Unleashing American Innovation

Sign up to receive CFR President Mike Froman’s analysis on the most important foreign policy story of the week, delivered to your inbox every Friday afternoon. Subscribe to The World This Week.

Earlier this week, in Austin, Texas, more than two hundred of the nation’s top policymakers, founders, scientists, investors, and university leaders gathered for the inaugural Endless Frontiers retreat.

The Council on Foreign Relations’ China Strategy Initiative launched Endless Frontiers in partnership with Baylor University, Rice University, Texas A&M University, and University of Texas at Austin to address a daunting challenge: how to rebuild the foundations of U.S. strength at a time of technological transformation and geopolitical competition, particularly with China.

Participants included current and former White House officials, prominent members of Congress, former secretaries of defense, CIA directors, NASA administrators, award-winning scientists, leading entrepreneurs, and top investors. Endless Frontiers hosted the first technology policy speech of the Donald Trump administration, which was delivered by Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. It featured addresses from senior members of Congress on the China challenge. Endless Frontiers also honored the legacy of Admiral Bobby Ray Inman by announcing an annual “Inman Prize." Admiral Inman, who attended the entire event, was a pioneer of defense and intelligence technology who helmed the National Security Agency and served as deputy director of the CIA, before leading a distinguished career in the private sector. Inman joined the Council as a member in 1978. He also served on the Council's Board of Directors from 1985 to 1993, including as Vice Chairman from 1992 to 1993.

Endless Frontiers’ name is an homage to Vannevar Bush, the legendary science advisor to both U.S. Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman. His 1945 treatise Science—the Endless Frontier recognized that neither the government nor private companies possessed the incentives, resources, scale, or coordination required to achieve major scientific and technological breakthroughs on their own, especially in basic research.

More than eighty years later, Bush’s legacy is at an inflection point. The once iron-clad bond between private industry, capital, and the U.S. government has frayed. Private sector research and development (R&D) has grown tremendously, with a distinct focus on commercial applications. But such applications, no matter how profitable, have not always aligned with the United States’ strategic and military needs. Government support for R&D has always been critical, but its share of the whole is declining as the government slashes spending. The U.S. industrial base has deteriorated, just as China’s has boomed. There is a consensus that procurement from the military industrial base needs a fundamental rethink if the United States is going to take advantage—at scale—of the tremendous innovation happening in startups across the full spectrum of emerging technology.

Yet admiring the problem is a far cry from developing solutions, and that’s the core purpose of Endless Frontiers. Maintaining the United States’ edge will demand a new era of innovation and collaboration in the public and private sectors to unlock scalable, strategic breakthroughs in critical areas of science and technology, including biology and advanced manufacturing. This is easier said than done, but Bush’s legacy proves that it is not without precedent.

China was certainly top of mind during many of the discussions as the pacing threat across the military, political, economic, and technological domains. Then again, entrepreneurs and inventors don’t wake up every morning focused on responding to whatever China is doing. Rather, they seek to produce the greatest imaginable innovations. The United States wins, ultimately, by playing offense, not just defense. 

To unpack the mission of Endless Frontiers and explore CFR’s efforts to enhance U.S. competitiveness, I sat down with Rush Doshi, senior fellow for Asia studies and director of the China Strategy Initiative, for a wide-ranging discussion:

Froman: Why Austin?

Doshi: We picked Austin for a reason. Texas is frontier country, and the city of Austin mirrored the spirit of our working retreat. The central objective of Endless Frontiers was to bring policymakers, scientists, founders, journalists, and investors together to discuss the contours of American renewal. We thought it was important to take this conversation beyond the coasts, and Austin provided a central location equidistant from Silicon Valley and Washington, DC. Austin is also home to many of the emerging venture capital (VC) and technology firms working on national security, and Texas is home to world-class universities, including our four partner schools, which have a long track record of cultivating talent for the national security enterprise. The barbecue is a big draw, too, although I’m vegetarian. 

Froman: Rush, one thing that struck me was that the retreat recognized the current moment as the “decisive decade.” Policy decisions made right now, be they in Washington or Beijing, will shape the relative balance of power between the United States and China, not to mention world order, for years to come. But the decisive decade isn’t just a frame for strategic competition with China—it’s about the welfare of the American project. Hence, your view that effective China policy is as much about domestic policy as it is foreign policy.

