Biden Admin Needs to Prioritize Tech Standards Setting, National Tech Strategy, Former Officials Say

The U.S. should form a strong global technology alliance and promote better interagency cooperation on technology policies to better compete with China and counter its dominance at standards setting bodies, former government officials said. A modern national technology strategy must start with the White House and Congress, the former officials and experts said, which should embrace some form of industrial policy and pour resources into protecting critical technologies.

“There are people in the tech world who understand that China is catching up,” Michèle Flournoy, a former Defense Department official and the co-founder of WestExec Advisors, said during a March 16 Center for a New American Security event. “If we don't do something different, they're going to surpass us and that will have all kinds of implications.”

Some panelists applauded early moves by the Biden administration -- including efforts to promote technology experts to senior levels of the government -- as signs that the administration will embrace a technology strategy. But they said they are waiting to see whether the administration follows through on a comprehensive strategy, such as forming a global technology alliance and supporting funding and incentives for technology sectors with national security implications. “Do we have the people who can attend the meetings, who can do the analysis, have the relationships with industry and understand the incentives that the private sector works under?” said Loren DeJonge Schulman, a CNAS national security expert and a former U.S. national security official. “My guess is we don't quite yet, but these are great moves in that direction.”

Schulman said the Biden administration recognizes the importance of international standards setting bodies for critical technologies, where the U.S. has ceded leadership roles to China. Although the U.S. has tried to become more involved in those bodies, including issuing a rule last year that allowed companies to more easily participate in bodies in which Huawei is a member (see 2008280029), Schulman said more should be done.

“This is a place where I think that not only does it need to be recognized as a priority, it needs to be recognized as a bureaucratic and staffing priority so that we're putting the diplomats and negotiators and negotiation teams together that can help advance international standards setting, both within a body of democracies but also worldwide,” she said.

Flournoy said the U.S. should adopt many of the recommendations put forward by the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence earlier this month, which called for a modernization of export controls, an expansion of U.S. investment screening tools and more involvement in standards bodies (see 2103030057). She called the commission’s report “probably the most important commission report since the 9/11 Commission.”

“I think they nailed it in terms of analyzing the importance of the United States stepping up to compete in AI, both for the commercial economic applications and what that means for competitiveness economically around the world,” Flournoy said. She added that the White House needs to take a “strong” role in coordinating an interagency process that “looks something like” the National Security Council process but covers science and technology policy. “Frankly, we need to have the U.S. and its allies leading the way in setting standards,” she said. “If we don't do something bold and sustained, we will lose our edge.” The White House didn’t comment.

That includes forming a stronger technology partnership with like-minded allies, said Sue Gordon, a senior adviser with the national security firm Pallas Advisors and the former principal deputy director of national intelligence. The Biden administration can learn from some mistakes made by the Trump administration, including its failure to form a strong coalition against Huawei. “Huawei is a great example where it was really hard for our partners to catch up to where we wanted to go once they had already made a bunch of decisions on their own,” she said. “We need a clearer picture of which technologies we really think are important and which uses we think need to be protected.”