US Needs More Cohesiveness on Tech Issues With China, Brookings Panel Told

The U.S. government lacks technical knowledge and a single, leading voice in its approach to technology competition with China, the Brookings Institution was told. U.S. industries are concerned technology policies, such as export controls, are being made without full understanding of impact, said Adam Segal, Council on Foreign Relations emerging technologies chair. “We have to have a much better sense of the technologies involved and how they're actually deployed across a range of sectors," he told a Friday panel. Artificial intelligence isn't "going to look the same as quantum, which is not going to look the same as semiconductors, even though we’re all clumping them together as emerging technologies,” he added. The Commerce Department is working on tech export control regulations (see 1907110044). U.S. industries say there doesn’t seem to be a single voice for the U.S. on technology involving China, Segal said. “There are many voices, often competing, and not explicitly being driven from executive [branch] agencies." Abraham Newman, director of Georgetown University's Mortara Center for International Studies, doesn't believe the U.S. “has a clear strategy of what it’s pursuing vis-a-vis China in the technology sphere.” He wants the U.S. approach coordinated with trading partners: “I don’t have the sense that the current government is pursuing that.” The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy didn't comment.