Towards the end of the Second World War the commanding general of the US Air Force became concerned that the vast range of scientific expertise brought together to support the American military and defend freedom would dissipate in peace time. Henry — Hap, for Happy — Arnold was an enthusiastic advocate of high-intensity warfare and he feared America being left behind in the technological race with the Soviet Union.
Arnold wanted the best minds thinking about the coming age of supersonic-speed planes, new bombs, television, weather and computers. His intervention helped galvanise US policymakers and academics into a hugely innovative effort. The burst of spending on research and development created the conditions for American technological dominance and eventual victory in the Cold War.
Ananyo Bhattacharya tells the story of Hap Arnold’s mid-1940s intervention in his spellbinding book, The Man from the Future: The Visionary Life of John von Neumann, published earlier this year.
Von Neumann was central to that postwar push. Arguably the cleverest scientist of the 20th century, the Budapest-born mathematician had moved to the US in 1930 from where he proceeded to change the world. As an anti-fascist and anti-communist, defence was one of his primary interests. He was a key figure in the Manhattan Project that produced nuclear weapons. The first programmable digital computer was his doing. Biotechnology and nanotechnology are rooted in his theories. He was an originator of game theory. His final work on computers and the brain envisaged self-replicating machines and artificial intelligence.
The march of these ideas in coming centuries is unstoppable, von Neumann believed. What mattered, according to this Cold War warrior, was that free societies rather than tyrannical leaders retain the technological lead. That insight is relevant again in the context of modern China, and a sobering report published this week by the Belfer Centre for Science and International Affairs at Harvard provides a timely situation report. In the last 20 years or so totalitarian China has caught up with the US and the West. In The Great Tech Rivalry: China vs the US, the authors say China may soon become the leader: “Beyond becoming a manufacturing powerhouse, China has become a serious competitor in the foundational technologies of the 21st century: artificial intelligence (AI), 5G, quantum information science (QIS), semiconductors, biotechnology, and green energy. In some races, it has already become No 1. In others, on current trajectories, it will overtake the US within the next decade.”
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Professor Graham Allison and three colleagues produced the report to hand to the winner of the last US presidential election and they are now making their findings public.
The hope must be that it helps wake the American political and academic class, and the wider West, from its slumber.
Friends of America are worried to see it drifting around, seemingly lost in the introspective culture wars and so deeply divided that US democracy looks shaky. Unless someone new emerges from one of the two main parties, the next presidential race will be decided between the current unsatisfactory occupant of the White House and his wild predecessor. The vice-president grates so much, and is so unpopular as a consequence, that she is not a viable alternative.
Once, America looked like the shiny manifestation of the future. Now, as a leading British politician who visited the US earlier this year puts it: “It’s like landing back in an episode of Cagney & Lacey. It’s still 1985.” US consumers are wired up at home and in their cars but public space has deteriorated and much of the infrastructure is decades out of date compared with Europe or resurgent China.
Against this backdrop, The Great Tech Rivalry drops some truth bombs about the scale of the challenge. In telecommunications, China is winning: “With increases of up to a hundredfold in speed, fiftyfold in reliability, and tenfold in device connections, 5G promises to enable new use cases no one can even imagine today.”
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On AI, the early advantage America enjoyed because of Silicon Valley may have been squandered. There is now a real competition with China. On education, the US has thrown away the lead it once enjoyed.
While America has elite universities, in mass education China consistently outscores the US in maths and science. In 2018, China’s Pisa scores, assessing maths, science, and reading, ranked it No 1 in the world. The US ranked 25th.
When it comes to research and development expenditure, 20 years ago the US spent the equivalent of £270 billion. China spent just 12 per cent of that. Now it is close to parity.
If the advanced industrial democracies are to fight back, ensuring we have the technological capabilities to defend ourselves, the task cannot fall solely to the US. It will need allies.
Britain can play a role, as can France as the other main defence, security and intelligence power in Europe. The British lead on technology investment will help, if more of that private sector activity can be channelled into the defence and intelligence technology needed. This week it was reported that British tech start-ups lead the way in European tech investment. Northern European countries such as Sweden are also powering ahead.
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Ultimate Chinese victory over the US and its allies is not preordained. Free societies enjoy numerous advantages, not least because liberty facilitates the intellectual inquiry and open disagreement that history shows is a vital spur to innovation. But as the Cold War proved, a successful defence of freedom won’t happen unless political and scientific elites are prepared to lead.
