Tech Titans at War: The US-China Innovation Race with Jimmy Goodrich

welcome to China considered a podcast that brings fresh insights and informed discussion to one of the most consequential issues of our time how China is changing and changing the world I'm Liz conomy harro senior fellow and co-director of the US China and the world program at the Hoover institution at Stanford University today I'm joined by Jimmy Goodridge senior adviser for technology and analysis to the Rand Corporation and a leading expert on the global semiconductor industry welcome Jimmy thanks Liz it's a pleasure to be here it's really exciting great so the US has declared China its greatest long-term strategic competitor and there's probably no issue in that competition that's received more attention than technology but I think that it's hard for people outside the small group of experts like yourself to understand exactly what this technology competition is all about is it about National Security or economic competitiveness does include every technology or just those somehow tied to National Security how do you organize your thinking on this technology competition do you have a framework that you find to be particularly helpful well thanks Liz and as you know on this question you can ask a hundred different people and they give you a hundred different answers but I'll offer my thoughts for what I think are some of the important ways you can think about the US China Tech competition I mean clearly it matters matters for National Security it matters for economic well-being uh it matters for national pride who's going to lead the next generation of technologies that are going to shape our lives uh change economies and improve home and health and also secure National Security particularly for these general purpose Technologies like artificial intelligence robotics Fusion they have you know huge impact to both um the economy and our everyday lives but also to National security and you know as tensions between the US and China have increased I think there's been a more um acute understanding amongst policy makers that uh you know in the 21st century we're talking about competition in these Frontier Technologies who can attract the best talent create the best companies who can diffuse that into their economy who can rapid rapidly integrate these Innovations into their military better than uh the next country that's really what this is about um you know China is now the second second largest economy in the world they have tremendous depth in terms of uh their ability to innovate you know China has been able to create some of the world's most leading companies scientific Laboratories I think the story of China 20 years ago stealing and replicating technology is really the story of yesterday we're looking at a China that is uh fundamentally changed leading a lot of the indicators in in basic science and chemistry and apply Material Science in uh semiconductor related research and development in many areas uh basic uh R&D for AI Aerospace other areas so we have to think about China now as not just a um company uh not just a country that is a copycat innovator but an original innovator increasingly so yeah so is there a way to think about or a set of metrics that that kind of you use for who's winning and who's losing or do you think that's even helpful at all I remember reading a paper by um aspy the uh Australian strategic policy Institute that came out I think last year where they said that China was leading in 37 out of 44 uh sort of crucial areas of crucial Technologies based on uh sort of the level of original and and um qual Quality research that was being done in those areas I mean is that a metric that we should be thinking about or is that wind lose sort of framing the wrong one well I mean there's a lot of different ways to look at it uh but in general you can think about uh Tech uh Power as a measure of your creativity your level of innovation your economic productivity uh and also adoption of the technology it's one thing to create it but if you if you don't diffuse it and adopt it across your economy we've seen that happen for example we in the US the department of energy funded a lot of the original research for the Battery Technology and solar uh cell technology that's used today but China LED in scaling up of that technology and it's D brought the cost down where it's now the dominant producer of these items even though they didn't invent the original technology so it it matters that you can both create technology but also diffuse and adopted um I I think getting both of those right in fact um there is a professor at George Washington University Jeffrey ding who recently wrote a book about how diffusion of technology is really important I recommend it and looked at everything from the electric you know electricity to the automobile and more thinking about AI in terms of National Power is it who creates or who diffuses it I I think the answer is both so you really need to look holistically at both the macro and micro level at the macro level it's thinking about um R&D intensity how much of your government expenditure are you reinvesting back into research development as a percentage of GDP um how many you know how much talent are you producing on an annual annual basis what's the quality of it um is it PhD is it applied is it basic um is the work that they're doing oriented towards the needs of the economy or the scientists in the country um you know what kind of firm level startup creat you know activity do you have um you know for example we know that China looks at all these metrics because you can look back to early speeches from cin Bing and 20134 where he said China's losing the race we're behind in terms of of advanced Science and Technology we need to catch up in talent and patents and papers and other different indicators um but more recently C actually said hey at this meeting in Shandong uh if you recall early this year where he kind of signaled some recognition that the economy was not doing very well he gathered some experts of uh domestic economists one of the things he asked is why don't we have as many unicorn