5min chapter

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Technology, Defense, and American-Chinese Competition

Net Assessment

CHAPTER

The Problem With the Strategy Documents Claiming That the Threat Is Urgent

Sally Kohn: It's rare that people come out and make the case that we need to change the way we do business. She asks, why are so few people willing to say that or match the rhetoric with their proposals to fixing it?Kohn: I think what the administration would say is that they just saw bipartisan agreement for $52 billion subsidy into the semiconductor industry. But that's only the money part of it. There's so many other parts of it that I think that he would recognize are really deficient and got worse.

00:00
Speaker 3
So is the problem that the strategy documents claim that there's an urgent challenge but that it's not true or that they don't actually believe it or it is an urgent challenge and they can't convince the American people that it is? Because again, I think if it was urgent as some people imply then they themselves would be calling for much more thorough going change than they are. I mean, the fact that the Glenn Hubbard's and the Matthew Pottinger's of the world and Pottinger said a few weeks ago in the Wall Street Journal, it's like, yeah, when we care about Medicare and Social Security, that's not going to save Taiwan from China. So you know, that sort of thing. But it's so rare that people making the case that the threat is urgent. They're so rare that people come out and make the case that we need to change the way we do business. Why is that? Why are so few people willing to come forward and say that or match the rhetoric, you know, sort of align their rhetoric around the nature of the threat with their proposals to fixing it?
Speaker 1
I'll be quick and then let's that go and then I'll come back and be longer. I think the administrators, most of the people that are making decisions in the administration really believe it. And I don't know why they don't act like it or talk like it. I have thoughts about it. I have thoughts about why they aren't as forward about, for example, Ukraine and what needs to be done there. They don't want to be on the hook for it if things go south. And I think they are really worried that if things might go south or might be a prolonged stalemate. So, you know, who wants to own that? But for China, you know, Congress is willing to give the administration resources. Congress is willing to back it up and they just won't talk about it in the ways that I think it needs to be discussed. Zach?
Speaker 2
I mean, I think what the administration would say is that they, you know, we just saw bipartisan agreement for $52 billion subsidy into the semiconductor industry. But like, if I guess this is part of my issue with the article, if you're arguing that we need to treat this as an urgent challenge, I mean, the United States has put $50 billion into industrial policy that the United States doesn't do, that this is not business as usual as Eric Schmidt claims. This is totally different, right? And if you're arguing that the area you have to invest in is AI, and part of the reason they're arguing that they need to do this chip stuff is to make sure that the U.S. can compete, right, in terms of semiconductors so that we have the compute power to actually, you know, have domestic, a domestic industry that can build enough compute to compete with China and AI, then isn't that exactly, you know,
Speaker 1
isn't that exactly what Schmidt would have been arguing for? But that's only the money part of it. There's so many other parts of it that I think that he would recognize are really deficient and got worse. So all of the silly regulations to feed the Biden constituencies that are, you know, lobbying on more complicating factors, all of the policies that have led to inflation increasing. So now, you know, it's going to be 20% higher costs, lack of immigration reform, you wouldn't have, and there was an article in Bloomberg the other day that in the last 10 years, the United States has had 20 graduates of geodesy, which don't get me wrong. I didn't know what it was till I read it. But it's the study of the Earth's dimensions and gravitational fields. And it's what you have to have for GPS. Well, we're never going to have autonomous vehicles or the kind of military autonomous systems if we don't have precision GPS. Do you know how many China graduated in the last 10 years? 15. And that's what we're going to do. We're going to have a lot of opportunities, 1500. We would, why didn't we spend the student loan money on, you know, training workers that can build things and do things and make things start flying and, you know, getting immigration policy and, you know, funding universities to do R&D? If this is a national security imperative, like the Cold War, why aren't we doing stuff like that? And then we say, well, it also had $200 billion for stuff down the road. You don't think that's going to be just as politically different? So I mean, this is the problem with the piece is it doesn't have the politics in it. And it's just, it's a lot of politics too. So money, yeah, money is a huge first step, but then all the other pieces have to be in place. And we are doing anything to fix the other
Speaker 2
pieces. There are things like immigration, which like absolutely, you know, I spent some time around a bunch of governors recently and they were all complaining that they, they need workers, period, right? They need skilled workers. They need low skill workers. They need anybody they can get their hands on and that that's actually what's slowing down economies like in, in basically all across the country.

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