China’s Industrial Policy Funds Quantum Tech as Infrastructure & Outspends U.S.
(AsiaTimes) China is outspending the US in quantum computing, including $11 billion to build a single research facility in Hefei. By contrast, the US allocated $1.2 billion for quantum computing over the next five years. Overall, federal development funding in the US has fallen from 0.78% of GDP in 1988 to 0.39% in 2016.
To paraphrase Leon Trotsky, you may not be interested in industrial policy, but industrial policy is interested in you. The Asian model treats capital-intensive industry as infrastructure. It supports chip foundries with public funds the way we Americans subsidize airports or sports arenas.
The author urges the US to return with a vengeance to the strategies that won the Cold War.
-Forcing key high-tech industries onshore using defense subsidies/tax breaks
-Placing export controls on high tech (no more Boeing satellites to help China surveil its citizens)
-Change Defense Department budget priorities to emphasize war-winning advance technologies rather than legacy systems
-A new National Defense Education Act
-Create an alternative to the Belt and Road Initiative with Japan, South Korea, India and others
-Engineer a brain drain of China’s most talented scientific cadre.
NOTE: This is an overarching extensive article discussing multiple facets of a high-tech economy and the competition between the US and China. The original remarks were from David Goldman’s speech to the ‘Committee on the Present Danger’.
