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Protecting U.S. Technological Advantage (2022)

Chapter: 1 Introduction

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Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Protecting U.S. Technological Advantage. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26647.
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1

Introduction

U.S. leadership in technology innovation is central to the nation’s interests, including its security, economic prosperity, and quality of life. To achieve that leadership, both the public and private sectors must weigh competing considerations. The scientific research and development (R&D) that leads to technological advances thrives in conditions of collaboration and the free exchange of information (NASEM, 2018a). The sharing of ideas, participation by others, movement of researchers among institutions and countries, and publication of the ever-growing body of research results (Figure 1-1) spur creativity and speed progress. At the same time, some of those technological advances must be protected to address concerns related to national security or economic competitiveness.

Research environments in which the dissemination of ideas and information is limited are, in general, less productive than open research environments (Felin and Zenger, 2014). The latter environments attract and accept ideas and contributions from multiple sources, whether inside or outside those environments. Subjecting hypotheses, research plans, and draft articles to review by others is a way to identify and correct problems and improve research processes and conclusions. Closed research environments, in contrast, constrain the amount of accumulated knowledge that can be applied to a problem and inhibit the dissemination of new ideas and technologies to others.

CONTEXT FOR THIS STUDY

The openness of its R&D enterprise helped make the United States the world’s leader in science and technology after World War II (Kraemer, 2006). It has created a science and technology ecosystem that fosters innovation, risk taking, and the incorporation of new ideas into new technologies. It also has attracted the world’s best scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs, whether born and educated in the United States or in other countries, to U.S. universities, companies, and government research organizations.

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Protecting U.S. Technological Advantage. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26647.
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Image
FIGURE 1-1 Science and engineering article publications, by country.
NOTE: Article counts from peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings in science and engineering fields, assigned to a region/country on a fractional-count basis.
SOURCE: NSB, 2021.

To achieve these national advantages, however, certain technological outputs from innovation processes must be protected from use by adversaries or other forms of dissemination (NRC, 2009). Government, academic, and business leaders uniformly recognize the need to limit the spread of certain kinds of strategically important information (NAS et al., 2009). Information and technologies related to national security are subject to a variety of constraints on accessibility; data on human research subjects may be restricted because of privacy concerns; and companies have incentives to keep some information secret as a potential source of competitive advantage, while government policies often support the protection of proprietary information. Accordingly, the United States has a well-developed system of protections used to limit unauthorized access to technology information, production, or use.

Achieving the right balance between openness and protection can be difficult, especially given recent changes in global capabilities and intentions. Today, the United States is facing a competitive international environment that is markedly different from the environment that played a large role in shaping the nation’s post–World War II competitive and research paradigms, policies, and procedures (NSB, 2020a). Once dominant in science, technology, and the industries based on those technologies, the United States and its allies are now competing against other countries with strong science and technology enterprises. One measure of this growing competitiveness, again as demonstrated by Figure 1-1, is the substantial increase in the numbers of scientific publications with authors from China, India, and other countries, such that the United States now

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Protecting U.S. Technological Advantage. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26647.
×

accounts for less than one-fifth of total publications.1 Recognizing the vital contributions that technologies make to their competitiveness, many countries have prioritized investments in their innovation ecosystems. As a result, increasing numbers of technologies, including those vital to military preparedness or economic growth, are being developed and produced in countries outside the United States, often as part of a broader international commercial sector or through global R&D and manufacturing consortia.

Technology itself has changed (NASEM, 2019a). Science, technology, and innovation are much more multidisciplinary, multinational, multipurpose, and interdependent today than in the past, which complicates efforts to protect individual technologies from competitors in either the military or commercial realm. Many new technologies are developed, built, and based on systems of other technologies. As discussed in the next chapter, these “platforms” contribute to the capabilities, scalability, and reduced cost of producing new technologies.2 They are widely—often globally—shared, are publicly available, and are difficult to protect without adverse impact on all the other technologies that use them.

STUDY PURPOSE, CHARGE, AND APPROACH

To review the protection of technologies that have strategic importance for national security in an era of openness and competition, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) asked the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (the National Academies) to convene an ad hoc committee to consider policies and practices related to the production and commercialization of research in domains critical to national security. In its charge (see Box 1-1), the committee was asked to answer three questions:

  1. Given today’s competitive environment, how should federal R&D funding agencies evaluate or bound the openness of science and encourage transition from idea to commercialization, considering the benefits and drawbacks of specific technology protection and commercialization options?
  2. What solutions are required to address market or institutional challenges, if any, related to the production and commercialization of advances discovered in research, particularly those that may have potentially significant impacts on U.S. national security?

