A House panel on Wednesday warned of the potential for the U.S. to slip behind China in near-term critical technology development, with calls to double basic research funding over the next 10 years in areas such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing.
Witnesses at the House Science Committee hearing told lawmakers Congress should push for a national science and engineering strategy and look to bolster the technology infrastructure to “create an alternative to [China’s] Huawei.”
“As recent reports have underscored, the United States has already begun to face the consequences of our inability to make strategic and sustained long-term investments in our science and technology enterprise,” Rep. Bernice Johnson (D-Texas), the committee chair, said during her opening remarks. “If we do not lead, we will be poorly positioned to set global norms and standards for the responsible development and application of emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence and biotechnology.”
Wednesday’s hearing arrived just as Rep. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.), the committee’s ranking member, had introduced new legislation that would call for a national S&T strategy and double basic research funding over the next 10 years for the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation (NSF), NIST and NOAA.
“We must accelerate our investments in basic research, as well as invest in the tools and infrastructure needed to support that research,” Lucas said. “China has made it an explicit goal to surpass the U.S. in critical technologies. Their ‘Made in China 2025’ is a bold plan, which outlines their intent to become global leaders in areas like quantum information science, advanced robotics, aerospace and biotechnology.”
Lucas added that China increased government funding for basic research by 56 percent between 2011 and 2016, while the U.S. fell by 12 percent during the same period.
Diane Souvaine, chair of the National Science Board, echoed the lawmakers comments regarding China’s pace of technology development, adding the U.S. “is no longer the uncontested leader in science and engineering” and that “the board believes that China has already surpassed us in R&D investments.”
Souvaine noted that between 2000 and 2017 global R&D investments tripled while the NSF’s dedicated R&D funding feel by 12 percent, which she said has left billions of dollars in “merit-reviewed ideas unfunded.”
Eric Schmidt, the former Google [GOOG] CEO and current chair of the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Advisory Board, noted that China has affirmed plans to specifically surpass the U.S. in quantum computing, supercomputing, aerospace, 5G, mobile payments, new energy vehicles, high speed rail, financial technology and AI.
“At the moment, we are ahead in AI. We are ahead by some number of months or years, and the number is not large. There is every evidence that our current lead is very fragile and that China will catch and surpass us,” Schmidt said.
With regards to 5G, Schmidt told lawmakers the U.S. needs its own answer to China’s Huawei as countries around the world begin to turn to global industry partners to meet future telecommunications needs.
Schmidt agreed with the panel’s call to double core R&D funding over the next 10 years, while going further to say “we’ll probably need to double it again after that.”