The Endless Frontier Act (EFA) is moving forward at a rapid pace. Following a vote in the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee on May 12 (24 to 4), a lengthy debate process was terminated in the U.S. Senate on May 17 (86 to 11); similar deliberations are underway in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the White House has expressed support. The bill was originally introduced in May 2020 and did not receive final passage during the last Congress, but it does not appear to be in doubt that it will become law this time.
The Endless Frontier Act directly addresses the Chinese Communist Party’s attempts at technological hegemony – what Science magazine has dubbed the “Leading China (Communist) Act” – by providing more than $110 billion over five years for basic and advanced technology research. Of that amount, $100 billion is authorized for basic and high-tech research, commercialization of research results, and education and training programs in key technology areas such as artificial intelligence (AI); another $10 billion is provided for the establishment of at least 10 regional technology centers and a supply chain crisis response program to address issues such as the semiconductor chip gap in automobile production.
From the perspective of the current political situation in the United States, the rapid advancement of the Endless Frontier Act shows at least two implications for the United States to counter the Chinese Communist Party.
First, the countermeasures against the CCP have become a bipartisan consensus, and Congress controls the dominant policy on China
The change of the president and the Democrats’ narrow majority in both houses of Congress have not fundamentally reversed the U.S. strategy toward China. Although political polarization is very serious, there is a broad bipartisan consensus on the issue of countering the CCP.
For example, the draft Endless Frontier Act is sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Republican Senator Todd Young (R-TX), among others. The Endless Frontier Act is just one of a series of anti-communist legislation announced by Schumer in February to be passed in a “fast track” manner, limited to the technology sector.
In fact, the U.S. Congress has a platform proposal for a massive global “counterweight to the Chinese Communist Party. It is the Strategic Competition Act of 2021, which was passed by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 21 with 21 votes in favor and 1 vote against. The Strategic Competition Act of 2021 is the first major cross-party effort to develop a strategic approach to China that mobilizes multiple diplomatic, economic and strategic tools to counter the Chinese Communist Party “on every dimension. The bill’s strategic competition measures were co-authored by Democratic Congressman Bob Menendez, chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, and Republican Congressman Jim Risch, who said the bill represents “a true bipartisan consensus. This is considered a landmark bill. Reuters described the bill as reflecting a “rare unity of sentiment” on a hard line against China in a “deeply divided” U.S. Congress.
The broad bipartisan consensus to counter the Chinese Communist Party has had a significant impact on the Biden administration. Normally, in the U.S. political system, the president holds the reins of foreign policy; however, if the bipartisan consensus is strong enough, the president will have to accept this reality. Thus, the White House’s support for the Endless Frontier Act and the Strategic Competition Act of 2021 is not at all surprising. Biden even said in March that the Communist Party’s “overall goal” is to become the “richest” and “most powerful” nation in the world, a goal he himself does not criticize, but He himself did not criticize this goal, but reiterated that “this will not happen during my term of office because the United States will continue to grow and develop.
Second, the “Sputnik Moment” and the “Endless Frontier Act” to address the Chinese Communist Party’s technological challenges
During the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, on October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union successfully launched the Sputnik satellite for the first time in the world, which deeply shocked the United States and was called the “Sputnik Moment (Sputnik Crisis). At the time, the U.S. considered itself a leader in the missile and space fields, but both test launches failed. The Soviet Union successfully launched a satellite, and from a military perspective, “it seemed that there was now an eye in the sky looking down on the United States at all times, and that perhaps bombs would eventually be launched from outer space against a country that had neither the scientific nor the technological capability to protect itself!”
Thus, the United States had to rise to the occasion, and to select the main points: 1. constructed the basic framework of contemporary U.S. national science and technology development – such as the establishment of the National Science and Technology Policy Decision Advisory and Coordination Agency (including the current PCAST, OSTP, NSTC, etc.), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects ( DARPA, the reform of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation (NSF), and so on, established most of the nearly 700 federal laboratories that exist today.2. Congress passed the National Defense Education Act, which laid the basic framework for education in STEM disciplines in U.S. universities.3 In 1960, the United States produced 6,000 Ph.D.s in science and engineering, and by 1971 3. Investment in R&D has grown dramatically. Over a decade, congressional appropriations to NSF grew from $3.5 million to $500 million in 1968. Total funding soared from less than $4 billion in 1957 to nearly $40 billion in 1967, and major science projects, including the Apollo moon landing program, were launched during this period.
Since then, the U.S. science and technology development has entered the “Golden Decade”. The U.S. successfully passed the Sputnik Moment and regained its competitive edge in science and technology, marked by the successful landing of the Apollo program on the moon in 1969 and a major victory over the Soviet Union.
Now, the Chinese Communist Party is challenging the U.S. on all fronts, from economic, technological, and military aspects to culture, social institutions, and ideology, posing an “overall threat” to the U.S. Among them, the Chinese Communist Party’s struggle for technological hegemony is the most threatening and dangerous.
In particular, if we consider the mega-trend that the world is in the early stages of the fourth industrial revolution (converging new technologies – artificial intelligence, big data, robotics, biotechnology, nano-engineering, new materials, the Internet of Things, 3D printing – that will the digital and physical worlds together and will drive economic growth and geopolitics for decades to come); if you consider that the Chinese Communist Party is implementing a so-called “overtaking” strategy (of which forced technology transfer and technology plagiarism are part); if you consider that the U.S. government’s investment in science and technology is now the lowest in 45 years and that even If you consider that the U.S. government’s investment in science and technology is the lowest in 45 years, and that even the military technology that the U.S. prides itself on is having some problems; if you consider that the Chinese Communist Party is “using the epidemic for hegemony” and that the outbreak of the epidemic has “narrowed the technological gap between other countries (mainly China) and the U.S.”; then it is not surprising that the U.S. would move forward with the Endless Frontier Act. The significance of the bill is self-evident.
Senate Majority Leader Schumer, one of the bill’s sponsors, said, “We can either have a world where the Chinese Communist Party sets the rules for 5G, artificial intelligence and quantum computing, or we can ensure that the United States gets a jump on them.” Indeed, as he said, this bill is a rare investment in American science and technology for generations.
Conclusion
The Endless Frontier Act has a historical origin, too, in a 1945 report to then-President Roosevelt by Vannevar Bush (1890-1974), “Science: The Endless Frontier” (1945), just before the end of World War II. Science, the Endless Frontier,” to then-President Roosevelt just before the end of World War II in 1945, has had a major impact on the direction and approach to scientific research in the United States after World War II to the present. Where the United States used to think of the West as the new frontier, Vannevar Bush sees science as the new frontier for the future United States, and there is no end to it.
Yes, it is difficult to have a frontier for scientific and technological development. But what would it mean for humanity if the power of science and technology were to be captured or dominated by an evil regime?
The introduction of the U.S. Endless Frontier Act comes at the right time. This bill, if finally passed, will be put into effect within 180 days. By then, the U.S. will not only increase its research efforts in 10 key technology areas such as artificial intelligence, semiconductors, quantum computing, advanced communications, biotechnology and advanced energy, but will also inevitably “decouple” the U.S. and China from science and technology.
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