US tech sector is dominant---only antitrust crushes it

Moore 8-6-2021, MA, economics, syndicated columnist. (Stephen, "Moore: US tech sector
keeps besting the world", Boston Herald,
https://www.bostonherald.com/2021/08/06/moore-us-tech-sector-keeps-besting-the-
world/)
Take a bow, America. It’s official and irrefutable: The U.S. is blowing out the rest of the
world in tech leadership. No other country in the world comes anywhere close in tech
innovation and the dominance of our made-in-America 21st-century companies. The
Nasdaq index of once-small technology companies reached 15,000 last week. Only a few
years ago, that index stood at 5,000. Yes, these companies have tripled in their market cap
value — and that doesn’t include the dividends that have been paid out to large and mom-
and-pop shareholders in America and across the planet. We are told constantly that China
is catching up and achieving remarkable digital-age leaps forward in biotechnology,
artificial intelligence, green energy, robotics, 5G technologies and microchips. The value of
America’s 12 most valuable companies today in terms of stock valuation is well over $10
trillion. Those red, white and blue companies from Silicon Valley to the “Silicon Slopes” of
Utah to Boston to northwest Arkansas are worth roughly as much as all of the Chinese
publicly traded companies combined. Firms such as Google — many of which didn’t even exist 30 years ago — have made millionaires off your next-
door neighbor. Ordinary people are getting rich beyond anyone’s imagination 50 years ago, thanks to American innovation and inventiveness. Risk-taking, old-fashioned can-doism is a hallmark of this
unrivaled success story that has never been matched anywhere at any time in world history. Almost all of this is a tribute to American financial markets that allocate capital in hyperefficient ways.
Capitalists doing a spectacular job of allocating capital efficiently is our secret sauce to financial and technological success. I am always mystified when highly successful Wall Street investors can’t explain
how it is they add value and sometimes concede that they are just unnecessary middlemen. Even Warren Buffett, one of the greatest of all time, expresses guilt about his billions, as if he and other great
financiers are economic parasites. No. Steering financial resources to winners like Google, not losers like Solyndra, makes everyone in America richer. Meanwhile, few politicians have any clue of how
capital markets create wealth and jobs and shared prosperity in America. If they did, they would appreciate that without capitalists and capital, there is no enterprise — no material progress. They would
instantly understand the economic lunacy of increasing taxes on capital gains and dividends, wealth taxes, and, worst of all, death taxes that threaten the future survival of family-owned businesses.
Cutting, not raising, the U.S. capital gains tax would be far wiser if we want America to maintain and widen our competitive lead and keep winning globally. The arrogant fools in the administration of
President Biden believe that to keep America No. 1 technologically, we need to have a multibillion-dollar government-run slush fund with the politicians picking winners and losers with other people’s
money. China does this, and so does Japan, and it has never worked. One of the most famous stories of government-as-investment banker was when the Tokyo government’s brain trust recommended
that Honda not get in the business of making cars. Here in the U.S., the political class has made a $150 billion bet on wind and solar power since the late 1970s, and in return, that has produced only a
small sliver of our energy needs. Even more inexplicable is the movement in America coming from senators such as Democrat Elizabeth Warren on the left and Josh Hawley of Missouri on the right to
break up our tech companies. Why? Because, evidently, they are too good at what they do. They make too much money. They have too many customers and too many advertisers. Put aside for a moment
the rancid political persuasions of some of these leftist Silicon Valley CEOs. Somehow, the left and right agree that building a superior product and even crafting entire new industries is a punishable
offense. God forbid. The rest of the world — the Chinese, Indians, Japanese and especially the technologically inferior Europeans — would love to hobble American titans and tax away their profits. The
role of the U.S. government should be to repel the foreign attacks. Crazily, the Biden administration has given the green light to foreigners pillaging American companies. This doesn’t put America first .

So, can America’s tech dominance continue to blow away the foreign competition for
decades to come? Bet on it. That is, unless we are foolish enough to decapitate our
own industries through regulation, antitrust policies and raising tax rates on success.
The challenge for U.S. supremacy is coming from Washington, D.C., not China.

American defense innovation is peerless.

Gholz 6-24-2021, Eugene, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of
Notre Dame. Harvey M. Sapolsky, Professor of Public Policy and Organization, Emeritus, at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the former Director of the MIT
Security Studies Program. ("The defense innovation machine: Why the U.S. will remain on
the cutting edge", Journal of Strategic Studies,
https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2021.1917392)
Here we examine these concerns that the American military advantage in the Post-Cold War
era has dissipated in large part because the Defense Department lags behind in developing
advanced technologies. Our judgment is that the American defense research and
development system, as honed during the Cold War and expanded since, is fully capable of
handling any military challenge. It is a gigantic technology-generating,
innovation-producing, war-fighting machine. U.S. ‘hard’ innovation
capabilities – ‘input and infrastructure factors’ like R&D facilities, human capital, access
to foreign technology, and availability of funding – far outstrip those of its potential
rivals, even though those factors are the ones often thought of as easier for catch-up
countries to obtain.3 Despite warnings that the United States no longer spends enough on
R&D and that Chinese R&D spending is surging, the reality is that the United States
dramatically leads in military innovation investment. In functional terms, the United
States dominates all other countries, including China, in ‘input factors,’ starting with
resource allocations to defense research and development. More important, we believe that the American defense
technology system is pushed toward innovation by specific contextual factors, the ‘soft’ categories of attributes and capabilities, that cannot readily transfer to likely
rivals.4 First, the political culture of the United States values technology strongly: technology is assumed to be the solution to most problems, including military ones.
American culture also has a strong casualty aversion driven by an economy traditionally burdened by labor scarcity and by responsive political institutions that
encourage the substitution of capital for labor to keep its own people out of harm’s way.5 The All-Volunteer Force reflects this by making military service voluntary and
thus making military service expensive for government and service personnel lives ever-more-valuable and in need of husbanding. Second, competition is deeply
engrained in defense, as it is in most of American society, stimulating new ideas and providing a diversity of approaches to any problem, in case one technology
trajectory does not work out as hoped. Competition extends among the various military services and agencies, which each seek to propose solutions to the nation’s
strategic problems, and among firms with different design-team philosophies. Third, the United States also welcomes foreign ideas much more readily than other
countries, given U.S. openness to immigration, especially among the highly skilled and technically expert. Finally, a Cold-War organizational innovation in the United
States created special public-private hybrid organizations, Federally-Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs) that offer unbiased technical advice and a
mechanism for the accumulation of knowledge – a unique social, relational system for institutional memory and systems integration capability that generally works very
well. Other nations, with different divisions between the public and the private and dramatically different governance institutions, cannot easily copy these capabilities.
These soft innovation factors particularly emphasize American advantages in the functional category of institutional factors – norms of seeing technology as a solution,
trying hard to minimise casualties, using innovation as a means of competition among organizations, and welcoming foreign ideas. The institutional factors draw from
the particular American mix of organizations, notably independent military services with strong identities, competitive firms in the defense industry that readily form
networks or teams of suppliers even as each maintains its own core competencies and technical habits, and FFRDCs that help keep systems integration efforts honest

Because
and less parochial and that help preserve knowledge of false-start technology trajectories and craft skills that enable high-tech systems to function well.6

of the robustness of America’s input factors and the difficulty of copying its unique
institutional factors, we conclude that the American defense innovation system will
remain at the cutting edge and will not be surpassed by a potential international rival. In
the final section, we explain why American leaders are so nervous anyway.

Venture capital, investment, and tech firms are thriving.

Jaffer 10-11-2021, *Jamil N. Jaffer, former Chief Counsel and Senior Advisor to the U.S.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee and currently serves as the Founder and Executive
Director of the National Security Institute at George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law
School. **Joshua D. Wright, former Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
and currently serves as the Executive Director of the Global Antitrust Institute and
University Professor at George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School. ("We need to
protect American innovation in the competition with China", Newsweek,
https://www.newsweek.com/we-need-protect-american-innovation-competition-china-
opinion-1636706)
The United States is home to companies that make up substantially more than half of the
market value of the top 100 global public companies. Technology makes up more than a
third of America's contribution to that market value, at nearly $8 trillion. According to the
World Bank, the innovation-based digital economy grew more than twice as fast as the
overall GDP between 2004 and 2019. In the U.S., the digital economy has grown more than
three times as fast as the overall U.S. economy since 2005. This torrid growth increases
domestic employment and labor productivity. All of this redounds directly to U.S. national
security—economic security is national security.
America's economic future depends not on big manufacturing, but on technology and
innovation. Where steel plants and manufacturing plants once stood, we now see software
development and chip design labs, cloud computing nodes and supply distribution centers.
All this has happened specifically in the United States precisely because the government
allowed resources to flow to their most productive uses and at times helped prime the
pump with basic research funding.
The U.S., unlike some European nations, has avoided creating a vast web of bureaucracy
and heavy-handed government regulation. While there are some pockets of innovation in
Europe, the regulatory environments in France, Germany and Spain make them much less
attractive to cutting-edge companies. Venture capital investment in the U.S. is more than
three times larger than in the EU. For all of its foibles, America remains a good bet for
innovative companies.
Our relatively laissez-faire economic policy has also created a robust startup community.
It supports strong venture capital funding, like Andreessen Horowitz' investments in the
burgeoning crypto industry and social media app Clubhouse. It also has helped the U.S.
become the world leader in startup acquisitions.
Current U.S. economic policy has also created long-term growth opportunities in the
public markets. American tech companies, for example, make up four of the five most
valuable public companies based on market capitalization. Larger technology companies
like Illumina may very well be able to fund smaller ones like Grail. They can identify
opportunities to leverage economies of scale, make important innovations, such as new
ways to screen for cancer, and bring new technology like multi-cancer early detection tests
to market. This is a good thing.

