US Trails China in Key Tech Areas, New Report Warns

[beijingwalker]

US Trails China in Key Tech Areas, New Report Warns​

Ex-Google, DOD leaders paint dire picture unless U.S. organizes to win technology races.​

By LAUREN C. WILLIAMS and PATRICK TUCKER
SEPTEMBER 12, 2022 06:38 PM ET

Imagine a future in which the most skilled U.S. tech workers can’t find jobs, authoritarian regimes exert more power than democratic governments, freedom of expression is replaced by open censorship, and no one believes the U.S. military can deter conflict. All this could happen if China surpasses the United States in key technology areas, according to a new report from the Special Competitive Studies Project, led by former Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work and Google co-founder Eric Schmidt.

The 189-page report, released on Monday, looks at current and future technology competition between the United States and China—from microelectronics supply to tech talent retention to the effects of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence on tomorrow’s national security.

“In our judgment, China leads the United States in 5G, commercial drones, offensive hypersonic weapons, and lithium-battery production,” the report said, while the U.S. is ahead in biotech, quantum computing, cloud computing, commercial space technologies, and has a small lead in artificial intelligence.

Work said Monday’s report is an effort to help retain U.S. leads and reduce Chinese advantages gained during the decades-long war in Afghanistan.

“We didn't really respond as we normally have done in the past,” Work told reporters during a Defense Writers Group event. “This is a real technical competition. It is absolutely critical to the future of our country as well as democracies worldwide, and we must win it. And this starts to give recommendations on how we organize ourselves for the competition and how do we win it.”

The report is a continuation of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, which published several reports and hundreds of recommendations, including how the Defense Department should buy software and organize itself to take advantage of advances in AI.

“The solution to the problems that China has is more investment in areas that are competitive with us,” Schmidt told reporters.


He said that despite its internal problems, the country will spend more to develop AI, quantum, software, semiconductors, biosecurity, biosafety, and synthetic biology.
The report lays out dozens of recommendations for policy-makers and leaders in the military and private sector about how the United States retains (or finds) the edge in various areas.
Some of the top recommendations include:

• Develop a “national process for horizon scanning for emerging technologies and rivals’ strategies that draws on a range of experts.” Create strategic plans to reach milestones in specific technology areas.
• Launch an effort, possibly with government funds, to move new technologies like 5G and AI from the lab to market more quickly.
• Bolster tech-regulatory bodies to oversee new products, services, and uses involving artificial intelligence and ensure that they work in the public interest. “Existing regulatory bodies have the sector expertise that allows for tailoring rules, ensuring AI governance complements existing nonAI governance, and assessing impacts,” the report said.
• Develop a technology alliance among democratic allies to coordinate policies, investments, etc.

The report also features a number of recommendations specific to the U.S. military, such as

• Fully embrace distributed, network-based operations to give more power to smaller, more nimble units that can act across land, sea, air, space and cyberspace (or multi-domain.) “Develop and experiment with smaller…highly-connected, and organically resilient, multi-domain units that practice network-based decision-making and effects, not just hierarchy-based decision-making.”
• Undermine adversaries’ ability to censor networks and media. This would be especially important if China invades Taiwan. “By helping ordinary Chinese citizens during times of war thwart automatic censors and by placing the burden on regime human censors, the United States can help expand the public discourse beyond the regime’s control.”
• Plan for what you can’t plan for, because new asymmetric tools are changing the battlefield faster than military doctrine and old-fashioned planning can keep up. “The current method of war planning runs the risk of producing a situation in which the U.S. military could run out of munitions or assets before reaching the end of conflict. Second, the resource straight-jacketing embedded in the current planning methods limits the development of innovative concepts and reduces the ability of Combatant Commanders to influence the development of new capabilities.”
• Develop war plans that attack biases and weaknesses in adversarial AI by manipulating data, among other techniques. “In the near term, the focus of U.S. counter-autonomy efforts could include identifying means and generating access to take over adversaries’ AI-enabled systems to extend our sensing deep inside their territory and within its decision-making.”

Drone warfare
The report notes that drones have been crucial to Ukraine’s effort to fight off Russian invaders, a harbinger of wars to follow.
“Drones will be as important in the first battle of the next war as artillery is today,” Work said. “So we are seeing, already, how drones are going to be more central to operations for the United States and our allies and see that happening in real time and Ukraine.”

Such weapons will be “ubiquitous throughout the battlefield,” the former deputy defense secretary said, which will make outlining specific use cases, tactics and procedures that avoid unintended engagements against civilians, among other scenarios, so important.

“Guarantee these things are going to be everywhere. They already, you know, dominate the battlefield,” Work said.
Indeed, Schmidt, who recently traveled to Ukraine, said the local tech industry was helping the beleaguered country put drones and autonomy to work.

“There's a whole focus around getting an army of drones and they seem to be very good at using drones in their war tactics. And the programmers and so forth, have been very good at hacking the drones and using them,” he said. “And I can just report that based on my small amount of data that the Ukrainian tech industry really did make a contribution to the fight.”

US Trails China in Key Tech Areas, New Report Warns

Ex-Google, DOD leaders paint dire picture unless U.S. organizes to win technology races.

www.defenseone.com

 

[Menthol]

Faster technological advancement is good for the entire humanity.

The bad thing is unfair competition.

Instead of progress, each other is tackling each other, hindering technological advancement.

 

[beijingwalker]

Experts Warn US Is Falling Behind China in Key Technologies​

September 17, 2022 3:07 AM

• Rob Garver

FILE - Visitors look at the Chinese military's J-16D electronic warfare airplane during an air show, Sept. 29, 2021, in Zhuhai, China. Some observers are warning that the U.S. faces an uncertain future in which China and other nations could challenge its technological dominance.