startups in China like we used to so we know that the Chinese government is actually quite acutely aware of a lot of these metrics and following them very closely uh if you look at their you know the 20th party Congress there was a huge section on science and technology and the plum document um that lists very proudly all the accomplishments they've made and exactly of many of those metrics that the I I mentioned that's exactly how if you look to science technology organizations in the US the nationaly National Science Foundation iif they're also assessing in many of these the thing though is you can take the exact same metrics and sometimes come to different conclusions so I think that's where it's important to then look Beyond what's going on at the macro level and look at case studies I think that's really important because the macro picture doesn't give you honestly the full uh sweep of what's happening on the ground in China and that's when you have to look at individual firms go out visit China meet with the factory managers the folks working on R&D talk to uh researchers around the world that are engaging with their Chinese counterparts and really have a bottomup assessment as opposed to a top down as to the level of innovative activity in different sectors and it it varies between ship building EVS cars robotics semiconductors foundational versus Advanced ships you can write a different story for almost every sector in China that's what's you know as a as a analyst who does research on China's science technology space why it's so fun and so interesting is that there's such a wide variety of uh facts on the ground um that you know either impress you or leave you thinking wow you know they're they're not doing as well as they would have liked in this space so that's I mean that was terrific and I want to come back to a couple of those um case studies um to get your sense because uh of what's taking place on the ground in China because you are I think you know really uh one of the people who has spent the most time certainly in the semiconductor space but I think also increasingly in AI the most time uh thinking and and engaging on the ground in China to understand what's really taking place um but let me just um take one step uh before that and ask you like do you think the United States and China approach this competition in the same way I mean you've La laid out you know a number of different really important metrics that we should be thinking about but you know does the United St States tend to stress sort of one approach and does China stress a different approach do we understand the tech competition in the same way do we frame it in the same way um I I think sometimes it's very different however I'd say the US approach is becoming more oriented towards a national competitiveness agenda than it used to be if you go back maybe 10 years you know it was our basic research is conducted in universities um Co corporations tapped into it if they want to or not we don't have we didn't have industrial policy to attract chipm or battery or uh solar panel Manufacturing in the United States but fast forward now the US is doing a lot of that um on the flip side if you go into China there's always been a 5-year plan and Industrial policy someone in the halls of Beijing drinking tea and thinking they need to achieve this target or that metric but you know frankly you can go out talk to some of the companies who don't even recognize they're part of a plan they they're just trying to make profit because this is an attractive industry and you know frankly some policy policy signaling has meant they can probably get more investment in and subsidies because of that um but I I would say that the Chinese approach is um the way I look at it is the government sets the goalpost it identifies long range targets uh but it doesn't give an intentionally a lot of guidance of how to get there it says you know we want to create a world leading semiconductor industry by 2030 that was the Target in their um integrated circuits plan in 2014 um or you know by 2025 they want to achieve you know x amount of innovation increase in whatever sector you name it Robotics and so on um and then they really leave it to the provinces to the Mayors the governors to the CEOs of local government financing Vehicles who often D out a lot of the cash to these companies to those state-owned Enterprise bosses the entrepreneurs to figure out how to get there uh and then you kind of open up the spigots funding comes out there's a tremendous amount of waste but that's kind of by Design really it's it's you know thinking about China's government efforts at developing their science technology I think of it as a venture capital state I'm not the first to coin that term others um have used that um where they've got a portfolio of bets in the semi inductor space for example uh they might fund two or three companies to produce the same thing or in super competing there's always been sort of managed competition of four or five players but they'll pick the best out of the pack for their ultimate deployment of the technology um much like a venture capital investor is thinking you know they' they've got 20 Investments two or three out of the 10 might win and that's enough for them because it's the end not the means that they got to and if the end is for a VC return on investment or for China for um moving up the ladder and creating jobs then all the means that they got there were Justified can they sustain that in sort of a more constrained budget environment with a slowing economy is one of the you know big question out there amongst the you know China policy Community um so for the us we're kind of moving more in that direction again as I mentioned we're much more Le Fair industrial policy was a taboo word in Washington um but now with chips act um inflation reduction act um possibly more Investments for things like ship building and a in a new Congress and administration we're moving a little bit in that direction not as intensively as China is I think China's much more top down mobilization but also bottom up at the same time uh and very flexible where I where I think