Even with new tech, US-China relations will be peaceful – squo maintains
interdependence
Zhen 20 (Zhen Han, Postdoctoral Scholar at the Centre for International Environment and
Resource Policy (CIERP), The Fletcher School, Tufts University; T V Paul, James McGill Professor
of International Relations, the Department of Political Science, McGill University, “China’s Rise
and Balance of Power Politics”, The Chinese Journal of International Politics, Volume 13, Issue 1,
Spring 2020, Pages 1–26, https://doi.org/10.1093/cjip/poz018)
Compared with the hard balancing against the Soviet Union during the Cold War, one can see the key difference today is that
China has yet to be perceived as posing an existential threat similar to that by the Soviet Union. Chinese
and Western strategies and economic interdependence propelled by economic globalization allow this.

The dominant approach of the great powers today consists in somewhat defensive and deterrent
strategies and doctrines, suggesting that balancing against threats as opposed to power seems to be the dominant approach in
contemporary world politics. Rising states, especially China in the post-Cold War era, have been following defensive
and deterrent strategies and doctrines as opposed to an offensive strategy. And the deterrent and defensive
technologies of today make it extremely hard for a state to lose its sovereignty and physical
existence through another power’s aggrandisement. The presence of nuclear weapons allows states to engage in
limited expansion without evoking much of a backlash. No substantial technological breakthroughs have
taken place that could compare to the introduction of the tank or the aircraft, which made offensive
doctrines and strategies such as blitzkrieg feasible for expansionism.93 Nor are rising powers incorporating
new offensive technologies into new war strategies such as Nazi Germany’s development of the blitzkrieg strategy.94

Secondly, the contemporary state system is more interdependent than at any other time in history.
During the Cold War, economic globalisation and economic interdependence were confined to among Western allies, as economic
containment was the dominant feature of the global economic order. In the contemporary world, major power economies are
increasingly tied together. The ongoing economic globalisation is also different from previous eras in
both
qualitative and quantitative dimensions.95 Intense interactions in commodity trade , financial and
service trade, international travel and education, climate change cooperation, and technology exchange essentially tie
states together in a community of shared future.96 Thus, major powers have also underlined the limitations
of coercive sanctions and military means to achieve their goals.97

The combined strength of these factors is that states, even the weakest ones, do not worry much about their
physical existence, and as a result, the rationale for them to form intense military alliances for hard
balancing has declined. Balance of power, after all, is predicated on the notion that superior power needs to be
balanced, lest the powerful become aggressive and usurp the less powerful over time. As threats are limited to the non-
existential variety, balance of power competition is less dominant than in previous historical eras. The
ideologies of the existing powers or rising powers propound expansion and conquest, as did the previous era’s rising powers such as
Germany, Italy, Japan, and the Soviet Union. Thegrand strategy of China, in particular, even after 2012, has been
that of relying on a slow expansion without evoking too hostile a reaction. The BRI is indeed helping
China to avoid intense hard balancing. China’s acceptance of many norms, as well as its involvement in
institutions, reduces the chances of its getting into an expansionist ideological mode.98 Although this
factor may change, since nationalist ideologies could spring up as structural conditions change, it is unlikely to be the case unless a
substantial sense of grievance emerges in China.

US tech competition strategy upsets China’s peaceful multilateralism and

economic leadership
De Graaff 18 (De Graaff, N., Associate Professor in Political Science and International Relations
at the Department of Political Science and Public Administration; Van Apeldoorn, B. Professor of
Global Political Economy and Geopolitics at the Department of Political Science and Public
Administration at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, (2018). US–China relations and the liberal
world order: contending elites, colliding visions? International Affairs, 94(1), 113–131.
doi:10.1093/ia/iix232)

Even if America’s market power is still unparalleled and underpinned by the dollar’s status as the unrivalled global reserve
currency,4 even if China’s military budget is still only about one-third of America’s , and even if the Chinese

political economy is plagued by its own contradictions such as overcapacity and a spiralling debt, China does
represent—in terms of the size of its population and its growth potential—a world power with the ability to challenge America’s status
as a leading global power in the coming era.5 This is why some authors find it conceivable that China will come to act as what Schweller and Pu have
called a ‘spoiler’ of the system, seeking to overthrow the rules-based liberal world order.6 Others, however, have highlighted the fact that to date China
has actually been largely adapting to the liberal rules of the game as formulated within US-dominated global institutions rather than challenging them,
acting as a supporter of the current system.7 China’s compliance with WTO rules is a case in point.8 The question thus remains to what
extent and how China is adapting to or confronting the liberal order—and US power and position within that order—
which in turn is both influenced by and shaping the way in which the United States itself is responding to China’s
rise.

We identify three scenarios regarding the evolution of the US–China relationship and its implications for world order. The first
scenario is one of (inevitable) conflict. The realist version presents this in balance-of-power terms , with China’s
emergence as a global Great Power threatening America’s position as hegemon. While some realists view American decline as inevitable and advocate
accommodation to China’s rising power,9 most argue that the United States should and will resist this challenge by
pursuing a ‘containment’ strategy, leading to a new Cold War or even open military conflict.10 Others look more at the illiberal nature of China’s
domestic regime, and the threat its authoritarian and statist version of capitalism might pose to the West and the liberal order.11 To the extent that
China does not want to be part of this liberal sphere under US leadership, US–China confrontation becomes more likely.
In the second scenario, that of co-optation, China will let itself be incorporated into the liberal order . In
this scenario, what we describe below as America’s strategy of ‘liberal engagement’ will pay off: China, taking into account its own
self-interest and the deepening interdependence between the world’s two largest economies, will choose to adapt to what the
Obama administration called the ‘rules of the road’. This would also imply a gradual abandoning of its ‘statist’
model of economic and political governance. This scenario, associated above all with liberal theorists, might unfold even in
the case of America’s relative hegemonic decline, simply because, it is argued, the liberal order is so attractive: it has low costs of
entry, while participating in it brings great benefits in terms of prosperity and legitimacy.12

These two scenarios are the most commonly found in the literature; but we identify the possibility of a third, one of coexistence.
Here the United States and China would each maintain their own distinct political and economic
system, both systems being—in different ways—part of and compatible with a capitalist and globally
interlinked world economy. In this hybrid scenario China retains a relatively autonomous trajectory , partially
adapting to the rules of the game of the liberal order, but at the same time holding on to distinctive aspects of its state–

society model and foreign policy orientation. Such a scenario—which might come close to what Zeng and Breslin
identify as a ‘G2 with Chinese characteristics’13—seems to align with the ‘new type of Great Power relations’ that

President Xi Jinping has in mind, and fits with an emerging consensus within China that the
country needs to take a more proactive leading role in global politics.14 Such a scenario would, however, also require
partial adaptation—and accommodation— on the part of the United States,15 and the key question
therefore naturally arises whether the US is prepared to undertake such adaptation.

Military tech competition crowds out Chinese development influence through

the BRI
Luo 19 (Luo Zhifan, Ph.D. candidate of sociology at the University at Albany - State University of
New York; Aaron Major, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University at Albany -
SUNY, (2019), “The Political-Military Foundations of China’s Global Ascendency”, Journal of
World-Systems Research, Vol. 25, Issue 2, DOI 10.5195/JWSR.2019.874)

Finally, while both BRI and non-BRI countries have had some military-diplomatic engagement with China, BRI
countries were much more likely to have sustained military-diplomatic ties . The
membership of the AIIB is similarly made up of countries with established economic and political-
military ties to China, though with some notable exceptions. Table 4 shows that AIIB members have similarly strong, long-
standing connections to Chinese trade, foreign investment, and oil import networks as “core” BRI countries and are similarly
much more likely to have established economic ties with China than non-AIIB members. On the other hand, AIIB
members
have only slightly stronger ties to some Chinese political-military networks , specifically arms
exports and military diplomacy, but the degree of difference between AIIB members and non-AIIB members is
not as great as that between BRI and non-BRI countries. Like BRI countries, AIIB members countries are much more
likely to have sustained military-diplomatic relationships with China , but AIIB member countries average
only slightly more years being part of China’s arms export network than non-AIIB members countries (1.6 versus 0.9).
Moreover, Chinese military deployments in the 2000-2012 period were in countries that did not become AIIB members.

the BRI and AIIB both build upon existing economic and
Taken together, these findings show how
political-military relationships, and (especially the AIIB) serve as a framework for expanding Chinese
influence beyond its existing economic and political-military ties. The membership of the AIIB consists
of two groups: 37 regional partners who were likely to be direct recipients of AIIB funded project s or who had their own
interests in supporting infrastructure development in the region, and 24 non-regional partners, most of whom are Western
European economies with whom China has had relatively few political-military ties over the last two decades. China does not
deploy troops to Europe, and Western Europe does not need economic aid nor show much interest in Chinese arms. Yet, this
does not mean that China has not used political-military means to shore up commitments from Western European partners. As
shown in Table 2, above, the PLA’s military diplomatic activity in Western Europe is nearly as frequent
as it is in Sub-Saharan Africa, with roughly half of the countries in Western Europe participating
in military diplomacy with China in every year 2000-2011.12 This suggests two things. First, the BRI and AIIB both
facilitate Chinese investment abroad, but their likely effects with respect to China’s global influence differ. In its early years, the
BRI has served more to consolidate existing relationships than to expand China’s influence
around the world. The AIIB has acted more as a vehicle for expanding Chinese influence, notably into the wealthiest
countries of the West. Whether the AIIB ultimately serves to create a real alternative to existing multilateral financial
bodies still needs to be seen, but this is clearly a step towards China taking a lead role in organizing the distribution of global
investments and further developments along this line would certainly shore up its position as a global economic leader. Second,
this analysis reinforces the point that softer
forms of political-military engagement are doing more to
help China achieve its global ambitions than direct military conflict. Both the pattern of
BRI investments and AIIB partner countries suggest that military diplomacy supported,
and perhaps even helped establish, these relationships.

