“For decades, U.S. policy toward China rested on a quiet but powerful assumption: Beijing was essentially running the same race as the United States, just a few steps behind,” writes Jake Sullivan, former U.S. national security adviser, in a new essay from the forthcoming issue of Foreign Affairs. As technology—from semiconductors to artificial intelligence, biotechnology to clean energy—becomes “the central front in U.S.-Chinese competition,” Washington may not have the durable lead it thought it had.
The United States’ biggest rival is starting to dominate “many of the foundational layers that underpin the modern economy,” Sullivan argues. Regaining these areas of high ground “must be the central task of American statecraft in the twenty-first century.” After all, “technological power is translating directly and rapidly into geopolitical power to a degree the world hasn’t seen in years.”
|