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1 While publication counts are an inexact measure of R&D outcomes, the bibliometric data used in Figure 1-1 are selected by Elsevier from peer-reviewed scientific and technical journals “based on evaluation by an international group of subject matter experts.” The data are further screened by the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics at the National Science Foundation (NCSES, n.d.).

2 Notable examples of platforms include app stores, overnight fulfillment and delivery, the internet, genome editing, artificial intelligence, and 3D printing.

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Protecting U.S. Technological Advantage. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26647.
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  1. What are the appropriate policy changes related to research, production, commercialization, and technology protection that will help accelerate the marketing/fielding of advances stemming from U.S.-funded research within and to the benefit of the United States, in particular for technologies critical for national security leadership?

The committee addressed these questions in part by examining four specific science and technology domains that have substantial impacts on U.S. scientific leadership, economic growth, and national security: microelectronics (particularly semiconductors), artificial intelligence (AI), synthetic biology, and quantum computing. It also studied aspects of economic competitiveness crucial

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Protecting U.S. Technological Advantage. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26647.
×

to national security concerns, such as maintaining supply chains for defense-critical technologies. And the committee reviewed current legal, regulatory, and policy regimes to assess potential changes in policies and practices that would accelerate the commercialization of technologies critical to national security and economic strength. Based on its analysis in these areas, the committee offers in this report recommendations for changes to technology protection policies and practices that reflect the current realities of how technologies are developed and incorporated into new products and processes.

The committee examined technologies related to national security, but the range of such technologies is very broad. Today, military technologies often rely on R&D done in commercial companies, federal laboratories, independent research organizations, and universities. This R&D may occur anywhere in the world, not just in the United States. Furthermore, global power today is closely linked to economic influence, and economic influence is closely linked to technological leadership. Most of the advanced technologies that countries such as China have targeted for leadership are connected in some way to national security, whether because of their direct importance to military technologies or because of their broader effects on economic prosperity. Because of the many interconnections between civilian and defense uses of technologies, this report generally does not use the term “critical” technology, which has come to be associated with technologies necessary for national defense, referring instead to technologies of “strategic importance” to national security and economic competitiveness. Finally, the committee recognized that the world’s economies, particularly those of the leading world powers, are much more closely linked than they were in past decades, creating opportunities for leverage but, at the same time, constraints on available policy options.

NEW POLICIES FOR A NEW ERA

One way for the United States to protect strategically important technologies would be to “double down” on existing technology protection approaches, increasing restrictions on the movement of and access to information, technologies, and people. In today’s competitive environment, however, the committee believes that such actions would likely damage and slow the rate of innovation in the United States more than it would constrain the advances of other countries. Technologies are developed so rapidly and are so intertwined among sectors and nations that preparing a long list of specific technologies to restrict has little protective value, but instead would throw sand in the gears of the U.S. innovation system.

Similarly, identifying very broad areas of technology or technology platforms as strategic assets that require protection is likely to have a chilling effect on economic growth and, in a dual-use world, on national security. New ideas from basic research and new technologies based on that research are widely available in a world where many other countries have built strong science and technology infrastructures and where research is often conducted by broadly

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Protecting U.S. Technological Advantage. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26647.
×

distributed international collaborations. Forcing restrictions on research through the incremental, unilateral imposition of regulations and policies would likely slow research in the United States while having no effect elsewhere, creating more costs than benefits for the U.S. economy and society.3

Today, commercial and military advantage goes to those countries that are best able to implement research results most rapidly in the form of useful products, solutions, and processes. These have been, are, and will be the countries with the talent, innovation ecosystems, and resources needed for success.

In today’s world, the misappropriation of U.S. technology, while certainly real, is not the greatest threat posed by foreign competitors. Rather, the greatest threat is that the United States will inadvertently weaken its innovation ecosystem while other countries continue to emulate the actions that have historically produced the U.S. advantages in technology development and commercialization. To counter this threat, the United States needs to protect and extend its ability to develop new technologies and apply those technologies to problems in both the military and commercial spheres. Protecting and strengthening this ability is vitally more important than protecting specific technologies.