BRI solves regional wars – promotes interdependence which is the foundation

of conflict resolution
Muhammad 19 (Imraz Muhammad, Lecturer, Department of Political Science, University of
Buner, Swari; Dr. Arif Khan, Assistant Professor, Department Political Science, University of
Buner; Dr. Saif ul Islam, Assistant Professor, Department Political Science, University of Buner;
“China Pakistan Economic Corridor: Peace, Prosperity and Conflict Resolution in the Region”, Sir
Syed Journal of Education & Social Research (SJESR) Vol. 2, Issue 1, 2019,
https://sjesr.org.pk/articles/02-v2-2019/issue-01/09-Vol-02-Issue-01-Jan-June-2019-P-128-
139.pdf)

In the twenty first century, the geostrategic importance of South Asia is rising because of theChina Pakistan Economic
Corridor (CPEC) which is the important component of the one belt one road initiative (BRI). CPEC, started point is
Gawadar a deep water port connects to the China‘s province of Xinjiang. Being part of the BRI, once CPEC is completely started
functioning, it will improve the political, social and economic situation of the regional states and will
raise the geo-strategic importance. CPEC is the priority of both states China and Pakistan, for Pakistan, CPEC pass through Pakistan‘s
geography, is outlet for the landlocked countries and provides access to the supply and demands market to regional countries, while
it is very short route for China, CPEC replace 13000 km only into 2500 km to reach to Middle East.1 So both the states have an
instinct desire to continue it irrespective of change in the government.

Not only this, CPEC will boost up the regional states‘ economy, ensure peace and prosperity in the
region. Political, social and economic degradation in South Asia, created a hurdle in the cooperation
among the regional countries. Security issues, terrorism, over population, economic disparities, lacking of
education and modern inventions, lacking of health facilities, poor economic setup, water issues etc. devastated the life style and
hindered the progress, development and peace in the region. CPEC is a turning point in the history of Asians‘
countries, it is not only a game changer and a target for Pakistan and China but a project for the whole region. Goal
of this project is to promote commerce and trade culture, integrate the regional states for the development of economy, agriculture
and industries. Furthermore, itis a source of peace, prosperity and conflicts resolutions in the region through economic
development, economic dependence and regional integration.
CPEC is a sign of peace and affluence for the whole region as for Pakistan. Being economic zone it will bring political, social and
especially economic growth in the region. However, this research work deals with analyse the CPEC role in bringing peace and
prosperity on the one hand and led to conflict resolution in South Asia on the other hand.
What is CPEC?
The CPEC is the part of one belt, one road has featuring of common advantages and prosperity, containing on complimentary
interest, cooperation and collaboration and mutual benefits. A widespread transport corridor, industrial and trade cooperative rout
between China and Pakistan, having the potential of people to people contact and communication, sources of cultural diffusion and
exchange. Additionally, CPEC has the ability of political, social and economic growth, bringing peace, prosperity and security in
region2

The CPEC covers the areas starting from a muslim majority province Xinjiang Uygur in China and almost all provinces Pakistan. Main
areas through which CPEC passes are Kashgar, Atushi, Tumshuq, Shule, Shufu, Akto, Tashkurgan Tajik, Gilgit, Peshawar, Dera Ismail
Khan, Islamabad, Lahore, Multan, Quetta, Sukkur, Hyderabad, Karachi and Gwadar. Furthermore, the CPEC will comprise one belt,
three passageways, and two axes and five functional zones.

Peace, Prosperity and Conflict Resolutions

Narrowly peace is defined as the passivity and acceptance of injustice and cruelty without showing reaction.3 It may also be turn as
the complete absence of war which simply fall in the negative peace category, but actually peace is more than that, it is
based
on the political, social and economic development of society and elimination of the injustice, and violations of
the human rights.4 More elaborately, peace focused on the modern concept of democracy, liberalism and postmodern society,
which is really related to the deconstruction of the parochial society, snatch powers from single body and share with rest of the
society, where there is popular democracy is observed. Where there is no exploitation of the individual and restriction on the
abusive use of the authorities.5 Nonviolence, the philosophy of Gandhi and Bacha Khan, is the part of positive peace, where there is
no violation of the law, demand for rights under the shadow of law, no threats are used during protest and strikes. So, by this way
there is risk for the conflicts, violations and war. Demand for right by using violence fall under the umbrella of negative peace.
Jonathan Schell fruitfully summarised the dilemma of non-violence as cooperation, collective action consist on the mutual consent
against abusive and parochial power and compel those actions which are taken against them.6 However, it is a very emotive term
which has many heads and tails has not absolute end, in short the think tankers are in seeking to find easy way to bring cooperation,
consensus, mediations, resolutions and more effective ways to resolve the issues and disputes, and transform the causes of war into
peace.

Perpetual peace is possible in resolving the conflicts, but due to anarchy in the international community, there is conflict.
Disagreements, irrational demands, denial and counter claim leads to conflicts. So, prevention of the conflicts, mediation,
management and resolution fascinated the international community, because the cost of war and conflicts is higher. For the conflict
resolution, various methods are used as the tactics of good offices, arbitration, enquiry, negotiation, problem setting workshop,
second track diplomacy, reconciliation and judicial settlement.7 However, conflict resolution depends upon clear assurance from all
parties.

CPEC Role in Bringing Peace and Prosperity & Peace through Economic Growth & Regional
Integration:
Political, social and economic interdependence society, reduce the chances of conflicts and war. Liberal thinkers probe out that
free trade and economic interdependence flourish peace and eliminate the risk of militancy. The
theory of Economic Opportunity Cost Hypothesis investigated that economic interdependence increase the level of integration
among nations, consequently there is the eruption of peace and alleviated the condition of war8 . Economically
weak
states, where is economically disintegrated states are mostly enhanced in conflicts with each other. So, it is the
benefits of trade globalization which decreases conflicts among nations. The theory of Neo-Functionalism which discussed norms
and values of the Europe integration, has focused that cooperation and harmonization in one sector open the routes of another for
the cooperation.9 Where, further expansion of the chain of integration, cooperation and as a result peace enhances in society. Like
European states, Afghanistan,
Iran, India, Pakistan, China and other central Asian states have the
capacity of regional integration through CPEC. The CPEC has the potential of cooperation, integration, economic
growth, and forged unity among regional states. According to the norms of NeoFunctionalism, CPEC provides an opportunity of free
trade, economic dependence, transportation and regional integration through functional cooperation.

South Asia is the most exacerbated region in the world, because of militancy, conflicts, overpopulation, less development, lacking of
education and specially the arm race among nations. Terrorism in the region (Afghanistan and Pakistan) created
security dilemma and furthermore the conflicts of Pakistan and India over Kashmir worsen the situation,
which disturb the economic chain in the region for a long time. CPEC bestowed the best opportunity to resolve
the conflicts and created peace through geo-economics and geo-politics. This corridor has the capacity to create
economic interdependence in the region and regional integration because of functional cooperation based on common interest and
needs.10 CPEC network connected the regional and extra-regional countries through, economic trade, liberalization of economy,
free policies and open membership, to get advancement in commerce and trade on global level.11 Being part of the of the Belt and
Road Initiative (BRI), CPEC has
the capacity to interconnect China, Pakistan, Iran, India, Afghanistan,
Central Asia, West Asia, not only this other states of the Central Asia are also may connected with this corridor through India.
After Passing through Asia, CPEC enter into Europe through ―One Belt, One Road‖ strategy.12 By this way CPEC created
cooperation among adjacent and de-adjacent countries, and lead to peace and prosperity through economic dependence, as the
China‘s Assistant Foreign Minister opined that peace, prosperity and economic development of CPEC not only limited to China and
Pakistan but to the whole region.13 Similar view has been presented by the Ex-PM Nawaz Sharif during his visit to Turkmenistan,
CPEC would be beneficial for everyone in the region in the socio-economic perspective, as he said that ―CPEC will offer
opportunities for hundreds of millions of people.‖ But it is necessary to promote peace in the region because without peace,
development remains just words on the tongue, as he further mentioned that peace and prosperity are connected with each other.
Furthermore, flourishing the popular concept of happiness and prosperity Nawaz Sharif added, that my government will ensure
Regional integration and connectivity. It will help us to work together towards pursuing our common objective of strengthening
peace and bringing development in our region. In fact CPEC is an opportunity where Pakistan and other countries of the region have
to work for the betterment of our people.‖14 So, through integration of the regional states, CPEC has a great role in the flourishing
of the peace, prosperity and development in the region.