At a gathering of current and former U.S. officials and private-sector executives Friday in Washington, concern was rampant that the United States has fallen behind China in the development of several key technologies, and that it faces an uncertain future in which other countries could challenge its historic dominance in the development of cutting-edge communications and computing technology.

The gathering was convened by the Special Competitive Studies Project, an effort spearheaded by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, the stated purpose of which is "to ensure that America is positioned and organized to win the techno-economic competition between now and 2030, the critical window for shaping the future."

Among attendees, the prevailing sentiment was that the nation's ability to actually win that competition was under threat.

Dire predictions

A few days before the summit, the SCSP issued a report predicting what would happen if China became the global technological leader.

"Understanding the stakes requires imagining a world in which an authoritarian state controls the digital infrastructure, enjoys the dominant position in the world's technology platforms, controls the means of production for critical technologies, and harnesses a new wave of general purpose technologies, like biotech and new energy technologies, to transform its society, economy and military," the report said.

FILE - China's President Xi Jinping is shown during the World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province, China, Nov. 23, 2020.
The report envisions a future where China, not the U.S., captures the trillions of dollars of income generated by the new technological advances and uses its leverage to make the case that autocracy, not democracy, is the superior form of government.

In the report's grim vision, China promotes the concept of a "sovereign" internet, where individual countries limit the flow of information to their people, and where China develops and possibly controls the key technology supporting critical infrastructure in countries around the world.

Finally, the report warns that under such a scenario, the U.S. military would lose its technological lead over China and other competitors, and China might be in a position to cut off the supply of "microelectronics and other critical technology inputs."

'Nothing is inevitable'

In an address to the summit, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan appeared to agree that the nation faces significant challenges in keeping pace with China in the development of new technology.

"We know that nothing is inevitable about maintaining America's core strength and competitive advantage in the world," Sullivan said. "And we know that it has to be renewed, revitalized and stewarded, and that is especially true when it comes to U.S. technological leadership."

In China, he said, "we're facing a competitor that is determined to overtake U.S. technology leadership and is willing to devote nearly limitless resources to do so."

FILE - Biden White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan speaks during the daily briefing at the White House in Washington, Oct. 26, 2021.
Sullivan also said, however, that President Joe Biden's administration is aware of the threat and has been working to meet it. In particular, Sullivan noted the recent passage of the CHIPS Act, which directs more than $50 billion toward establishing advanced microchip fabrication facilities in the U.S.

"We're making historically unprecedented investments, putting us back on track to lead the industries of the future," Sullivan said. "We're doubling down on our efforts to be a magnet for the world's top technical talent. We've adapted our technology protection tools to new geopolitical realities. And most importantly, we've done this in a way that is inclusive, force multiplying and consistent with our values."

Not 'fast enough'

H.R. McMaster, a retired Army general who served as national security adviser during the Trump administration, appeared as a panelist at the conference. He said that while progress is being made, the pace needs to be quickened.

"It's not going fast enough, because we're so far behind, because there's too many years of complacency based on flawed assumptions about the nature of the post-Cold War world," McMaster said.

He called for a more active effort to block China's technological advancement, saying, "We need export controls now, to prevent China from getting a differential advantage, [while] maintaining our competitive advantages."

China has repeatedly criticized U.S. efforts to impede its technological advancement, an issue that Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning addressed this week when asked about U.S. export controls.

"What the U.S. is doing is purely 'sci-tech hegemony,' " she said. "It seeks to use its technological prowess as an advantage to hobble and suppress the development of emerging markets and developing countries. While trumpeting a level playing field and a so-called 'rules-based order,' the U.S. cares only about 'America first' and believes might makes right. The U.S. probably hopes that China and the rest of the developing world will forever stay at the lower end of the industrial chain. This is not constructive."

5G as a warning

A recurring theme at the event was the development of 5G wireless internet technology, a field in which Western countries, including the U.S., fell far behind China. With the benefit of favorable treatment from Beijing, Chinese firms, specifically Huawei, developed a dominant global position in the provision of 5G networking equipment.

FILE - A 5G logo is displayed on a screen outside the showroom at the Huawei campus in Shenzhen city, in China's Guangdong province.
Concerned that having Chinese-made equipment serve as the backbone of sensitive communications technology could create an espionage or security risk, the U.S. and some of its allies mounted a global campaign to block the installation of Huawei's equipment, even if that meant significant delays in the rollout of 5G wireless service.

"The key message here is we need to make sure that what happened to us in 5G does not happen again," said Schmidt. "I cannot say that more clearly. You do not want to work on platform technologies that you use every day that are dominated by nondemocratic, nonopen systems."

Schmidt said that it would be difficult to stay ahead of China technologically, predicting that Beijing would "double down on competing in the areas that we care about," including artificial intelligence, quantum computing, biotechnology and others.

Maintaining relations

Jon Huntsman, a former U.S. ambassador to China, said that Americans are generally uninformed about how far China is ahead of the United States in some technologies. Now the vice chairperson of Ford Motor Company, Huntsman said that in the development of electric vehicles, for example, China is at least five years ahead of the U.S.

He said that the U.S. must walk a fine line to catch up with China in some areas and to maintain its advantage in others. In particular, he stressed the need to retain person-to-person business and other relationships with the Chinese people.

"Decoupling our people is not a good thing," he said. "We'll wind up with China right where we are with Russia if we do that." He added, "Decoupling is only going to create estrangement, misunderstandings and instability, globally, on the security side."

Experts Warn US Is Falling Behind China in Key Technologies

At Washington gathering, experts say country's future will be grim if it loses its ability to drive technological advances

www.voanews.com