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2022’s seismic shift in US tech policy will change how we innovate

Three bills investing hundreds of billions into technological development could change the way we think about government’s role in growing prosperity.

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This essay is part of MIT Technology Review's 10 Breakthrough Technologies 2023. Explore the full list here .

It was the perfect political photo op. The occasion was the September groundbreaking for Intel’s massive $20 billion chip manufacturing complex in the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio. Backhoes dotted a construction site that stretched across hundreds of flat, empty acres. At a simple podium with the presidential seal, Joe Biden talked about putting an end to the term “Rust Belt,” a name popularized in the 1980s in reference to the Midwest’s rapidly declining manufacturing sector.

It was a presidential victory lap after the passage of some landmark US legislation, beginning with the infrastructure bill in late 2021. Together, three major bills promise hundreds of billions in federal investments to transform the nation’s technology landscape. While ending the Rust Belt might be typical political hyperbole, you get the point: the spending spree is meant to revive the country’s economy by rebuilding its industrial base. 

The dollar amounts are jaw-dropping. The bills include $550 billion in new spending over the next five years in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, $280 billion in the CHIPS and Science Act (which prompted Intel to go ahead on the Ohio construction), and another roughly $390 billion for clean energy in the Inflation Reduction Act. Among the investments is the most aggressive federal funding for science and technology in decades. But the greatest long-term impact of the legislative flurry could come from its bold embrace of something that has long been a political third rail in the US: industrial policy. 

That means deliberate government interventions, including financial incentives and investments, favoring growth in particular industries or technologies—say, for national security reasons or to address problems such as climate change. Think of US support for semiconductor manufacturing in the 1980s or the creation during the Cold War of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which led to the internet and GPS.  

But for decades now, free-market advocates have disparaged industrial policy as a foolhardy attempt to pick economic winners. Since the early 1980s and the era of Ronald Reagan, US politicians and many mainstream economists have disdained it. In reality, it never completely went away. President Obama toyed with elements of it in trying to revive manufacturing in the US after the 2008 recession; President Trump turned to it in his Operation Warp Speed to mobilize industry around covid vaccine development. But for the most part, it has seemed foreign to US political thinking: it was something China does, something Japan, South Korea, and France used to do (remember the Concorde?). 

The US has effective and productive free markets. And, of course, we have Silicon Valley, our own engine of economic growth, propelling the economy forward. All we need to do is unleash that engine by loosening regulations and cutting taxes. Or so the dominant narrative went. 

That narrative began crumbling long before the covid-19 pandemic made clear the need for the government to help bolster critical industrial sectors and supply chains. An unblinking faith in free markets has led to globalization, helping to gut many of the country’s industries, particularly in manufacturing. For a while, the economic argument was that it didn’t matter where you made stuff; cheap commodities were good for living standards, and the country should focus on high-tech growth. 

The problem is that high-tech growth has been limited, anemic, and unevenly distributed. Income inequality has climbed to high levels. The Rust Belt and other sections of the middle of the country keep getting rustier. Despite impressive advances in artificial intelligence and other areas of high tech, the nation’s prosperity has largely benefited people in only a few regions; notably, experts have begun identifying a handful of superstar cities, including San Francisco, Seattle, and Boston, that are booming while the rest of the country suffers. Perhaps most telling, growth of productivity—particularly the kind related to innovation, called total factor productivity—has been sluggish for several decades now in the US and many other rich countries. 

I wrote about the failure of technologies such as social media and artificial intelligence to boost productivity growth in the mid-2010s, in an essay titled “ Tech slowdown threatens the American Dream .” Since then, the situation hasn’t gotten any better, roiling US politics and fueling a mood of economic malaise. 

What’s changed now is that the new legislation, which passed with some degree of bipartisan support in Congress, signals a strong appetite across the political spectrum for the US government to reengage with the country’s industrial base. After decades of declining federal investment in R&D , which dropped from 1.2% of GDP in the late 1970s to below 0.8% in recent years, the CHIPS and Science Act alone authorizes some $174 billion for research at places like the National Science Foundation.

