2021 BRN Discussion, page-1293

the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act established a bipartisan commission on artificial intelligence. Its report, released last week, recommends steps such as doubling the federal investment in nondefense research and development to $32 billion by 2026 and enacting a new version of the 1958 National Defense Education Act, passed in the wake of the Soviet Union’s Sputnik launch.

The commission highlighted the challenge of artificial intelligence. “We take seriously China’s ambition to surpass the United States as the world’s AI leader within a decade,” the commissioners wrote, asserting that the US must “win the AI competition that is intensifying strategic competition with China.” The same could be said of the other areas that Beijing has identified as essential to achieving technological pre-eminence within the next generation.

“The world’s leading powers are racing to develop and deploy emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing,” the administration asserts, that could reshape everything “from the economic and military balance among states to the future of work, wealth, and inequality within them.” The conclusion: “America must reinvest in retaining our scientific and technological edge and once again lead.”

Senator Jack Reed, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, has pointed to what he terms China’s “aggressive attempts to undercut our current technological superiority” and expressed concern about the strength of our entire national research and innovation enterprise from research to the manufacturing and industrial base.” Senator Marco Rubio has called for a “21st century pro-American industrial policy”.Beijing’s relentless advance has finally awakened the sleeping American giant. Partisanship must not stall our response.WSJ

Source: The Australian, 10 August 2021 - Online Edition.
Reprinted from Wall Street Journal.

Pay walled: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/the-wall-street-journal/america-wakes-up-to-the-china-threat/news-story/b1c582e92392373bd118924e08b1170f