Fearmongers claim the 5G sky is falling: China is way ahead, and drastic measures are needed to catch up. But these claims are often based on poorly understood comparisons of 5G deployment. China’s 5G stats can paint a misleading picture if taken at face value.
With protectionist policies shielding their rear flank domestically, China’s digital firms are out to capture global market share. Their strategy hinges on state-backed innovation mercantilism—and their success will come at the cost of U.S. jobs, exports, and economic growth.
Colombia faces significant political, social, and economic hurdles in building its digital economy, yet its progress toward developing a robust strategy deserves recognition. It has an opportunity to be a trailblazer and regional role model.
A key component to any national advanced industry strategy—and one that should receive welcome bipartisan agreement—should be to help all 50 states expand their state development strategies and better align them to the overall mission of outcompeting China.
Some advocates are willing to take extreme steps to transform the U.S. broadband system, because they claim we require universal broadband networks capable of gigabit-per-second speeds. This is not true.
The president-elect’s overall approach to technology and innovation policy appears to be formulated to engage the government as an active partner alongside industry in spurring innovation—but also as a tougher regulator of many tech industries and technologies.
Critics accuse big tech companies of stifling innovation by buying start-ups just to kill them or by exerting such dominance that entrepreneurs don’t want to enter their markets. Neither claim holds up to logic or evidence.
The United States has no national, coordinated innovation policy system. In fact, its overall innovation system has been deteriorating. The country’s economic future and national security will depend on rising to the challenge of addressing this problem.
The State New Economy Index uses 25 indicators to measure the extent to which state economies are knowledge-based, globalized, entrepreneurial, IT-driven, and innovation-oriented.
A recent majority staff report summarizing the findings of a yearlong House Antitrust Subcommittee investigation into competition in digital markets is filled with analytical errors that highlight larger problems with the report’s basic framing and policy conclusions.
China’s subsidy-aided rise to dominance in PV manufacturing has driven prices way down, but at the cost of undermining promising alternative technological pathways. Policymakers should adopt measures to sustain greater diversity in PV and similar technologies.
Many countries rightly seek to maximize their value added in the global semiconductor industry. But like-minded allied nations can also advance their leadership collectively by collaborating on technology and ecosystem development, intellectual property, and trade liberalization.
The U.S. government should triple its annual investment in energy innovation over the next five years to speed clean energy transitions around the world and build advanced-energy industries at home.
Recent advances in gene editing offer promising opportunities to mitigate emissions from agriculture and other sectors, and to capture carbon from the atmosphere. Governments should accelerate the development and deployment of these solutions.
China is striving to become the global leader in biopharmaceuticals, but many of its policy steps are “innovation mercantilist” in nature. This not only is expected to threaten U.S. leadership, but also slow global life sciences innovation, with negative consequences for cures and treatments.
China will likely be the biggest business disruptor of the 2020s, but the discussion about how to respond has yet to take shape. A strategic framework should rebalance the global supply chains, bolster competitiveness, adjust to China’s market size, and solidify the West’s appeal.
What happened? How did America go from the world’s leader to not even an also-ran in the span of just two decades? Equally troubling, why did no one sound the alarm bell when there was still time for action?
With nearly three dozen new additions, the latest update of ITIF’s “Tech Policy To-Do List” provides a menu of hundreds of actionable ideas for Congress and the administration to foster innovation, growth, and progress.
The rapid growth of large Internet platforms has caused some activists, scholars, and political officials to worry about their impact on competition. These concerns are largely misplaced.
If the United States is serious about maintaining its leadership in biopharmaceuticals, then it’s time for policymakers to articulate and embrace a robust sectoral competitiveness strategy.
U.S. broadband networks weathered the COVID-19 surge in traffic better than most peer nations. The pandemic should galvanize policymakers to ensure broadband can serve as an essential lifeline for everyone, including low-income and rural residents.
Not really. Despite the measured rise in concentration in some industries, in the vast majority of markets it remains well below the levels that would normally trigger antitrust concerns.
COVID-19 has prompted calls for reshoring of medical goods, including strict “Buy American” prescriptions. While reshoring is important, “Buy American” fails to recognize the value of the global supply chain and avoids addressing the real problem, China.
5G wireless will drive economic growth for decades to come, but we need a comprehensive strategy to ensure a robust deployment and adoption of secure networks. A U.S. strategy for 5G should play to our strengths to overcome unfair practices that have made Huawei a leader.
Further stimulus in response to the COVID-19 crisis should focus not just on short-term recovery, but also the long-term competitiveness of key technologically sophisticated, traded-sector industries. Now is the time to recognize America needs a robust industrial strategy.
The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed gaps in society’s digital readiness for social distancing. If policymakers seize the opportunity to address these gaps, they can make it easier to manage the next pandemic while providing significant long-term social and economic benefits.
The federal government should take aggressive steps to spur the development of more tech hubs in America’s heartland by identifying promising metro areas and helping them transform into self-sustaining innovation centers.