also one of the biggest differences is that there's more tolerance for failure Ironically in the US in the Chinese political system than there is in the US political system because a lot of this industrial policy is so new there's a real fear that say with the Biden Administration they'll make a wrong investment decision lead to a cylindr like bankruptcy that could you know um weaken the political consensus around these type of things whereas in China they've had so many failures but so many different successes I think there's a higher tolerance for those failures in their system yeah although I think arguably there's a high tolerance for failure in the Venture field in the US economy maybe not in terms of the political system engagement with it but I think it's one of the strengths of you know all the Silicon Valley silicon alley Etc that in fact there is that tolerance for you know companies you know rising and falling and you know exiting and new ones springing up all the time I think that's one of our greatest assets is the healthy Venture Capital private Equity Financial community that um helps create a lot of these startups invests in companies that um just have a small idea in their garage you know China is struggling if you've you know read a lot of the reports of the last two years VC funding has really um particularly private backed VC funding has really uh been in a drought in China now the government stepped in and become the predominant uh uh LP to a lot of these Venture Capital startups or VC funds in China but that means though the government has more say they're more focused on job creation is a new Factory going to be built in my district versus you know five 10e returns and is this widget going to be you know F successfully developed on the market that's the orientation of the US system but the Chinese system when you've got the government as a shareholder obviously is going to have a different set of metrics on the flip side that might mean that some areas that the sort of quick return VC Community is not interested in like hardtech um maybe more maybe more prone to investment in China right that's why we have the chips and science act in in in in good part I think let me just you know ask you quickly though to that point about the Venture Capital the private Venture Capital drying up and the government stepping in why is it I mean I know that certainly Western um you know Venture Capital has has dried up for a variety of reasons you know tied to sort of changing uh political circumstances in the relationship increased tensions and and so I think greater concerns about uh you know us uh money being used to support Technologies in China that could undermine our national security but what why is the private uh Venture money drying you know Chinese private Venture money drying up in China I think there's a couple of reasons one of course is the pandemic and then the drag on the economy that that's had um uh since then and so and on top of that you know a lot of the really active uh funders of tech in China got their money from the internet economy from the e-commerce boom with the internet Crackdown that um you know the the government conducted over the last couple of years that's really spooked a lot of the investors it's fizzled a lot of investment activity and it's also reduced a lot of their Holdings so there's just less money um there's not as much confidence and now you know people that would have been investing in um you know uh widget startups um Fusion technology AI you know they might be opening up a Bookshop in Thailand now instead of investing in a lot of these new startups it's not to say there's a complete drought there's still companies out there you've got Lee Kaiu and sinovation and others that are invested in the economy um but I think it's it's a confidence issue it's also a just a single fact with a slowing economy there's going to be less Capital um and that's where the government has tried to to step in um and fill some of that void you know it's interesting again guess it's all roads back to see all roads lead back to see sometimes and he mentioned unicorns um like 30 days later the state Council had a guidance document on oh my gosh we need to get Venture Capital funding revved up again and just what they need another government document to tell them what to do right um so you mentioned uh sort of the industrial policy something that um the United States I mean United States has had industrial policy in the past but clearly China's been sort of the the king of industrial policy um and now the United States with chips and Science and inflation reduction act you know has sort of elements of that um are there any other things you think that China should learn I mean sorry that the United States should learn um from the Chinese model I personally think back to just Chinese persistence and um I've just been reading Eva Do's new book um on hwei hwei and right and mentions uh you know that the Chinese government had invested a billion UN in in 1996 in semiconductor industry and you know here we are today there's still now it's you know hundreds of billions um of dollars uh that China is putting into uh the semiconductor industry but nonetheless you know you mentioned batteries and EVs and they persist um whereas sometimes the United States as I think you were suggesting you know we develop the technology but then then we don't you know continue you know President Carter was putting solar panels on the west wing of the White House in 1979 and you know then President Reagan came in and ended the renewable energy program and so you know one of the downsides of our democracy and and flips in government but but what else do you think the United States might take away from the China model well I think that's really important just look at other East Asian economies that have done very well in Innovation industrial policy take Taiwan and the semi conductor Miracle uh taiwan's semiconductor Manufacturing corporation which today produces around 90% of all the world's most advanced chips the smallest chips uh they started out as a joint venture between the Taiwanese government 48.5% owned