The issue of terrorism, militancy, Kashmir disputes , crimes as piracy, human trafficking and problems
around the Indian Oceans, are created severe affection over the region regarding international trade and commerce,
crumpling of economy and security threats. These issues also devastating the security and economic situation of Pakistan,
therefore, responding to these devastating issues is one of the foremost priorities of Pakistan and China. ChinaPakistan adopted
joint struggle for the fortification of their maritime security to bring peace and stability in the region and secure the CPEC from
insecurity.15

China’s military and economic rise promote a stable world order better than the
US – solves regional governance, prolif, and climate change
Chen 20 (Zhimin Chen, professor of international relations at the School of International
Relations and Public Affairs at Fudan University; Zhang Xueying, PhD candidate at the School of
International Relations and Public Affairs at Fudan University, “Chinese conception of the world
order in a turbulent Trump era”, The Pacific Review, 2020, DOI:
10.1080/09512748.2020.1728574)

There is a more clearly articulated official conception of the world/international order, in the notion of ‘a
Community of Shared Future for Mankind’: a vision based on sovereign states and the multi-polarizing
balance of power, but supportive of necessary multilateral and bilateral mechanisms to promote
the level of cooperation required in a globalized world. It is not an order to replace the existing one, but an
improvement of the current order. In a major speech by President Xi Jinping at the UN office in Geneva on 18 January
2017, he presented five aspects of such a future world : countries stay committed to building a world of lasting
peace through dialogue and consultation; build a world of common security for all through joint efforts;
build a world of common prosperity through winwin cooperation; build an open and inclusive world
through exchanges and mutual learning ; and make the world clean and beautiful by pursuing green and low-
carbon development (Xi, 2017b). Zhang Wenmu commented that, through ‘a Community of Shared Future for Mankind’,
China presents a ‘China solution’ for global governance which meets the needs of humankind by embracing ancient oriental
wisdoms. (Zhang, 2017, p. 24) Gao Cheng from CASS emphasizes the idea of ‘contributing together and benefiting together’ within ‘a
Community of Shared Future for Mankind’, allowing China’s development model to serve as a template and inspiration to countries
encountering similar development challenges, in order to help them achieve long-term political stability and prosperity (Gao, 2016,
p. 104).
Overall, Chinese scholars are cautiously optimistic that this is a future world order to be promoted .
First of all, Chinese in general believe that US dominance in the world is not sustainable. A recent
survey conducted in China showed that a majority of Chinese citizens (57.7%) who participated in the survey believed that China will
eventually surpass the US in terms of overall development (Huazhong keji daxue guojia chuanbo zhanlue yanjiuyuan (Huazhong
University of Science & Technology National Communication Strategy Institute), 2019). A future China might not be a new
dominating power, but the US will surely lose its dominating position (Zhang, 2019). Therefore, any hegemonic world order will not
be viable in the future.

Secondly, a globalized world demands cooperation among states and other global actors. Even if globalization has its many flaws, it
remains one of the mega-trends in the world. Globalization is already an ‘objective reality of the contemporary world’ and could not
‘be altered by the subjective will of some people’ (Qin, 2017). The mounting number of global
issues has also enlarged
the wide gap between the necessity of global governance and current global governance
capacity, creating a fundamental problem which requires the adjustment of the international order (Fu &
Fu, 2017).

Thirdly, in
the wider global South, and even in most Western countries, China would still find many like-
minded partners in terms of developing economic partnerships , and governance partnerships to
address large-scale regional and global challenges, such as regional security, nuclear
proliferation, climate change and sustainable development,. Countries in the European Union are mostly
NATO allies and key supporters of the past USled liberal international order. While European states share some concerns of the
Trump administration regarding policy towards China, they are also bewildered by rising US unilateralism and are willing to work
with China on many key bilateral and global agendas. Chinese observers are following the EU’s new foreign direct investment review
mechanism, which has a fairly explicit aim to restrict Chinese direct investment in EU countries (Zhang, 2019) They are also paying
close attention to the EU’s collaboration with the US and Japan in pushing WTO reforms which would restrict state subsidies and
curb the role of state-owned companies in national economies (Xu & Zhang, 2019). Nevertheless, these differences do not
overshadow the broader shared understanding and support between European states and China on the key aspects of a desired
future world order. Both sides champion multilateralism (Michalski & Pan, 2017), while a number of key European countries have
joined the China-initiated ‘AIIB’ (Pang, 2015). In a recent Joint Statement from the 21st EU-China Summit, leaders on both sides
stressed that the EU and China ‘reaffirm their resolve to work together for peace, prosperity and sustainable development and their
commitment to multilateralism, and respect for international law and for fundamental norms governing international relations, with
the UN at its core’ (European Council, 2019). This European example showcases that the
rest of the world is unlikely to
follow the template of the Trump government , or embrace similar forms of narrow nationalism
and isolationism in economic and foreign policy.

America’s dominating the tech race now—military and R&D edge in every next
gen tech, controls the backbone in telecom. But – antitrust ruins it—breaks up
the firms making the largest investments in R&D
Abbott ’21 [Alden Abbott, Paul Redmond Michel, Adam Mossoff, Kristen Jakobsen Osenga,
and Brian O’Shaughnessy; March 10; the Federal Trade Commission’s General Counsel (2018-
2021), adjunct professor at George Mason University, J.D. from Harvard Law School, M.A. in
economics from Georgetown University; Retired Chief Judge and United States Circuit Judge of
the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit; Law Professor at George Mason
University; Law Professor at the University of Richmond; chair of Dinsmore’s IP Transactions and
Licensing Group; the Regulatory Transparency Project, “Aligning Intellectual Property, Antitrust,
and National Security Policy,” https://regproject.org/wp-content/uploads/Paper-Aligning-
Intellectual-Property-Antitrust-and-National-Security-Policy.pdf]
The U.S. government has recognized that “5G is a critical strategic technology [such that]
nations that master advanced communications technologies and ubiquitous connectivity will
have a long-term economic and military advantage.”8 The U.S. has had a substantial
technological edge over our military and intelligence rivals in foundational R&D for 5G and
other next-generation technologies. U.S. companies have long been leaders in the
development of previous generations of core mobile standards (2G, 3G, 4G, and LTE). This
technological leadership has made it possible for U.S. companies to ensure the security and
integrity of the hardware and software products that make up the backbone of the U.S.
telecommunication systems. This leadership must continue for the U.S. government to more
effectively anticipate potential security risks and take the necessary steps to protect national
security.9

Despite this history of clear technological leadership, there are causes for concern. First, a very
small number of U.S. companies have made the investments in the overwhelming majority of
the R&D necessary to develop 5G.10 Historically, U.S. companies have heavily invested in R&D,
which has propelled the U.S. into leadership positions in critical standard development
organizations working on foundational next-generation technologies like 5G.11 U.S. companies
like Qualcomm play a significant and important role in this process through innovation,
patenting, and standard setting, but they are not alone in the global community of high-tech
companies.12 Backed by their nations’ leadership, Chinese and Korean companies have also
invested heavily in developing the core technologies for 5G.13

The willingness of U.S. companies to invest in R&D is threatened, however. The development of
5G is a bit like a race, with the companies who develop the best technology coming out ahead.
While U.S. companies are savvy and talented competitors in this race, aggressive and
unwarranted use of antitrust law by U.S. regulators, as well as by foreign antitrust authorities,
threatens to put obstacles in these companies’ paths and hinder their ability to lead.

China won’t overtake the US.

Eugene Gholz & Harvey M. Sapolsky 21, Associate Professor, Political Science, University of
Notre Dame; Emeritus Professor, Public Policy & Organization, MIT. Former Director, MIT
Security Studies Program, "The Defense Innovation Machine: Why the U.S. Will Remain on the
Cutting Edge," Journal of Strategic Studies, pg. 2-17, 06/25/2021, T&F.
Here we examine these concerns that the American military advantage in the Post-Cold War era has dissipated in large part because
the Defense Department lags behind in developing advanced technologies. Our judgment is that the American defense
research and development system, as honed during the Cold War and expanded since, is fully capable of handling
any military challenge. It is a gigantic technology-generating, innovation-producing, war-fighting
machine. U.S. ‘hard’ innovation capabilities – ‘input and infrastructure factors’ like R&D facilities, human
capital, access to foreign technology, and availability of funding – far outstrip those of its potential
rivals, even though those factors are the ones often thought of as easier for catch-up countries to obtain.3 Despite warnings
that the United States no longer spends enough on R&D and that Chinese R&D spending is surging, the reality is
that the United States dramatically leads in military innovation investment . In functional terms, the United
States dominates all other countries, including China, in ‘input factors,’ starting with resource allocations to
defense research and development.
More important, we believe that the American defense technology system is pushed toward innovation
by specific contextual factors, the ‘soft’ categories of attributes and capabilities, that cannot readily
transfer to likely rivals.4 First, the political culture of the United States values technology strongly:
technology is assumed to be the solution to most problems, including military ones. American culture also has a strong
casualty aversion driven by an economy traditionally burdened by labor scarcity and by responsive
political institutions that encourage the substitution of capital for labor to keep its own people out of harm’s way.5 The All-
Volunteer Force reflects this by making military service voluntary and thus making military service expensive for government and
service personnel lives ever-more-valuable and in need of husbanding.

