My conversation with Senator Todd Young
At a great event at AEI on science, technology, and R&D
Senator Todd Young has been a leading voice in the U.S. Congress on science and technology policy. He played a major role in devising and passing the Chips Act and served on the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology, which just released its final report (link here).
I asked Senator Young to explain his priorities for science, technology, and strategic competition. He outlined 5 priorities: chips, ships, rocks, genes, and geniuses.
Chips: their importance is now widely recognized, though Sen. Young noted (and I agree) that we still have plenty of work to do to address our supply chain vulnerabilities and—even more critically—retain technological leadership.
Ships: the decline of America’s shipbuilding capabilities and the rapid rise of China’s creates an obvious national security risk, given their role in naval warfare. The US is now a tiny player in global shipbuilding, with China, Japan, and Korea the major players. The
Rocks: critical minerals. As the last few months have demonstrated, our industries, especially cars, are critically dependent on NdFeB magnets sourced largely from China, or at least made with processed material sourced from China. We’ve been talking about this for nearly 15 years, but haven’t built up the non-China capacity. It’s shocking that car companies let themselves become so vulnerable given all the evidence that China was preparing to use its control of over 90% of rare earth processing capacity as a source of political leverage.
Genes: emerging biotechnology. In addition to our vulnerability on basic medicine components (APIs) from China, we’ve also watched China rapidly move up the value chain in many segments of pharma and biotech. These are among the few spheres where Western firms have a sustained technological advantage over Chinese competitors. Their edge is eroding, in some segments rapidly.
Geniuses: I give Sen. Young a lot of credit for his forthright support for high-skilled workers coming to the U.S., in a political context that—to put it lightly—is not conducive to immigration. But he’s right: immigrants have been a key reason why the U.S. has technologically outperformed other advanced economies. Immigration is still a major asset to the United States (and a liability to our adversaries, which loses many thousands of its brightest minds each year, who come and build companies in the U.S. instead.)
In short, Sen. Young laid out a strong to-do list for the U.S. when it comes to technology and economic security.
Check out the full conversation below.