by the Taiwanese government for over two decades the Taiwanese government sat there as a patient uh shareholder um buffering them from Market forces they gave uh 20 years of tax credits to those that Pur purch the equipment to build out their factories um and no surprise at their early stage of inception when they really weren't able to on their own make profit the government buffered that and persisted um you know when the going gets tough like for example we're seen Intel struggle in the market you have to keep going you you can't just walk away as soon as it gets a little dicey I think the other important takeaway that China doesn't do well that we should not replicate is China doesn't know how to exit their Investments um um if you know the Taiwanese government as soon as they saw tsmc become successful also in Korea um you know when the Korean government had its heavy chemicals inititive in the 1970s then in the 1980s they built up their semiconductor plans the the government of both Korea and Taiwan as soon as they saw Samsung LG tsmc become successful they reduced their Investments they reduced the government policy because they realized that it worked and they don't need to create these compan dependence on them for their financial success I think the other thing we can learn from China of what not to do is don't create companies where the government has overriding control um that's one thing that's remarkable about China is that if you look at all the industrial policy success of different East Asian developmental States most of the actors who implement the industrial policy are private entrepreneurs running privately held companies Samsung LG Sony uh tsmc whereas in China vast majority of the government dollars are not going to 10 cent in Alibaba um they're going to China resources Corporation and chingua uni group and Avic and you know the China minerals um energy extraction Corporation limited Etc everyone under the you know Central government's uh seac group that's starting to change a little bit what's interesting is over the last five or six years um particularly as us China Tech tensions have escal ated what China's been talking about is I think learning from those past mistakes something called whole of nation new type of innovation um and this means mobilizing the state but instead of just these old line State Ministries and S soes bringing in the private companies and work together and Huawei is actually the best example of that back to the Fantastic book that Eva wrote um Huawei is now the sort of Vanguard of that new model where Huawei is partnering with state owned Enterprises like smick or uh research institutes like the China Academy of Sciences to work together to take private Market orientation business process R&D management skills and the good Tech coming out of the labs and push forward um is this a sign they've learned entirely I think this is May might be a one-off but it's interesting that they're experimenting with the model that has worked for other countries so I would hope that for our industrial policy uh we're not going to create you know State and Enterprises the government's not going to have an over writing share that they've got an exit strategy uh then we can make our industrial policy as market-based and oriented as possible yeah I mean I do think that that's built into the design as it is right because we're kind of you know government Capital at about 39 billion and private Capital at you know 10 times that so I think I think that's the direction in which um in which we're we're moving but I I also think that you're warning about like when the going gets tough you know the tough get going but not like going out the door but stick with it I think is is really important and and hopefully all these programs are going to weather the the transition um the political transition I think there's a cons you know bipartisan consensus around rebuilding our manufacturing base um you know I think the you know Republican party preference is tax policy to get there instead of um you know uh fiscal subsidies but remember the chips and science acts includes attack credit um that's probably actually exceeding the total amount at the end of all of this of the subsidies 39 billion right you're right at least tax 25% it's like twice that size yep yep y but inflation reduction act I think relies more on incentives and tax credits and things like that so um that was less bipartisan so so there's something in there for everybody I would hope yeah yeah and now I think a number of of of um Representatives members of Congress Congress even Republican ones have come to embrace the IRA and the advantages that they've you know seen for their districts they see the jobs being created and the job creation it's real I think you know the part of the challenge of the last four years is that a lot of these Investments are huge they take time it's hard to see the immediate results but you know at the end of the day it'll benefit the country so um at the end of the day that's great right so you mentioned Lee Kaiu um and uh you know he has been a really important player in China and I remember back in 2018 he wrote the book on AI superpowers which you know he said basically you know China was eventually was going to win the the AI race um uh in large part you know because it was the Sai Arabia of you know data you know um because it was investing more money you know had great entrepreneurs had huge you know engineering uh class huge internet companies um and he also said that the American apprach is more about like academic research whereas China is going to Value the uh use of AI in manufacturing and I think this brings us back to you know some of the first points that you were making about needing to you know have the full cycle right um so do you think that um this is the way that AI is playing out I mean the AI competition is playing out that the United States is maybe overly weighted on the academic research and not enough on the deployment throughout the economy and whereas China's already moving into deployment but maybe isn't quite leading in the research how do you see this playing out yeah I