Second, competition is deeply engrained in defense, as it is in most of American society, stimulating new
ideas and providing a diversity of approaches to any problem, in case one technology trajectory does not work out as hoped.
Competition extends among the various military services and agencies, which each seek to propose
solutions to the nation’s strategic problems, and among firms with different design-team philosophies.

Third, the United States also welcomes foreign ideas much more readily than other countries, given U.S.
openness to immigration, especially among the highly skilled and technically expert. Finally, a Cold-War
organizational innovation in the United States created special public-private hybrid organizations,
Federally-Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs) that offer unbiased technical advice
and a mechanism for the accumulation of knowledge – a unique social, relational system for
institutional memory and systems integration capability that generally works very well. Other nations,
with different divisions between the public and the private and dramatically different governance institutions, cannot easily
copy these capabilities.

These soft innovation factors particularly emphasize American advantages in the functional category of
institutional factors – norms of seeing technology as a solution, trying hard to minimise casualties, using innovation as a
means of competition among organizations, and welcoming foreign ideas. The institutional factors draw from the particular
American mix of organizations, notably independent military services with strong identities,
competitive firms in the defense industry that readily form networks or teams of suppliers even as each
maintains its own core competencies and technical habits, and FFRDCs that help keep systems integration
efforts honest and less parochial and that help preserve knowledge of false-start technology
trajectories and craft skills that enable high-tech systems to function well .6

Because of the robustness of America’s input factors and the difficulty of copying its unique institutional factors, we conclude
that the
American defense innovation system will remain at the cutting edge and will not be
surpassed by a potential international rival. In the final section, we explain why American leaders are so nervous
anyway.

Is the United States losing its military overmatch?

In the early 1990s, with the disintegration of the Soviet Union that marked the end of the Cold War and the rapid defeat of Iraq in the Gulf War, the United States had a
dominating military edge against all comers in terms of the capabilities of both its nuclear and conventional forces. Many trace this edge to the so-called Reagan Build-up, which
actually began in the last two years of the Carter Administration and then expanded under President Reagan. The buildup involved investments of hundreds of billions of dollars
to modernize nearly all parts of the American military. The modernization of nuclear forces, for example, included the acquisition of Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines, the
highly accurate Trident D-5 and MX Peacekeeper missiles, the B-1B and B-2 bombers, and the acceleration of work on strategic command-andcontrol, anti-submarine warfare,
and anti-ballistic missile systems. Conventional forces improvements included fielding the Abrams tank, Bradley infantry fighting vehicle, Apache attack helicopter, and the
Patriot missile system, constructing a nearly 600-ship Navy, and deploying the A-10, F-15, F-16, F/A-18, and JSTARS aircraft, along with important technical improvements in
realistic training and investments in troop quality.

The Soviets were especially challenged by the conventional warfare improvements: the battlefield integration of sensors, communication systems, and precision weapons, which
they labeled as a ‘Military-Technical Revolution’ or, in later American terms, a ‘Revolution in Military Affairs’ (RMA). The combination of new technologies seemingly rendered
useless their ability to mass armored forces in a potential drive westward. As the Gulf War demonstrated to the entire world, numerical advantage in heavy metal on the
battlefield had been transformed from the source of military power into an easily reduced target set for American forces.

Among the consequences of the Soviet Union’s collapse were a one-third reduction in the size of the United States’ standing forces and an increased use of the remaining forces
in interventions across the globe. Freed from a possible clash with its nuclear-armed rival, the United States could involve itself in various civil wars and, after the 9/11 attacks on
the United States homeland, interventions to counter terrorist groups and regimes that might support them. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq produced persistent insurgencies,
where the RMA systems had little relevance and thus no major success.
But it is not the limitations of precision weapons but rather their diffusion that worries many. Both Russia and China, through clever tactics and the fielding of accurate offensive
and defensive systems, seem to be on the verge of being able to blunt the global reach of American power.7 Add in their acquisition of space and cyber weapons, and America’s
once unquestioned military edge appears in jeopardy. These threats to the previously established American technological advantages seem to require a new round of American
innovation.

Strong input factors: Defense R&D spending and the FFRDCs

It is not that the United States cannot lag behind in some fields of militarily relevant technology or be surprised on the battlefield.
Technology advances on many fronts and is pioneered in many places. Technological investment by potential adversaries surely can
raise the costs to the United States of blithely sticking to operational concepts that previously promised great effectiveness at low
cost.8 However, the United States has
been mobilized on such scale, for so long, with a special emphasis on
applying its vast science and engineering resources to its defense, that it will not readily fall
behind in weapons technology or quality.

The United States invests heavily in defense-related research and development (R&D) activities. Figure 1 shows the past 40
years of history of U.S. inputs to defense research and development. Currently the United States invests more
than 75 billion USD each year in defense R&D plus billions more in Department of Energy R&D investment
for nuclear weapons. That is about two-thirds of what all other countries in the world, American friend or
foe, spend on defense R&D.9 China is the only great power that spends more on its entire defense effort than the United States
spends on just defense R&D. Seventy-five billion dollars is more than Russia, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, or Japan spends
on defense.10

Moreover, the United States has invested at very high levels for more than 70 years. The United States
substantially ramped up its defense R&D investment in the 1950s to levels comparable to today’s spending. While it is true that in
inflation-adjusted terms, defense R&D totals in the 1950s were lower than today’s, that is mainly because of the lower complexity of
that era’s technological frontier, not because of some subsequent policy shift to greater emphasis on defense R&D investment.11
The continuing drive to push the military-technological frontier has kept R&D spending high all along, and the overall spending trend
has increased in parallel with the increasing complexity rather than lagging behind. While R&D budget increases have not been
constant, their cycle (including as shown in Figure 1) has crested and troughed at very high levels. Annual spending has not dropped
below 55 billion USD (in 2018 dollars) since 1983, and in several years, it has been very close to 100 billion USD. That high level of
spending, year-in and year-out, has a cumulative effect, because it builds a foundation of tacit knowledge, experience in integrating
complex systems, and human capital that understands the specialized parameters of military systems, which often differ from those
of even high-end civilian systems. For comparison, the much-hyped Chinese
defense budget (not the Chinese defense
R&D budget) did not exceedthe level of U.S. defense R&D spending until the late-2000s. Cumulative
Chinese defense R&D investment is surely quite modest in comparison to cumulative U.S. defense
R&D investment.13

The intensity of U.S. interest in defense research began at the start of the Second World War, with scientists rather than the military. American scientists had been frustrated by
the failure of the military to use them effectively in the First World War, when they were confined to military laboratories and subject to military discipline. Led by Vannevar
Bush of MIT, they approached President Roosevelt and gained their own organization to manage wartime research, what was eventually called the Office of Scientific Research
and Development (OSRD). That organization, not the military, directed the effort to develop the atomic bomb, radar, and many of the other significant technical advances of the
war.14

In the postwar years scientists remained active in bomb research, though with less independence, in the newly created Atomic Energy Commission (later absorbed in the
Department of Energy) and in the expansion of R&D efforts in the newly established Department of Defense (DOD), which sought in particular to exploit the advances in missile,
jet propulsion, and submarine technologies of the war, including those made by the Germans. Although OSRD itself was disbanded, at least parts of its work continued in various
universityand contractor-managed organizations and laboratories, the Federally Funded Research and Development Centers and University Affiliated Research Centers. Those
organizations play a vital role in creating ‘soft’ innovation capabilities in the United States – preserving the institutional memory about past R&D efforts, cultivating multiple
design-team philosophies that enable diverse approaches to technological challenges, and using their independence to prevent the capture of the U.S. R&D effort by rent-
seeking activities of government customers and private-sector suppliers.15

For example, the Radiation Laboratory at MIT, which worked on radar in the Second World War, was renamed Lincoln Laboratory and continued under MIT management as an
FFRDC doing classified work for the Air Force. The University of California manages the nuclear bomb-design laboratories, Los Alamos and Livermore, designated national
laboratories for the Atomic Energy Commission. The Navy has its own set of university-managed laboratories, often called Applied Physics Laboratories, at Johns Hopkins
University, the University of Hawaii, Pennsylvania State University, the University of Texas, and the University of Washington. The armed services also set up several policy-
focused FFRDCs, the best known of which is the RAND Corporation. As new issues came up over the decades, new organizations were created such as the Software Engineering
Institute at Carnegie Mellon University and the Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies at MIT.

FFRDCs and related organizations do more than provide the American military with cutting edge
research on important technical and policy problems. As non-profits dedicated only to serve government agencies, they are a
source of valued, unbiased technical advice.16 In fact, some FFRDCs, specifically MITRE and the Aerospace Corporation but others
as well, specialize in advancing systems design and integration skills to help the American military build its
biggest systems.17
Until the Second World War, contractors hired to produce America’s weapons during wars returned to their commercial business at
each war’s end, as military needs soon faded. But the end of the Second World War was quickly followed by the Cold War and the
continuing demand for weapons. Many firms stayed in the weapons business, some focusing exclusively on defense while others
formed specialized divisions to serve the military. This was especially true in the aviation industry, where firms like Lockheed,
Northrop, Grumman, McDonnell, Douglas, and Boeing grew large developing and building the aircraft and missiles that were central
to the Cold War arms competition.