Doshi: That’s right. We are in a critical period that demands a decisive response from government, industry, academia, and civil society in a number of sectors. Accordingly, Endless Frontiers was focused on five key priorities for American renewal: rebuilding the “arsenal of democracy,” restoring the United States’ industrial capacity, securing the country’s critical infrastructure and supply chains, renewing the government for modern challenges, and renewing national unity and a shared sense of purpose. Our participants were divided into twenty groups over the course of three days to tackle different facets of these questions. Now, our aim is to build on the work they did over the course of the next year, including through new China Strategy Initiative study groups.

Froman: The U.S. science and technology landscape has no doubt evolved since Vannevar Bush’s time. The private sector is playing a significantly greater role in supporting R&D, even basic research. The National Science Foundation and Department of Defense aren’t the only basic research funders in town. At the same time, it will take more than profit maximization and the invisible hand to maintain the United States’ edge. What would Bush tell us today, beyond extolling the importance of government-funded basic research?

Doshi: We have done this before. Bush’s publication was widely influential when it first came out. It led to robust partnerships amongst the government, universities, and industry, and would provide the foundation to establish federal investment vehicles for research critical to both military and civilian use. Those efforts drove breakthroughs from medicine to semiconductors to space exploration. Given the political climate and growing fiscal constraints, I think Bush would tell us to lean in on the “coordination” aspect of his vision for the U.S. technology ecosystem. As important as basic research breakthroughs are, it is equally important that we speed up the U.S. government’s ability to adopt emerging technologies and deploy them at scale. That, plus better communicating the strategic needs of the U.S. government to private industry, can play a critical role in sending the massive, long-term demand signal required to unlock private capital and spur innovation that aligns with the national interest. 

Taking a step back, I think Bush would also recognize the gravity of the moment. He viewed scientific and technological prowess as a key driver of national power and prosperity. He would realize that our edge is diminishing and demand an urgent response. The need to lead in science and technology was a defining feature of the conversations at Endless Frontiers. And intellectual property leadership alone isn’t enough. Today, the United States faces enormous challenges given China’s sheer scale. As former Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell and I just wrote in Foreign Affairs, “quantity has a quality of its own.” Not that China is lacking for quality either: they now lead in top-cited scientific papers and in active patents across a broad set of strategic technologies, and President Xi Jinping has made winning the “fourth industrial revolution” a national priority.

Froman: Today, Silicon Valley and the U.S. tech ecosystem at large are synonymous with consumer products. The United States has focused for decades on consumer technologies like smartphones, social media, and other digital services, but it would seem that Silicon Valley and the VC sector as a whole are in the midst of a pivot back to their roots in defense and deep technology. 

Doshi: That’s true, and the pivot was manifest at Endless Frontiers. This kind of focus on foundational science and engineering often has longer gestational periods and speculative payoffs. But some of the key areas of interest—quantum computing, synthetic biology, nuclear fusion, and advanced robotics—are critical to winning the “fourth industrial revolution” and key areas of focus for China, too, which hopes to lead in all of them. And in addition to “deep tech,” a number of firms are also focused on defense technology. We’re also seeing new startups partner with the Department of Defense to focus on artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and aerospace. New venture capital firms are focusing exclusively on investments to support national security, while old venture capital firms are shifting their investment criteria to back defense firms. 

Froman: A focus of the summit was fostering cohesion and rebuilding national unity along with a collective sense of purpose. The working retreat featured officials from the Obama, Biden, and Trump eras. Both sides of the aisle recognize that China poses a serious strategic challenge, and with it, there is a need for the United States to boost its competitive position vis-à-vis China across all key policy domains. 

Doshi: That consensus, however, is at risk given sharp differences on issues from tariffs on allies to cuts to scientific research. Endless Frontiers did not elide over those differences. In many cases, the highly detailed nature of the conversations got us closer to consensus on solutions for revitalizing American innovation.

We welcome your feedback on this column. Let me know what foreign policy issues you’d like me to address next by replying to [email protected].