remember reading that book at the time and it's a great book and Kaiu is obviously one of the most knowledgeable people around China's Tech ecosystem um you know has great insight and expertise on the topic but you know I I did think that you know he did get one prediction right that the US was going to lead in the hardware and they still are um whether it's in advanced node chips or the semor production equipment the US and the Allies still lead and he had sort of predicted that was going to be an area where the us is going to have a strength I think in data it didn't quite turn out to be the way we thought it would um China is a population of over a billion but the rest of the world is four times that so at the end of the day actually I think we had to look bigger when you look at Google or meta or open aai they've got the world's data available to them uh whereas China has data that's created within sort of inside the wall Garden of the Chinese Internet it's useful within China but it's not as useful outside of China um in addition you know the first I think of Chinese AI development is basically two waves the first wave really when Kaiu wrote that book was all about um facial recognition and neural networks and that was really the first wave of AI uh and China you know exploded they took off they they LED they lead that technology because they had a huge market led by the government fueled by demand for surveillance and security Camp exact every Chinese startup in that era since time Meg um were you know they were almost entirely focused on uh police Public Safety surveillance applications for you know you know if you go to the street corner in China now there's 20 different cameras from 20 different agencies that are hooked up to 20 different systems and that's really what drove that first wave of AI development in China the second AI wave which is happening now is um taking um fundamental breakthroughs in research around Transformer models and uh large language models and using uh prediction to figure out how your phraseology is going to work you know if if I say boom then what's the likelihood of the next 20 words and the models can predict that for you the US is you know created that whole technology is still leading but China is very close behind uh and uh you know we're seeing today that some of the Chinese companies like deep seek step fund uh kyu's company zero AI um uh are are quite Innovative and on these kind of rankings of who has the best models Chinese companies are holding their own weight I think one of the big questions is um with the export controls that do constrain China's access to the chips which you need to fuel these AI systems uh is that Gap going to get bigger over time or not um that's an open question that you know a lot of people are trying to figure out the answer to yeah so you've spent some time figuring that out what do you think um you know I think it takes time for these controls to have an impact um you know China's is able to stockpile purchase a lot of things they're able to Unfortunately they were getting access to things like tsmc uh they've been able to smuggle a bunch of chips in um you know your rules are only as good as the ones you enforce and I think we've learned over time that um um you know 200 Page regulations are great if they're enforced uh and that's an area where I think that's been lacking over the you know last couple of administrations uh but it's very difficult I mean these are huge deep Global Supply chains they span multiple countries and jurisdictions um Arcane rules that require you know teams of lawyers to understand this is not easy stuff you know I I I think it's a work in progress the export controls and you know whether or not they're going to deliver the uh sort of results that you know whether the China Hawks um say they will or those that criticize them won't I don't think we really have an answer one way or the other yet it's too early remember the Biden administration's big package was just two years ago uh and so much you know that's not even really a full technology cycle for for example the semiconductor industry it takes two or three years to design a new chip so we're still at the very early Innings of this and we'll see over time there's one thing however is that you know there's no doubt that China's fully committed to localizing as much as fast as they can and every area that um you know we're we're trying to constrain the PRC in and so it's a big question of you know small yard High fense strategy have the most delicate narrow controls as possible you also send a signal to China at the same time to double down and build out its IND industry as fast as possible do you use all that leverage now later when uh it's a complicated question yeah I mean and recognizing of course that China was already committed uh to indigenization um what I think the controls have done is to accelerate the process right to to force them to to move faster to invest more um and yeah and every area that we're talking about today with semiu equipment materials software AI chips memory chips China was investing in every single one of those before that um they've certainly increased the intensity and the scope of the investment was that because of export controls or just a breakdown in us China relations who started it all I mean that's a that's that's a hard question to answer right right and well I guess we'll we'll give it a couple of years but I would never want to see certainly the export controls um be thought of as you know the the one Arrow uh in our quiver buet yeah the you know funding the science part for example of the chips and science act I think should also be you know an essential part of of our competitive strategy when it comes to uh semiconductors and you know there's there's a lot of focus on semiconductors on Tik tock on batteries you name it those are all Applied Technologies where we are going to win sort of the future of the next wave of innovation is going to be leveraging our amazing University and National Lab infrastructure to invest in the basic science um that then we can apply and commercialize whether it's in Fusion technology Next