The peak technologies in the arms race changed over time, but the U.S. organizations and level of investment maintained the U.S.
lead. The 1950s added space: the shock of the launch of the Sputnik satellite spurred dramatic increases in American R&D
investments and the commitment to reach the moon before the Soviet Union. The lead the United States already had in ballistic
missiles became obvious in the 1960s, as it met milestone after milestone in the quest to deploy strategic nuclear forces and build
satellites to support them, all the while fighting a war in Vietnam and reaching the moon. As the Soviet Union sought to catch up,
the United States began the investment in sensors and precision weapons that eventually undermined Soviet power and self-
confidence. The American emphasis on strategic defenses, sometimes more potential than real, nevertheless threatened to cancel
the advantages the Soviets had worked hard to achieve in nuclear missile numbers and warhead size.18 The conventional warfare
revolution took away the Red Army menace that had kept half of Europe in its grip and the other half in its fear for decades.19 The
Soviets lost hope of winning battles that were never fought.

Little of this R&D structure went away at the end of the Cold War. The increase in defense R&D spending that marked the Reagan
Build-up was a ratchet. Today, the United States spends more on defense research, in real terms, than it did
at the height of the Cold War. Defense industry mergers and base closures reshuffled ownership of some military research
facilities but did not shrink many of them. DOD employs nearly 100,000 people in 63 research laboratories and
centers.20 The FFRDCs and similar organizations continued their work supporting the military. The end of
the Cold War was a dip, not a cliff.

Soft institutional factors: Incentives for innovation

What also didn’t go away with the end of the Cold War were the incentives that drive American military innovation – the institutional factors or ‘shared prescriptions guiding
conduct [of] participants within the system’ that drive the American defense innovation system.21 There are at least three. One is a concern for avoiding casualties. A second is
the rivalry that exists among the various components of the American defense establishment. And the third is the openness of American society to immigrants and their ideas.

The concern for avoiding casualties runs deep in American military operations and stems from both a persistent national labor shortage and the democratic nature of the
American polity.22 There were never enough people to build the country, thus the constant importation of labor, free or not, to tend the fields or run the factories. The earliest
defense forces were militias made up of all local men, but it was difficult to assemble significant troops for expeditions or to keep them deployed for long because of the need
for their labor back home. Mobilization for wars relied heavily on state forces, which varied in quality and commitment. Later resort to conscription was contentious and often
produced evasion and rioting. The United States resisted the maintenance of a large, professional military until the 1950s.23

Even when the United States succumbed because of the Cold War, it sought to limit the military’s growth through the intense application of technology. The World Wars drew
the United States into the age of total war with huge armies, but the combat experience made the United States fully aware of the human costs inherent in modern
industrialized warfare. The Army Air Corps became the champion of strategic bombing doctrine that called for fleets of bombers bypassing the carnage of the battlefield to
destroy industries that were thought to be central to an opponent’s power.

Bombers themselves proved vulnerable in World War II, and when they failed to achieve the intended strategic effects, air power advocates repeatedly promised that with just a
little more technological progress they would achieve the precision and invulnerability needed to make the operational concept work.24 The accuracy problem persisted
through the Vietnam conflict, where the destruction of specific targets, usually bridges, often required risking the lives or capture of hundreds of pilots in multiple missions
involving dozens upon dozens of aircraft each.25 Given the limited goals at stake in such conflicts, individual losses mattered much politically. Thus, the great and successful
effort to improve the accuracy of conventional weapons and the speed and stealth of the platforms that carry them to the point where if a target can be identified and located, it
can be destroyed with little or no risk to American personnel.26 The means depend upon the circumstance, often weather- or platform-determined, and include laser- and GPS-
guided weapons. Now drones often take the place of manned aircraft.

The race to develop new weapons and doctrine is spurred on in the American system by inter-service competition.27 The United States military, unlike those of nearly all big
nations, is not dominated by one armed service, the Royal Navy in the United Kingdom or the Red Army in the Soviet Union. The United States does not fear invasions across its
borders by foreign armies, nor does it need a navy to link it to distant colonies. Instead, each of its armed services seeks special prominence among the others as being the
answer to emerging dangers or the foreign policy desires of the president. There is overlap and duplication in their efforts – and the incentive to innovate.

It was this competition that gave the United States the lead in the race to develop ballistic missiles and satellites of all types.28 Civilian agencies, particularly the Central
Intelligence Agency and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, sometimes join in. The United States has several intelligence agencies, four air forces, three armies,
and a navy or two, and each favors certain technologies and sees a particular threat best. They are rivals for attention, resources, and public acclaim.

The Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 and the intelligence reforms that followed the 9/11 terror attacks were intended to foster more cooperation and more central direction
among the services and agencies. Certainly, the conflicts among the services are less visible, as all hail (in public) the virtues of Jointness. But it is a soft Jointness, more logrolling
than subordination to a common doctrine or an agreed-upon set of priorities. The services still compete for attention and promote their vision of the threat that endangers the
nation: witness the reactions of the Army and Marine Corps to the Navyand Air Force-conceived AirSea Battle doctrine.

The resistance to centralization is protected first and foremost by the military services’ strong cultures, with their proud traditions and their situations as ‘total organizations’
that control their members’ entire lives. Even the civilians who work for the services tend to have a relatively strong sense of their organization’s mission, compared to other
government workers, because of the services’ relatively clear definitions of their critical tasks, although the services are also notably complex organizations, and in other
circumstances such complexity tends to dilute organizational identity. But in addition to the organizations’ natural drive to nurture and protect their professional jurisdiction,
Congress, which has often pushed for centralization and planning, also protects inter-service competition by separating out favored causes. At the same time that it passed
Goldwater-Nichols, which emphasizes Jointness, Congress created the Special Operations Command, essentially a new service with its own global jurisdiction and budgetary
independence. More recently, Congress has elevated cyberwarfare to a separate warfare command and laid the groundwork for the creation of a separate Marine Corps-like
Space Corps from within the Air Force.29 One hand praises centralization and planning while the other advocates decentralization and competition, the stimulants of innovation.

The military power of the United States also benefits from immigration, which is a continuing source of new ideas and great energy. John Ericsson, the much-admired 19th
Century American naval engineer who promoted steam propulsion and ironclads, was born in Sweden. John Holland, the pioneer of the modern submarine, was born in Ireland.
Igor Sikorsky, the developer of the helicopter, was born in Russia, as was Alexander P. de Seversky, the great promoter of air power. America got to the atomic bomb first,
thanks to Albert Einstein and other Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. In aviation William Boeing was of German origin, the Lockheed brothers were of Scottish descent, and
John Knudsen Northrop’s family was from Yorkshire. And Abraham Karem, the designer of the Predator drone, immigrated to the United States from Israel.30

Immigration may be under scrutiny in the United States these days, but illegal immigration is much more contentious than immigration itself. The United States still admits a
million new permanent residents and naturalizes another three quarters of million people each year.31 Immigrants are part of every aspect of American life, but most
particularly science and engineering and every field of technology development that is relevant for defense – computer science, aeronautical engineering, nanotechnology,
robotics. Just look at American universities or a list of Silicon Valley technology startups.32 America’s main military rivals have no immigrants or asylum seekers. None except
desperate North Koreans fleeing an even-more-oppressive regime.

The irrelevance of reform

But doesn’t the importance of private organizations (private firms and FFRDCs) for the development of military technology mean
that the Department of Defense needs to take special care to connect to the most innovative parts of the United States like Silicon
Valley, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and other centers of high technology? Relative labor scarcity and inter-service competition can
help the military come up with ideas and wish lists for technology, but if the military intends to tap the technologies of the future,
someone else is going to have to actually design and build the systems. Former Defense Secretary Ashton Carter set up initiatives
like the DIUx (Defense Innovation Unit – experimental, now no longer experimental and known simply as DIU) during the Obama
administration to make these connections, fueled by a concern that the military organizations’ style is a poor fit for the modern
American culture of innovation.33 Will a new generation of research scientists relate well to defense’s mission of breaking things
and accommodate at all to its requirement to apply reams of acquisition rules to its contracts and to take months for reviews in
order to make any decisions? Can the private-sector world of stock options and public offerings be a part of the public world of
government shutdowns, salary freezes, and debt-ceiling crises?34

Because the Defense Department relies heavily upon prime contractors such as Lockheed Martin and
Northrop Grumman to design and build its most advanced weapon systems, the technology question really is: can the
existing prime contractors effectively use advances in technology to build the best weapon systems?
There is no indication that they cannot. With these primes, the United States still builds the best weapon
systems. The primes already are the integrators of technologies produced by others, including the
commercially oriented firms that DIU and the other new agencies are meant to reach.35 The primes’ job is to bring
together a network of subcontractors with the appropriate technology and skills and manage them to
an exacting schedule and within certain budget limits to build systems that can survive and dominate in the
harshest environment of them all, a battlefield, usually after traversing another difficult environment like space or the ocean
to get to the fight. The technologies are important, but it is weaponizing them by creating complex systems that
can work when stressed that counts the most, and that is what Lockheed, Northrop, and the other primes do
for the American military.

