Thursday, U.S. Senators Todd Young (R-Ind.), Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), and Mark Warner (D-Va.) introduced the Global Technology Leadership Act. This bipartisan legislation would establish an Office of Global Competition Analysis to assess how the United States fares in key emerging technologies – such as artificial intelligence (AI) – relative to other countries to inform U.S. policy and strengthen American competitiveness.
“This legislation will better synchronize our national security community to ensure America wins the technological race against the Chinese Communist Party. There is no single federal agency evaluating American leadership in critical technologies like artificial intelligence and quantum computing, despite their significance to our national security and economic prosperity. Our bill will help fill this gap,” said Senator Young.
“We cannot afford to lose our competitive edge in strategic technologies like semiconductors, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence to competitors like China. To defend our economic and national security and protect U.S. leadership in critical emerging technologies, we need to be able to take into account both classified and commercial information to fully assess where we stand. With that information, Congress can make smart decisions about where to invest and how to strengthen our competitiveness,” said Senator Bennet.
“Over the last few years the U.S. has made significant investments in key sectors like semiconductor manufacturing. But as the U.S. works to out-innovate our global competitors, it’s crucial that we have a meaningful way to track how our progress stacks up against near-peers like China. I’m proud to join this bipartisan effort to create a centralized hub that’s responsible for keeping tabs on these developments, which are critical to our economic and national security,”said Senator Warner.
The bipartisan Global Technology Leadership Act would establish an Office of Global Competition Analysis to bolster competitiveness by analyzing how the United States fares in critical technologies relative to other countries, informing policymakers and strengthening U.S. leadership in strategic innovation.
The Office of Global Competition Analysis would assess U.S. technology competitiveness based on a fusion of intelligence and commercial data, which today are too often siloed in intelligence and civilian agencies, respectively. This has often left the United States blind to its relative capacity in critical technologies compared to other nations, like in the cases of 5G and semiconductors. Analysis that interrogates the entire U.S. ecosystem, including private sector dynamics, is critical to understanding threats and opportunities in strategic emerging technology, such as AI.
“The United States has a strong history of organizing to lead through challenging periods. To address post-World War II security concerns, the U.S. Government created the National Security Council. To address post-Cold War economic challenges, the U.S. Government created the National Economic Council. Today, the United States faces a new era of global technology competition and to remain the world’s leading technological power, we need to organize our government for this new competition. The United States must meet this challenge by creating an office to conduct critical technology analysis and provide the President and Congress with recommendations to act,” said Ylli Bajraktari, President and CEO of the SCSP Action Program and the Special Competitive Studies Project, and the former Executive Director, National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence.
“Effective monitoring of the global and domestic science and technology landscape is critical to our long term economic competitiveness. To my knowledge, no part of the U.S. government currently possesses a scalable approach for doing so. Sustained investment in data-backed analysis is critical to our national interest and continued global leadership in emerging technologies,” said Dewey Murdick, Center for Security and Emerging Technology, Georgetown University.
The legislative text of the bill is available here.
