Administration Seeks 'Market-Based Approach' on Emerging Tech

The Trump administration emphasized a “market-based approach” to ensure U.S. dominance in developing emerging technologies, in a national strategy released Thursday. The National Security Council identified 20 critical technologies, including telecom, semiconductors, autonomous vehicles, artificial intelligence and quantum computing. The market-based approach is preferable to “state-directed models” that “produce waste and disincentivize innovation,” the strategy said. It helps “protect ourselves from unfair competition,” including from China and Russia. Those countries and other “strategic competitors … have adopted deliberate whole-of-government” critical and emerging tech “efforts and are making large and strategic investments to take the lead,” the strategy said. “America’s lead in certain C&ET sectors is declining. The [U.S.] will take meaningful action to reverse this trend.” The strategy includes a focus on improving the U.S. workforce for some emerging tech and increasing the pool of investors to ensure improved R&D. It calls for preventing foreign adversaries like China from unfairly benefiting from U.S. innovation, including by beefing up international intellectual property theft norms and expanding restrictions on exports of some tech to those countries.