The Department of Defense taps into advanced technology by funding some basic research and lots of
applied science and engineering at universities through its own research support agencies and its set of service-specific
laboratories.36 For riskier efforts usually involving major prototyping or technology demonstrations, the military uses the
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).37 The FFRDCs, national laboratories, and dozens of
defense-supported specialized institutes are linked in with all of this and have their own ties to
academic research. It is this system that gave the United States the lead position in computers, created
the internet, pioneered work in oceanography and ocean engineering, and pushed capabilities in
remote sensing and satellite imaging.
The Defense Innovation Unit initiative may help a little. So, too, may the Defense Department’s Strategic Capabilities Office, the
Defense Innovation Board, and the CIA’s experimental venture capital unit In-Q-Tel.38 These initiatives reinforce and complement
what defense agencies in the United States have been doing for decades. More important, creating these agencies is also politically
smart, as it shows
defense agencies dealing directly with what the American public perceives to be the very
cutting edge of technology and innovation. Likely unnecessary, but no harm done.

<<MARKED>>
No harm unless the Department of Defense gets so caught up in pursuing the new organizations that it somehow forgets that what it
really buys is the expertise in designing and building complex systems specifically for military roles. Systems integration works in any
field because the integrators understand their customers’ particularities and peculiarities. In defense, that means that the systems
integrators that make complex weapons systems need to know a little bit about warfighting, the jargon that the military uses to talk
about its unusual missions, and the political deal-making (organizational and electoral) that chooses which projects get funded and
survive to eventual deployment with the operational military.39 The commercial technology companies are already in the mix of
weapon systems’ supply chains, along with defense-unique suppliers; there is no real lack of technology access. And the commercial
technology companies will never specialize in the defenseunique aspects of the weapons or be responsive enough to the military
customers’ quirks to produce cutting-edge military systems or to keep the demanding military customers happy and to work
gracefully with them in the complex political ballet of defense acquisition. DIU and the rest are just a veneer, a new part of that
political dance.

Perhaps the perceiveddecline in American power that worries some is due to failures in the
acquisition system, problems with its structure and the inflexibility of its regulations. The Congress
obviously thinks so, as it often prescribes changes in both. For example, it recently required that the jurisdiction of the
Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics be divided into separate undersecretaries for research and
engineering and for acquisition and sustainment on the argument that technology and innovation needed their own high-level
champion within the Defense Department. Of course, it was not too long ago that predecessor offices were combined because, as
the argument went, technology development, weapon system acquisition, and the maintenance of complex equipment need to be
thought of as one continuous activity and closely coordinated. It is striking that the recent reorganization takes the wiring diagram of
the Department of Defense more or less back to what it was in the late-1950s.40

There is no more common project in defense than acquisition reform. There have literally been dozens of congressionally mandated
and secretarially commanded studies of the weapons acquisition process over the years. Changes in bureaucratic structure and
regulatory detail have been constant. Too often unacknowledged in all of this is the difficulty gaining agreement within the
fragmented American political system on the value, schedule, and cost of particular weapons. The defense budget is cyclical, with
periods of rapid growth and inevitable decline as war fears grow and decline. Advocates of particular systems push for quick
commitments on the upside, increasing the likelihood of project cost growth and performance failures, while opponents seek delays,
hoping to catch the budget downside, when new starts and regular progress are hard to make. Proponents are optimists, and rivals
are pessimists. Disappointments beset all complex undertakings, weapon acquisitions included. There are no reform cures for most
acquisition problems.41

Some believe the problem lies in the Congress itself, its lack of regular order, the reliance on continuing resolutions and the threat of
shutdowns. All of this is said to harm defense, disrupting planning, slowing modernization, and hurting force readiness. There
certainly have been important changes in Congress in recent years. The growth of party extremes, weakening greatly the
opportunity for compromise, is one. Another is the elimination of earmarking, which was a way to gather votes in exchange for
funding favorite projects in particular districts. And a third is the weakening of the power of committee chairmen, who used to rule
with iron fists.

But the incoherence in Congress on defense matters likely reflects more the disagreement over the
nature and saliency of the threats the United States faces than it does the general political cleavages in
the society. The partisan divide on defense is in fact weaker than it has been in past.42 Gone also, though, is the imminent danger
posed by the Soviet Union. Instead there is just a long list potential dangers – a resurgent Russia, a rising China, diffusing
technologies, cyber hacking, terror threats, climate change – none galvanizing in the way the Soviet Union once was, all hidden off in
some distant part of the globe, and many more potential than realized.43
The source of discontent

Why the insecurity, when the United States is a very secure country? Although American force structure was cut by about a third
(from about 2.1 million to 1.4 million), little else in the security infrastructure created for the Cold War was downsized after the
Soviet Union collapsed and the Warsaw Pact disbanded. Some Soviet experts left the field for new occupations, fleeing the
unexpected wreckage that was suddenly their careers. But many other defense analysts did well by becoming ethnic-conflict experts
or democracy-promotion specialists, the business of the day. Likely the threat assessment meetings were more relaxed sessions than
in the past, and fewer serious military exercises were conducted, but nearly all of America’s Cold Warfocused think tanks, academic
research institutes, and contract study groups stayed in place and began searching the globe for other security problems that could
possibly replace the East/West one that had served so well as the source of their livelihoods for so long.

Business was good from the start because the American military did not go home, finding missions in Europe, Africa, and Asia trying
to prevent ethnic slaughter or staving off famine and political chaos. The National Command Structure expanded rather contracted,
adding four-star commands for North America and Africa to complete the globe-spanning regional listing and adding subordinate
commands to the functional commands to raise the status of space or to give strategic warfare its due. As new developments
occurred, accommodations were made for them: counter-terrorism operations and cyber defense joined the top tier along with
nuclear proliferation.

The threat/policy opportunity radars have kept turning .44 There is reward for identifying new
dangers. Terrorism, cyber, and climate change threats have an endless quality to them, ideal to justify
continuing planning efforts and making new budget requests.45 The United States built up a large
threat assessment apparatus to ask ‘what if’ questions for the Cold War. That apparatus, like the defense
research and innovation establishment, was not disbanded at war’s end. It finds the threats for the others to
solve.
The United States pays a lot to avoid being surprised. Part of that price pays for people and
organizations that constantly call out dangers, potential gaps, or failures in its multiple layers of
defenses. Analysts warn that America is not ready for biological warfare, that its cyber defenses are inadequate, and that it
hasn’t been paying enough attention to space. Worse, they say, the Defense Department is too slow in fielding this system or that,
there is too much red tape, and there is not enough initiative. They call for a defense budget big enough to build the 355-ship Navy,
a new strategic bomber, and a new generation of modernized nuclear weapons. These continuing calls for defense investment,
especially in new technologies, keep the U.S. defense R&D system on its toes, well supplied with inputs and opportunities to
capitalize on the incentives to generate innovations.

No impact to loss of tech leadership.

Swaine '21 [Michael; 4/21/21; PhD in Government from Harvard University, director of the
East Asia program at the Quincy Institute; "China Doesn’t Pose an Existential Threat for
America," https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/04/21/china-existential-threat-america/]

Finally, the latter set of supposedly existential normative or ideological threats consists of many
elements, including Beijing’s possible overturning of the so-called global liberal international
order, Chinese influence operations aimed at U.S. society, the export of China’s political values
and state-directed economic approach, and its sale of surveillance technologies and other items that facilitate
the rise or strengthening of authoritarian states. These threats all seem hair-raising at first glance. But while significant,
they are greatly exaggerated and do not rise to the level of constituting an existential threat.

Beijing has little interest in exporting its governance system, and where it does, it is almost
entirely directed at developing countries, not industrial democracies such as the United States. In
addition, there is no evidence to indicate that the Chinese are actually engaged in compelling or
actively persuading countries to follow their experience. Rather, they want developing nations to
study from and copy China’s approach because doing so would help to legitimize the Chinese system both
internationally and more importantly to Beijing’s domestic audience.
In addition, the notion that Beijing is deliberately attempting to control other countries and make them
more authoritarian by entrapping them in debt and selling them “Big Brother” hardware such as
surveillance systems is unsupported by the facts. Chinese banks show little desire to extend
loans that will fail, and the failures that do occur are mostly due to poor feasibility studies and the
incompetence and excessive zeal of lenders and/or borrowers . Moreover, in both loan-giving and
surveillance equipment sales, China has shown no specific preference for nondemocratic over
democratic states.

Even if Beijing were to attempt to export its development approach to other states, the actual
attractiveness of that approach would prove to be highly limited. The features undergirding
China’s developmental success are not replicable for most (if any) countries. These include a high
savings rate; a highly acquisitive and entrepreneurial cultural environment; a state-owned
banking system and nonconvertible currency; many massive state-owned industries that exist to
provide employment, facilitate party control over key sectors, and drive huge infrastructure construction; and strong
controls over virtually all information flows. Moreover, such a model (if you can call it that) is almost
certainly not sustainable in its present form, given China’s aging population, extensive corruption,
very large levels of income inequality, inadequate social safety net, and the fact that free
information flows are required to drive global innovation.

Although China’s combination of economic reform policies and authoritarian political

system has been around since
the early 1980s, not a single nation has adopted that system either willingly or under Chinese
compulsion. There are certainly many authoritarian states and fragile democracies on China’s periphery,
but none of them were made that way by China .

China’s challenge to the so-called global liberal international order is also exaggerated. In the first
place, it is highly debatable whether in fact a single coherent global order even exists. What
observers usually refer to as the “liberal international order” (a relatively recent term) actually consists of an
amalgam of disparate regimes with different origins, including international human rights pacts,
multilateral economic arrangements, and an international court.
The United States certainly plays an important or leading role in many of these regimes. But it did not create and does not drive all
global regimes—and in fact does not support some of them, such as the International Court of Justice, and has not ratified some
critical pacts such as the United National Convention on the Law of the Sea. And many very important global regimes (e.g., regarding
the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, trade and investment, climate change, and pandemics) have no deep connection
to liberal democratic values per se and are supported by Beijing, albeit sometimes more in letter than in spirit.

