovative methods to produce newly developed technology, has failed to reap the benefits from our investments in R&D.
Our roundtable of senior leadership at the White House National Economic Council and U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services as well as a diversity of viewpoints across political ideologies from Breakthrough Energy, American Compass, MIT’s The Engine, and Employ America discussed competing with China on advanced manufacturing sectors (bioeconomic, semiconductor, quantum, etc.), supply chain resilience, and new visions for industrial policy that can stimulate regional development.
In an industry with such high fixed costs, the Chinese state’s subsidization gives such firms a great advantage and imperils U.S. competitiveness and national security. To curtail Chinese legacy chip dominance, the United States should weaponize its monopoly on electronic design automation software.
The technical advances fueled by leading-edge nodes are vital to our long-term competitiveness, but they too rely on legacy devices.
To tackle AI risks in grant spending, grant-making agencies should adopt trustworthy AI practices in their grant competitions and start enforcing them against reckless grantees.
As people become less able to distinguish between what is real and what is fake, it has become easier than ever to be misled by synthetic content, whether by accident or with malicious intent. This makes advancing alternative countermeasures, such as technical solutions, more vital than ever before.