U.S. Competitive Advantage: Frontier Science Basic Research and Unlocking Vast Scientific Data Assets

We recently explored the argument that – by the sheer force of the scale of their population and autocratic strategic focus – China has an innate competitive advantage in material science basic research and strategic chip innovation.  As a counterpoint to that argument, we take a look at this issue of “scale” as an innate competitive advantage for the U.S. with these two case studies: 

• The $500 million commitment of the Department of Energy (DOE) “basic research to advance the frontiers of science”; and
• The Special Competitive Studies Project’s (SCSP) newly released paper, Data’s Role in Unlocking Scientific Potential, addresses how the United States can leverage its vast data assets as a competitive advantage to drive economic growth and societal benefits (which is the latest report from the SCSP as part of their National Data Action Plan, which was released in December 2022).  

Why is This Important?

• The general discussion of the Great Power Competition needs to become more quantitative and granular: What is working? Where has the U.S. achieved true outcomes and competitive advantage vis a vis China in deep tech, frontier tech, and exponential technologies? Are there ways of quantifying these outcomes and thinking about the next steps? And what next? 
• Do not focus on the scale of resources or the scale of respective budgets on a relative basis to competitors:  While this post is concerned with the scale of commitment by the U.S. to basic frontier science research and the scale of untapped data resources available in the U.S., we are continually asking the following question in our research efforts: What are the tangible outcomes and innate competitive advantages or dormant resources that are unique to the U.S. scientific research infrastructure  – and free market economy – which can be leveraged now for strategic competitive advantage in the global competition in tough tech, deep tech, frontier tech, and exponential technologies.       

What Next?

The OODA Loop Research questions mentioned above operate in the context of these ongoing OODA Loop research themes: