Big Investment in Infrastructure Needed to Turn Around Economy, Blank Says

LAS VEGAS -- Investment in infrastructure is critical to turning around a slumping U.S. economy, Rebecca Blank, acting deputy Commerce Secretary, told CES Thursday. Blank spoke during a discussion on how innovation can save the U.S., that took a sometimes pessimistic turn as panelists asked whether the nation is off its game. Panelists asked whether Angry Birds, a cellphone game which has gone viral, is now what passes for innovation in the U.S.

A “big investment in infrastructure” is “deeply important for innovation,” Blank said. “Not just traditional infrastructure of roads and ports … but the new infrastructures -- the smart grids, the satellites, the broadband resources.” Unless the U.S. catches up on building infrastructure, “we're not going to be able to compete,” she said. “Other countries are way ahead of us.” Many construction workers don’t have jobs and interest rates are low, she said: “If we do not spend money today on infrastructure we will not have an economy that will support innovation in the future."

Blank also stressed the importance of public-private partnerships funded through Commerce’s Economic Development Administration aimed at building regional innovation clusters. “We've been funding a number of these over the years,” she said. “The amount of money in this program is really quite small compared to what some other countries are spending, but it’s exactly the right thing to be doing."

Other panelists expressed pessimism. Burson Marsteller CEO Mark Penn described a period of national malaise since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. “We've had a lost decade,” Penn said. “Americans think we can’t do it. Maybe it can be done in China.” The U.S. in recent years hasn’t had the equivalent of a “Sputnik moment” that drove Americans to want to be the first to the Moon. “We don’t have a similar, national, leadership-led, driving goal,” he said. “What we have is, I think, more pessimism … than maybe since the Great Depression."

"What is the national, driving, lifting goal the people see as innovation?” Penn asked. “Do they want to make this a world where everyone can be fed easily? … Do they want to end cancer or do they want to supply a video screen in every square inch of every home?"

"We really need to change a lot of things in the U.S. to stay competitive,” said Martin De Beer, emerging business group senior vice president at Cisco. “What are our true national priorities as a country? I think it starts right at the top with leadership” that is too often lacking. Russia, for example, is trying to launch an alternative version of Silicon Valley outside of Moscow, De Beer said: “That’s happening all around the world."

"This is called the Consumer Electronics Show,” said Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway, putting his emphasis on the word consumer. “We have become conspicuous consumers having ridden our two generations of being the richest people in the world and have decided it’s way more fun, and, frankly, easier, to consume … than to produce anything.”