The United States, China, and Russia: An Innovation Net Assessment

Speakers: Dr. Robert Atkinson, (President, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation); Dr. Loren Graham, (Professor Emeritus of the History of Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology & Harvard University); Dr. Walter Hudson, (COL, US Army (Ret.)) (Associate Professor, Eisenhower School, National Defense University; Global Fellow, Wilson Center); and Dr. James Mulvenon (Director, Intelligence Integration, Intelligence Solutions Group)

Date: 18 May 2021

Speaker Session Summary

SMA hosted a panel discussion with Dr. Robert Atkinson (President, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation), Dr. Loren Graham (Professor Emeritus of the History of Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology & Harvard University), Dr. Walter Hudson (COL, US Army (Ret.)) (Associate Professor, Eisenhower School, National Defense University; Global Fellow, Wilson Center), and Dr. James Mulvenon (Director, Intelligence Integration, Intelligence Solutions Group) as a part of its SMA NDU Innovation Speaker Series.

Dr. Atkinson began the discussion by outlining how the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) studies innovation in the US and compares it to that of its main geopolitical rivals, China and Russia. China is increasingly closing the gap between its ability and the US’s ability to innovate. China’s notable ability to innovate demonstrates how a state-run-approach can foster innovation, despite scholars’ previous belief that too much state control would stifle innovation. Dr. Atkinson suggested that researchers may also under appreciate China’s ability to innovate because they tend to focus primarily on innovation in science and technology and not industrial innovation, which China excels at. Moreover, the USG’s shrinking percent of federal spending on research and development (R&D) has been a growing barrier for its ability to foster further innovation. Dr. Atkinson concluded his remarks by arguing that to effectively counter China’s growing ability to innovate, the DoD should conduct better overall analysis of its networks and focus on supporting companies that produce dual-use technology.

Next, Dr. Graham clarified that innovation and invention are not the same thing. He also argued that Russia is better at inventing than scholars give it credit for. However, the problem that Russia faces is that it does not effectively transform its inventions into industrial products that are well-suited for innovation; Russia’s inventions are mostly in the fields of mathematics and the arts. Dr. Graham argued that this is partly the case because societal factors in Russia (attitudinal, legal, political, economic, and organizational) are not conducive to innovation. Russia has been able to innovate more effectively within its military, however, because profitability is much less important for military applications.

Dr. Mulvenon argued that China is also better at innovation than it is given credit for. He cited several examples of China’s past achievements, including becoming the second country to land a rover on Mars and securing several patents on 5G technology through its largest telecommunications company, Huawei. Part of China’s ability to innovate is due to the fact that it is not burdened with legacy systems, unlike the US. However, China still relies heavily on talent programs to attract foreign researchers and espionage to steal technology. China has also proven to be effective at reverse engineering stolen technology but does not have the strong engineering background to create new generations of the technology themselves. Nonetheless, the Biden administration is pursuing partnerships with other democratic countries to develop a unified approach to counter the competitive, stolen technologies that China is creating.

To conclude, Dr. Hudson argued that analysts must stop thinking in binary terms and examine quantitative data more often. Analysts should also be more diagnostic and less prescriptive, the latter of which corrupts their analysis. Dr. Hudson also explained the process of net assessment and emphasized that when conducting a net assessment, analysts must look less at policy and more at behavior to better judge whether innovation is likely to occur successfully. The outcomes of these predictive models will still be hard to predict, even if analysts focus on behavior instead of policy, however. Dr. Hudson emphasized that the US also needs to realize its own limitations and not assume that answering a complex question, such as how can the US innovate with respect to its operations in the information environment (OIE), can be solved with just a few policy suggestions.

Speaker Session Recording

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Briefing Materials

Biographies:

Robert D. Atkinson As founder and president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), recognized as the world’s top think tank for science and technology policy, Robert D. Atkinson leads a prolific team of policy analysts and fellows that is successfully shaping the debate and setting the agenda on a host of critical issues at the intersection of technological innovation and public policy.

He is an internationally recognized scholar and a widely published author whom The New Republic has named one of the “three most important thinkers about innovation,” Washingtonian Magazine has called a “tech titan,” Government Technology Magazine has judged to be one of the 25 top “doers, dreamers and drivers of information technology,” and the Wharton Business School has given the “Wharton Infosys Business Transformation Award.”

A sought-after speaker and valued adviser to policymakers around the world, Atkinson’s books include Big is Beautiful: Debunking the Mythology of Small Business (MIT Press, 2018); Innovation Economics: The Race for Global Advantage (Yale, 2012), Supply-Side Follies: Why Conservative Economics Fails, Liberal Economics Falters, and Innovation Economics is the Answer (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), and The Past And Future Of America’s Economy: Long Waves Of Innovation That Power Cycles Of Growth (Edward Elgar, 2005). He also has conducted groundbreaking research projects and authored hundreds of articles and reports on technology and innovation-related topics ranging from tax policy to advanced manufacturing, productivity, and global competitiveness. He has testified before the United States Congress more than 30 times.

