by Stavroula Pabst at Responsible Statecraft
New report is headed by a task force riddled with conflicts of interests. We do our best to shed light on the subject.
Authors of a new Council on Foreign Relations report are framing government subsidies and bailouts for key tech industries as a national security imperative. Not surprisingly, many of the report’s authors stand to benefit financially from such an arrangement.
Published last week, the report, titled U.S. Economic Security: Winning the Race for Tomorrow’s Technologies, urges, among a range of measures to build and onshore the sector, that “government intervention in the economy in the name of national security is most clearly warranted in cases of market failure.”
Framing China as a threat to American tech supremacy in the realms of AI, quantum computing, and biotechnology, the report recommends the U.S. financially support these industries to compete. Notably, it calls for the U.S. to offer loan guarantees for critical technology start-ups, and establish a $900 million grant program to subsidize the costs for facilities building the electronic boards needed to back powerful AI servers.
A quick glance at the task force membership roster shows these are not independent experts nor analysts, but individuals heavily invested in these emerging technologies and government contracting.
Task force co-chair James Taiclet is the president and CEO of…
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