Publications: Robert D. Atkinson

South Korea’s AI-memory boom proves that it can still lead at the technological frontier. The proposed Future Response Fund and national megaprojects will test whether South Korea can turn that lead into stronger suppliers, exportable capabilities, and allied scale before Chinese expansion narrows its industrial base.

Washington is now more focused on China but remains in denial about the threat. Fourteen rationalizations explain why its techno-economic response remains limited.

America must answer three fundamental questions in favor of national power, innovation, growth, and national greatness or risk losing ground to the PRC.

Canada risks permanently losing advanced manufacturing as stagnant productivity, weak innovation, and risk aversion undermine its competitiveness. Reversing course requires a national strategy focused on productivity, innovation, and technology-based growth.

Labor-displacing technology can cause temporary pain, but that reflects progress. Suppressing it won’t protect workers; it’ll sacrifice productivity and growth.

Montgomery County’s new data center moratorium will do little for the environment, but plenty to weaken growth, deter investment, and undermine the infrastructure powering AI.

The utopian vision of globally integrated, democratic, free-market economies working together in harmony has not materialized. Meanwhile, the belief that China could not innovate—and that America would continue to lead in advanced technologies—also has proven to be false. These new realities require bold reforms in the U.S. research system.

Whether Washington sustains a policy response equal to the challenge China poses or takes a timeout while Xi runs up the score remains an open question.

If the China challenge is real, the West needs to get serious about its techno-industrial policy. This means a more active state in tech, trade, and industry, a prospect certain to rile free-market advocates who imagine that “even if the US is a hollowed-out economy, at least we will be free.”

Too many academics now trade objectivity for narrative, ignoring inconvenient facts that get in the way of the story they want to tell.