The challenge for the United States is not how to fend off the imagined existential threats
posed by China. Rather, it lies in developing a much clearer and factually based overall understanding
of the limited challenges, threats, and indeed opportunities China poses to the United States and the policies
needed to address them. Rejecting the specious notion that China is threatening to destroy an
entire way of life will make this task much easier.

U.S. tech leadership is high.

Gad Levanon 20. Forbes manufacturing contributor. “Reports Of US Decline Are Greatly
Exaggerated.” 08/27/20. https://www.forbes.com/sites/gadlevanon/2020/08/27/reports-of-us-
decline-are-greatly-exaggerated/?sh=6253227b26f8
Despite what many suspect is an eroding US global standing, 2020 may be remembered as the
year when the US became even more globally dominant economically.

Why? The tech sector’s share of the US economy is much larger than in most countries. And the
pandemic-driven recession has greatly accelerated the shift to online activity and digital
transformation by businesses and consumers, which would otherwise have taken years. That
lead to faster growth in the global demand for technology. In addition, the US is especially
dominant in the tech industries that are likely to grow the fastest in the coming years.

Stock prices certainly support this story. The S&P 500 is already above pre-pandemic highs
despite the deepest recession in 80 years, and most of the stock prices’ strength comes from
tech sector. The companies that have seen the strongest gains since the pandemic focus on
online shopping and payments, cloud computing services, cyber security, business related
software, social media, online advertisement, and on-demand entertainment content.

Stock prices are volatile and so are a treacherous guide for predicting the future, but there is a
plausible explanation for the large tech gains – and why they might last.

[Chart omitted]

There are several objective and subjective reasons for why the US is so successful in technology
compared with other countries. It has:

1The best universities, which attract many of the best students from all over the world – most
of whom tend to stay in the US after completing their studies

2A large inflow of experienced talent from other countries

3 Unrivaled access to venture capital

4 Fluency in English, the global language in both business-dealing and content

5 An economy big enough to make achieving scale relatively easy

6 Silicon Valley, the home and heart of the tech revolution

7 A culture that welcomes innovation and disruption and strongly encourages entrepreneurial
behavior

Given these factors, US tech leadership should continue.

What about the competition? One factor helping the US stand out is the weakness of the
European tech sector. The market cap of the largest European tech company, SAP SAP -0.3%, is
about one-tenth of Apple AAPL +1.6%’s. In other sophisticated industries like pharmaceuticals,
motor vehicles and aircraft, European companies are strong competitors to their US
counterparts. Europe’s relative technology weakness is perhaps as unusual as the US strength in
the sector, and is only reinforced by the fact that US technology companies are already big players in European economies.

Most of the top tech companies from East Asia – places like Japan, Taiwan and South Korea – are in hardware
and semiconductors manufacturing . They are serious competitors in these areas, but these technology sectors are
not growing as quickly.
No discussion of the future of technology is complete without China. The Chinese
internet companies are huge and
growing rapidly, but their ability to expand beyond China and its periphery is questionable . In
almost all sophisticated industries, Chinese companies are not yet major players in Western economies . Also,

recent events suggest that Western countries will be more cautious in dealing with China, perhaps limiting

its expansion. The latest developments with Huawei and TikTok are good examples. In addition, US companies are slowly
moving their supply chain elsewhere, further weakening China .

So, the technology

sector will perform well in the next several years, benefiting countries that are
strong in that area. The US, more than any other country, has a large and successful tech sector
that seems to be especially concentrated in the fastest-growing tech industries.

What does this mean for the US economy overall? First, it is important to mention that the boost the US is getting from its tech
sector has been larger than what most other advanced economies have gotten for quite a while ,
and is one of the reasons the US has been growing faster than them in recent years. But now, this trend is likely to accelerate .

Here is some back of the envelope math for the difference between the technology sector’s contribution to GDP growth in the US versus a typical
advanced economy: Suppose in the US the tech sector is 12 percent of GDP and is growing at 10 percent a year. In another typical advanced economy
the tech sector is 7 percent of GDP and is growing at 5 percent a year. That means that the annual contribution to GDP from the tech sector is 1.2
percent for the US versus 0.35 percent for the other country. That is 0.85 percent faster growth for the US every year. The net effect may be smaller
because some of the growth in tech companies come at the expanse of companies from other sectors. But when the average annual GDP growth rate is
1.5-2 percent in advanced economies, even a 0.5 percent a year difference is meaningful.

The gains
from the rapid growth in technology would disproportionately go to tech companies’
owners and workers. As most of these are high earners, this trend is likely to increase income inequality . But some
of the gains will spread more widely. After all, owners and workers, and the companies themselves, spend a large share of their income in the
communities they live and operate in. It will also increase geographic inequalities. Not surprisingly, within the US, areas close to Silicon Valley benefited
the most from the technology demand-surge. Between 2013-2018, among the 382 metro areas in the US, San Jose and San Francisco metro areas had
the fastest growth in personal income per-capita. During that time, personal income per-capita in the San Jose Metro area rose by 48 percent, more
than twice as fast as the national rate (22 percent). The surrounding metro areas, Napa, Santa Rosa-Petaluma, Santa Cruz-Watsonville, Stockton,
Vallejo, were all ranked in the top 40. Seattle, another technology Hub, is ranked 13.

All of these data points add up to an enduring strength . Despite concerns about US’s standing
in the world, its tech sector may keep it at the forefront of the global economy in the
foreseeable future.

America's maintaining a research and quality advantage

TR '20 [MIT Technology Review; 10/29/20; "America's technological leadership is at stake in
this election," https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/10/29/1011375/americas-
technological-leadership-is-at-stake-in-this-election/]

The government’s share of funding for basic research—the precursor to the kinds of technologies
companies can exploit—has been dropping too, from above 70% in the mid-20th century to 42% in 2017. Again,
the private sector has filled the gap, but its priorities are different; much of the replacement money is in
pharma. Governments are more likely to fund long-term, risky bets like clean energy, sustainable materials, or
smart manufacturing—the kinds of technologies the world really needs right now.

Contrast this with the situation in China. There, government-funded R&D has gradually grown as a
percentage of GDP (chart 2), even as the economy has exploded in size. The true measure of government investment is probably
higher, since a lot of the private-sector R&D spending is by state-owned enterprises that to some extent take orders from the
government.

And overall, China's R&D spending is shooting up, approaching the level in the US (chart 3).
True, China
is still far behind on many measures. Basic research, though it’s growing, still represents a
much smaller share of GDP than in the US or other advanced economies (chart 4). Also, as we’ve written,
although the number of scientific papers and patents published by Chinese researchers is
ballooning, the quality of that work (as measured by things like the number of citations) is low, and
homegrown Nobel laureates are few and far between .

Nonetheless, the gap is closing. Kai-fu Lee, a venture capitalist and former head of Google China, expressed an oft-heard
view at a recent event held by the New York–based China Institute: the US, he said, is “further ahead in fundamental
research in AI as well as almost any other domain,” but China is “catching up quickly ” and has an
edge in AI applications that require masses of data, such as machine translation and speech recognition. (Our China issue looked at
several other areas in which the country is carving out an advantage.)

Much of China’s technological acceleration is linked to state-led plans such as “Made in China 2025,”
which aims to make China more self-sufficient (pdf, page 21) in key high-tech industries like zero-emission vehicles,
industrial robots, mobile-phone chips, and medical devices. This is in stark contrast to the US approach, where the main driver of
decisions about where the money goes has been venture capitalists and the increasingly deep-pocketed tech giants, all of them
desperate to find the next product idea that can rapidly scale into a billion-dollar business.

Of course, oneshould take the claims made about schemes like Made in China 2025 with a pinch of
salt. The shortcomings of centrally planned economies are well documented, and governments
are usually not very good at innovation. The regulatory reforms in the mid-20th century that paved the way for the
venture capital industry are arguably some of the most important technology policies the US ever adopted.

US will remain leader in AI---funding and quality advantages secure a tentative

lead.
Savage '20 [Neil; 12/9/20; science writer for Nature; "The race to the top among the world’s
leaders in artificial intelligence," https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03409-8/]

For the near future, Ding says, the US is likely to remain the world leader in AI. “Though China has some
exceptional universities, such as Tsinghua University, the US dominates in terms of maybe the top 20 universities
doing AI research, and that is reflected in the quality of the papers. It’s very unlikely that China
will become the singular innovation centre by 2030.”

Many countries see AI as providing a competitive edge, not only economically, but militarily,
says Husain. He likens the competition in AI to the Space Race of the mid-twentieth century, in which the US and the Soviet Union
vied to be the first to achieve milestones in space travel. “The
Space Race yielded contributions that
differentiated the American technological ecosystem from all others for decades to come,” says
Husain. “If a country invests heavily in this area, it will yield technologies that will form the pillar
of defence capability and economic differentiation for the rest of the century.”
Technologies that can be developed based on AI will indeed have both economic and military benefit, says Daniel Araya, a policy
analyst at the Center for International Governance Innovation, a think tank in Ontario, Canada. “We’re
talking new
weapons, data-driven innovation for industry and automation, and redesigning how our society
works from the ground up.”