America’s Advantages: Contending with China’s Tech Rise

Abstract

Since the mid-twentieth century, the United States has led the world in science, technology and innovation—leadership that has been evident across a range of dimensions. The country has traditionally been the world’s leading investor in research and development (R&D), spending nearly $900 billion on R&D in 2022. US high-tech firms have become global juggernauts, and US universities are unrivaled in the breadth of their expertise across the sciences. Moreover, world-leading clusters in places like Silicon Valley and Boston-Cambridge foster close collaboration between these leading firms and universities. In 2023, in fact, the Global Innovation Index gave the United States a score of 99.9/100 for R&D collaboration between industry and academia. The United States’ multi-faceted leadership in technological innovation, in turn, has underpinned the country’s economic vitality, military might, and global prestige for decades...