Generation chemistry or bioengineering that's going to be useful for Life Sciences what's interesting is that China is really almost at a breakout stage of investment in basic science and it's something that really is not covered well um you know the economist did a piece about six months ago on China's basic science rise is it's really now a science superpower um they're building 20 New National Labs and science scientific facilities across the country and everything from experimental Fusion reactors to deep Earth exploration platforms uh you know mining colonies on the moon deep space probes everything you can think of it's like you know cin ping uh has a Fascination uh you know with Journey to the Center of the Earth and every other sci-fi book in fact I think at one point they were on his bookshelf um but it's interesting I recently spoke to uh somebody senior uh individual in the Chinese uh science system and they said you know we're not going to catch up anytime soon in these sort of appli Technologies of today but when it comes to the next wave of Technologies and high energy physics and Quantum they're much more um conf confident that these big Investments they're making 5 10 years down the road are going to pay off much like the big Investments the US made into its science infrastructure in the 1940s during World War II and then on through the Cold War paid off with GPS the internet the semiconductor you name it um those were all big government Investments that had spillover effects and I think China's watched that model they think it's going to work for them the you know again I come back to the big question of like well is that funding going to be around forever and um can they sustain it particularly if the economy continues to shrink the way it is right but I think we've also seen that despite the economy uh slowing significantly that this remains a priority for SI Jinping and so I think we should not take our foot off uh the gas pedal you know in anticipation that somehow they're going to start to retrench um and yeah I should have I should have answered my own question there and saying I don't think it will I agree with you that's fine 0% you could still take 30% of all that economic output and dedicate it to um science technology investment just look at Japan you know the zero growth economy of the last several decades they've added all sorts of new infrastructure there's still World leading power you don't have to be growing at 10% per quarter to have a huge dent on global development let's let's send that message to the new Congress I think it's an important one for them for them to hear so let me ask one one um last question a slightly different um area and that's on our Science and Technology cooperation with China um because there's still a large um you know area of Cooperative work um that is going on I think that many people would argue certainly in the US scientific Community should be going on a lot of synergy um among scientists you know across the Pacific um we've let the US has let the science and Technology cooperation agreement um that had been in place for you know 45 years um laps it missed its formal renewal deadline um you know is that a mistake or are we at a point where we really should just be like you know hunkering down and fattening down the hatches and closing off our research you know universities um how do you see that dynamic in terms of the cooperation versus the competition well I mean it's Talent element of it you know and the you know because so we've we've benefited here in the United States um to such a significant extent from that free flow of talent coming from China I mean many many you know of our top researchers today uh you know hail originally from China and from from other countries but um how do you how do you think about that well I think with anything there's benefits and tradeoffs and there's no doubt that um science is global and if you talk to any scientist in their domain whether it's physics chemistry or semiconductors what they're doing requires Global partnership because no one country has a monopoly on good ideas and people it's just fundamental rule of of humanity and idea Creation in fact I think it's our greatest strength is that if you look at the uh research labs and the innovation in China despite a lot of efforts they're not recruiting as many and as good has Global Talent that they would like into their research Labs now there are you read every day about this scientist and that scientist that's going back to China but the overall trend is that if you're a top scientist you want to work in a in a Western University or Japanese or South Korean because you're going to have more freedom you're GNA have less bureaucracy probably uh and frankly you can create a startup usually a lot easier um on the other hand though I think we were a bit naive in some areas where you know there there was you know joint collaboration on super competing technology they went straight into nuclear weapons simulation or you know working with the you know the Chinese Academy of engineering physics which is their nuclear weapons lab on you know uh things that will benefit their nuclear mization program or you know there Bill Gates wanted to do small modular nuclear reactor technology in a partnership with the Chinese National nuclear corporation uh which is working to develop smnr for their nuclear submarine program so there's areas where we just when there's a clear dual use application should be just more mindful um I think a lot of it just stems from education um working with the research Community to ensure they're aware of the risks um to ensure that research Integrity is really important that you know if you're a university researcher you're disclosing where your funding's coming from um and that's that's not something that applies to just researchers engaged with China any researcher working with universities around the world I think um you know MIT has actually done a great job they put together a task force they looked at how can they help improve research integrity and security and and get the Buy in from their research staff and professors because it