President Clinton appointed Atkinson to the Commission on Workers, Communities, and Economic Change in the New Economy; the Bush administration appointed him chair of the congressionally created National Surface Transportation Infrastructure Financing Commission; the Obama administration appointed him to the National Innovation and Competitiveness Strategy Advisory Board; and the Trump administration appointed him to the G7 Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence. Atkinson serves on the UK government’s Place Advisory Group to advise the Minister for Science, Research and Innovation on how policy can drive innovation in more regions. He is a founding member of the Polaris Council, a body of cross-sectoral, interdisciplinary science and technology policy experts who advise the U.S. Government Accountability Office’s Science, Technology Assessment, and Analytics (STAA) team on emergent and emerging issues facing the Congress and the nation. He also has served as co-chair of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy’s China-U.S. Innovation Policy Experts Group; as a member of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship; and on the U.S. State Department’s Advisory Committee on International Communications and Information.

Atkinson is a member of the Markle Foundation Task Force on National Security in the Information Age and serves on the boards or advisory councils of the Internet Education Foundation, the NetChoice Coalition, the University of Oregon’s Institute for Policy Research and Innovation, and the State Science and Technology Institute. Additionally, Atkinson is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Electronic Government and the Journal of Internet Policy; a member of the Global Innovation Forum Brain Trust; a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution; a fellow at the Columbia University Institute of Tele-Information; a fellow of Glocom, a Tokyo-based research institute; and a member of the Polaris Council, an advisory group to the U.S. Government Accountability Office’s Science, Technology Assessment, and Analytics team.

Atkinson was previously vice president of the Progressive Policy Institute, where he directed the Technology & New Economy Project. He wrote numerous research reports on technology and innovation policy, covering issues such as broadband telecommunications, e-commerce, e-government, privacy, copyright, R&D tax policy, offshoring, and innovation economics.

Previously, Atkinson served as the first executive director of the Rhode Island Economic Policy Council (RIEPC), a public-private partnership whose members included the state’s governor, legislative leaders, and both corporate and labor leaders. As head of RIEPC, Atkinson was responsible for drafting a comprehensive economic development strategy for the state and working with the legislature and executive branch of government to successfully implement each element of a 10-point action agenda.

Prior to his service in Rhode Island, Atkinson was a project director at the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, where, among other projects, he spearheaded The Technological Reshaping of Metropolitan America, a seminal report examining the impact of the information technology revolution on America’s urban areas.

As a respected policy expert and commentator, Atkinson has testified numerous times before the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, and he appears frequently on news and public affairs programs. Among others, these appearances have included interviews on BBC, CNBC, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, NPR, and NBC Nightly News.

Atkinson holds a Ph.D. in city and regional planning from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he was awarded the prestigious Joseph E. Pogue Fellowship. He earned his master’s degree in urban and regional planning from the University of Oregon, which named him a distinguished alumnus in 2014.

Dr. Loren Graham received his B.S. from Purdue University (Chemical Engineering, 1955) and his Ph.D. from Columbia University (History, 1964). He was Professor of History at Columbia University from 1972 to 1978, when he became Professor of the History of Science at MIT. He has received Woodrow Wilson, Danforth, Guggenheim, and Rockefeller Fellowships. Professor Graham is a member of the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Executive Committee of the Davis Center for Russian and Central Eurasian Studies at Harvard University. He is also a foreign member of the Russian Academy of Natural Science. Graham’s research focuses on the history of science in Russia and the Soviet Union in the 19th and 20th centuries. He is the author of numerous books, including Science in Russia and the Soviet Union (1993), The Ghost of the Executed Engineer: Technology and the Fall of the Soviet Union (1993), What We Have Learned About Science and Technology from the Russian Experience (1998), A Face in the Rock: The Tale of a Grand Island Chippewa (1998), a historical novel currently being made into a film, Moscow Stories (2006), Science in the New Russia (with Irina Dezhina) (2008), and Naming Infinity: A True Story of Religious Mysticism and Mathematical Creativity (with Jean-Michel Kantor) (2009).

Dr. Walter Hudson, J.D., Phd., is a Global Wilson Fellow and is currently an associate professor at the Eisenhower School of National Security and Resource Strategy, where he teaches courses in strategy, strategic leadership, geoeconomic policy and other topics. He is a retired Army colonel and is the author of the book Army Diplomacy (2015) which focuses on post-World War II occupation policy. He has also written widely in various journals such as The American Interest, Joint Forces Quarterly, Military Review, Military Law Review, and Prism.

Dr. James Mulvenon is Director of Intelligence Integration for SOSi’s Intelligence Solutions Group, where he has recruited and trained a team of nearly fifty Chinese, Russian, Korean, Arabic, Farsi, Dari, Pashto, and Urdu linguist-analysts performing research and analysis for US Government and corporate customers. A Chinese linguist by training, he is a leading international expert on Chinese cyber, technology transfer, espionage, and military issues. Dr. Mulvenon received his B.A. in China Studies from the University of Michigan, studied Communist Party History at Fudan University in Shanghai, and received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Los Angeles. His dissertation, published by ME Sharpe in 2001 under the title Soldiers of Fortune, details the rise and fall of the Chinese military’s international business empire. In 2013 he co-authored Chinese Industrial Espionage, which is the first full account of the complete range of China’s efforts to illicitly acquire foreign technology.

The SMA NDU Innovation Speaker Series description and list of the other sessions in this series can be downloaded here.