New circumstances call for a pivot from protecting technologies to protecting the advantages of the United States as a leader in technological innovation and development. To maintain its competitiveness, the United States needs to carefully manage its risks in the interdependent, global innovation system that produces today’s highly integrated, systems-based technologies, and to do so without trading away its ability to be the “first mover” in developing the disruptive technologies of tomorrow. More broadly, the challenge is to identify both opportunities to maintain or expand global leadership and ways in which the United States can manage national and economic security risks. The United States needs to recognize the elements of its national advantage; strengthen those elements to maintain its leadership in science, technology, and innovation; and identify and close any gaps in its security framework.

STRUCTURE OF THE REPORT

Chapter 2 of this report examines how technologies are developed and commercialized in today’s world. New technologies typically consist of tightly connected component technologies that make those new technologies more difficult to control, either by governments or by private industry. As noted earlier, many technologies are developed using powerful platforms that are widely shared among competing nations and function as underlying infrastructure for technology design, production, and use. Successful application of a technology often depends on the speed with which it can be developed and commercialized. The chapter explores these issues by examining four case studies of critical

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3 There are a few limited examples of voluntary global agreements to stop dissemination of scientific information, such as the Asilomar agreement.

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Protecting U.S. Technological Advantage. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26647.
×

technology development, focusing on semiconductors, artificial intelligence, synthetic biology, and quantum computing.

Chapter 3 examines the new competitive landscape now confronting the United States and explores the impact of these changes on the nation’s approach to managing the risks of strategically important technologies. The systems used by the United States to protect technologies of strategic importance for national security and economic competitiveness are based on assumptions that may no longer apply. Developing a risk management framework to protect U.S. technological advantages in a globally competitive landscape requires a fresh examination and reevaluation of policies and practices long used to protect technology.

Chapter 4 uses the rise of China as a case study of the kinds of competitive challenges the United States is facing today and will face in the future. China has specifically targeted particular technological domains as areas in which it is seeking global leadership. It has subsidized domestic industries; protected industries from international competition; purchased foreign companies in an effort to acquire technology developed abroad; compelled technology transfer in return for market access; and engaged in the theft of intellectual property through such means as espionage, the cyberhacking of businesses and research organizations, and the suborning of research decision-making protocols. At the same time, the United States and China are highly interdependent in science, technology, education, and commerce, which means that risks associated with technology development cannot be eliminated; instead, they must be actively managed.

Chapter 5 synthesizes the evidence and analyses of the previous chapters in the form of 13 findings. As discussed above, U.S. efforts to protect technologies may be counterproductive, slowing and limiting technology development and commercialization when it is the speed with which a technology is developed and applied that often is the critical factor in whether it yields national benefits.

Chapter 6 draws on the content of the previous chapters, on previously published reports, and on the experiences of committee members to present the committee’s conclusions and recommendations on how the United States can protect technologies in an era of openness and competition.

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Protecting U.S. Technological Advantage. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26647.
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Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Protecting U.S. Technological Advantage. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26647.
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Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Protecting U.S. Technological Advantage. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26647.
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Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Protecting U.S. Technological Advantage. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26647.
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Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Protecting U.S. Technological Advantage. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26647.
×
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Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Protecting U.S. Technological Advantage. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26647.
×
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Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Protecting U.S. Technological Advantage. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26647.
×
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Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Protecting U.S. Technological Advantage. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26647.
×
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Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Protecting U.S. Technological Advantage. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26647.
×
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U.S. leadership in technology innovation is central to our nation’s interests, including its security, economic prosperity, and quality of life. Our nation has created a science and technology ecosystem that fosters innovation, risk taking, and the discovery of new ideas that lead to new technologies through robust collaborations across and within academia, industry, and government, and our research and development enterprise has attracted the best and brightest scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs from around the world. The quality and openness of our research enterprise have been the basis of our global leadership in technological innovation, which has brought enormous advantages to our national interests.

In today’s rapidly changing landscapes of technology and competition, however, the assumption that the United States will continue to hold a dominant competitive position by depending primarily on its historical approach of identifying specific and narrow technology areas requiring controls or restrictions is not valid. Further challenging that approach is the proliferation of highly integrated and globally shared platforms that power and enable most modern technology applications.

To review the protection of technologies that have strategic importance for national security in an era of openness and competition, Protecting U.S. Technological Advantage considers policies and practices related to the production and commercialization of research in domains critical to national security. This report makes recommendations for changes to technology protection policies and practices that reflect the current realities of how technologies are developed and incorporated into new products and processes.

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