helps them in their work get more funding and have more credibility if they are perceived as living up to a really important code of conduct um and I've seen more universities kind of go that direction it doesn't have to be and it should not be targeting one group over the other frankly it's a global um conversation so you know I still think we should maintain as robust as uh links as we can recognizing that we should put guard rails on um technology engagement where there's going to be a clear military application um and also frankly it benefits us from knowing what the state of the research is in China if we're all you know drage drw Brides closed and behind our own Walled Garden uh we're not going to know what they're doing um and in some areas particularly for strategic applications that uh could put us at a disadvantage you know likewise that means we'll have to let trying to know a little bit about what we're doing but frankly a lot of the research is published anyways um so you know particularly when it comes to basic research uh you know I think there's a good way that we can balance things um I think we're we're we're heading down that path whether or not you know the next four years it's going to go in a different direction we don't know yet yeah okay so now we're into our quick little lightning round of questions um so give me your must read book or article on China uh well I was gonna say Eva Do's new book on Huawei that's a good one okay that's fine of course any book from Liz economy I recomend not Neary uh the new book on Cen ping thought from Steve saying and others is a good one I have not read um uh um blocking a few of the others but anyway those are the couple of the ones I recommend article um I go back to the economist article on basic science on China uh I think it was a good tip of the iceberg primer of and something that people don't think about a lot is the Innovation the labs the basic research and thinking more about China as a science superpower as a science imitator I think is is an important concept I also think frankly your article on Fortress economy is a great one tell me where you published it I read it in draft for form so where was it published uh I published it at University of California San Diego their Institute of global conflict and cooperation I that's a terrific article for understanding the direction of sort of overall direction of of XI jinping's thinking about you know uh security and economy I think nothing is nothing is better I recently read cjin Ping's thought on Science and Technology Innovation I'd recommend that one really if you're going to try and understand uh how he's thinking about this well it's all written down for you and a uh a bridged version and it's available on Amazon there you go for those who are not faint of heart um okay what's one thing that you wish the Biden administration had done differently uh with regard to China policy uh you know I draw back a little bit to what I mentioned earlier is um having better um implementation of the of the export control rules I think is an area that uh they could have done a little bit better could have improved upon um you know if you're if you're going to commit to using all this political Capital to expend with allies and Industry spend months drafting a rule you have to be committed to actually implementing it um and I think that's an area where you know hopefully over the next Administration or two uh there'll be some improvement yeah um what China issue do you think we don't know enough about I think you probably answered this but just in Cas you want to toss out something I go back to the basic science area I think right you know it's really hot and interesting I meet a lot of um PhD students Master students young um kids starting their career in think tanks and they're all interested in semiconductors and AI aiia all the time but you know what there's 20 other domains of technology that are really important there's very few people worldwide who think about Chinese science technology basic science technology policy in fact I think there's only one full-time program in the world which is the max plank Institute of science has a two-year study program on Chinese basic science and that's about it um Merck and UCSD they've co-funded a few projects but you know I can count the number of people who do this in one or two hands um so I I really do hope that the the China Community spends more time thinking about not just the Technologies of today but basic science and the Technologies of tomorrow and um there's so much going on in China in this space there's a new National commission there's a lot more party ideology what does that mean for the future of science um who's decoupling faster than whom um in basic science in many areas you might come to the conclusion China is well sounds to me like you have your hands full with a very very large research agenda and I hope you can recruit some more people uh who are like you um really outstanding researchers um to do this kind of work because I agree with you I think it's incredibly important um not only to understand sort of where China is today in terms of its technology but what it's doing to position itself you know for the next decade uh and uh and Beyond um so Jimmy let me say huge thank you uh to you uh for joining me in this conversation um it's been terrific uh and I really appreciate your taking the time oh thanks Liz it's always a pleasure this has been a fun fun chat so if you enjoyed this podcast and want to hear more reason discourse and debate on China I encourage you to subscribe to China considered via the Hoover institution YouTube channel or podcast platform of your choice in the next episode I'll be speaking with senior director uh for the Atlantic council's Global China Hub who until this past summer helped lead the state Department's work on reducing US economic dependence on China Melanie Hart and I will talk about her work and the broader efforts in the US government to develop more resilient and diversified Supply chains across core Technologies and commodities is

2024-12-20 09:35

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