Managing Tensions, Maintaining Balance—Michael Beckley This month, we’re zeroing in on a core tension in US strategy toward China: how to strike the right balance between deterrence and reassurance. As Washington strengthens military postures, deepens coalitions, and hardens supply...

In October 2022, the Biden administration introduced export controls to limit China’s access to advanced US semiconductors and technologies, aiming to maintain US technological superiority and address security concerns. These controls, targeting areas such as advanced chips and supercomputer...

Debates about national scientific and technological power tend to center on which state first generates new-to-the-world breakthroughs (innovation capacity). This essay argues that assessments of technological leadership should give greater weight to a state’s diffusion capacity, or its ability...

Since the mid-2010s, technology has been the topic du jour in Washington, DC policy circles. Trump’s crusade against Huawei and Biden’s war on China’s semiconductor industry reflect this new norm of the centrality of technology to US politics, as...

Just as Halford Mackinder, in his seminal work The Geographical Pivot of History, argued that control over the Eurasian heartland held the key to global mastery, the world stands at the precipice of another pivotal shift—one driven not by...

  Abstract The People’s Republic of China’s rise as a global innovation power is rooted in the development of a sovereign innovation infrastructure, one that allows China to compete in high-technology races with the United States. This process is...

Abstract  Recent news of hypersonic tests in both Russia and China stoke fears of a technological gap for the United States. However, a sober analysis of the state of hypersonic technology raises doubts of its capabilities, or usefulness in...

The Chinese state is the poster child of using digital tools for domestic surveillance and censorship. But China is not the only country exporting digital technologies that can be used for authoritarian modes of governance. Reliant on importing new...

Executive Summary  The U.S. semiconductor industry faces an existential competitive threat. China’s efforts to catch up and eventually overtake the U.S. in semiconductor technology is not only an economic challenge—it is also a security threat. The Trump administration’s decision...

Many of the apps we use—as smart and as fast as they appear—cannot function without people working behind the scenes to fill in the gaps. Machines are not as good as humans (yet) at figuring out whether a tweet...