Part of the reason the legislation received such broad support is that the funding provisions are a bit of Rorschach test. Some see measures to defend critical national technology businesses like chip production against the threat from China, and to make sure we don’t lose the global race in areas such as AI and quantum computing. Others see green jobs and efforts to address climate change, and a return to the post–World War II recognition that investing in science and research is critical to economic well-being. 

Still, despite the differences in motivation, the federal government’s willingness to embrace hawkish industrial policy is at least providing a chance to rethink the role the state plays in innovation. “It’s not just an opportunity—it’s a necessity,” says Dan Breznitz, the Peter J. Munk professor of Innovation Studies at the University of Toronto and co-director of its Innovation Policy Lab. After decades, he says, it’s time the US government got back in the game of “understanding the importance of merging innovation strategy with industrial policy.” 

Likewise, the European Union, South Korea and Japan, countries in the Middle East, and various other members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development are all “back on the industrial-policy bandwagon,” says Dani Rodrik, an economist at Harvard. “It’s not like industrial policy ever went away,” says Rodrik, “but now it’s at the center of the conversation.” Instead of being embarrassed by the topic, he says, politicians are now touting it as a strategy. 

For economists like Diane Coyle, an expert on productivity and the emerging digital economy, the need for industrial policy to promote targeted growth is obvious at a time when productivity is stagnant, climate change is reaching a crisis point, and the rapid digitalization of the economy is worsening inequality. “We absolutely do need industrial policy in the kind of economy we have now,” says Coyle, the co-director of the Bennett Institute for Public Policy at the University of Cambridge. “But the catch, of course, is it’s difficult to do, and governments often don’t do it well.” 

What about Solyndra?

The well-worn critique that industrial policy asks governments to pick winners, something they aren’t particularly good at, doesn’t really hold up to scrutiny. For every Solyndra (a solar company that received a half-billion-dollar federal loan guarantee before flaming out, and the favorite example of a disastrous losing pick), there is a Tesla—funded around the same time by a federal loan. But the criticism does have some truth to it; industrial policy requires, well, policies. It requires choices. 

The US legislation passed over the last year is really a series of different industrial and innovation strategies. There’s a classic industrial policy that singles out support to the chip industry; a green industrial policy in the Inflation Reduction Act (which is often called the climate bill) that broadly favors specific types of companies such as EV manufacturers; and other spending choices and policies scattered throughout the bills that aim to create new jobs. Arguably the most important provisions, at least according to some economists, are those designed to boost federal support for R&D.

There is no obvious, coherent vision tying it all together. 

For now, says David Victor, a professor of innovation and public policy at the University of California, San Diego, that’s fine. “It’s more like industrial policy à la carte,” he says. It’s based on what is politically possible, appeasing different interests, from labor to industry to climate activists. Now, says Victor, “we need to turn it into as effective industrial policy as possible.”

One challenge will be dealing with potentially conflicting priorities. For example, the climate bill’s generous tax incentives for electric vehicles come with a few stipulations. The EVs must be assembled in North America. What’s more, the battery components must be made or assembled in North America and the critical metals going into the batteries must be mined in the US or by its free-trade partners. That might boost long-term domestic manufacturing, creating jobs and building more reliable supply chains, but it also could create a bottleneck in EV production. If that happens, it could slow down efforts to reduce carbon emissions. 

Various other trade-offs and choices loom as the country ramps up its technology investments. To help make better choices, Erica Fuchs, a professor of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon, and her collaborators have started a pilot project, funded by the NSF, that will use advanced data analysis and cross-disciplinary expertise from a team of university researchers to better inform policy makers on technology decisions.

Called the National Network for Critical Technology Assessment, it’s meant to provide useful information on different options to meet various geopolitical and economic objectives. For example, given US dependency on China for lithium and the Democratic Republic of the Congo for cobalt, and given the risks of those supply chains, what is the potential value of innovations in battery recycling, alternative battery chemistries (such as ones that don’t use cobalt), and alternative extraction technologies? Likewise, there are questions around what parts of domestic battery manufacturing are most important for creating US jobs. 

While much analysis has already gone into writing the legislation, says Fuchs, many more questions will come up as the government attempts to spend the allocated funds to best realize legislative goals. She hopes the project will eventually lead to a larger network of experts from academia, industry, and government that provide the tools to clarify and quantify opportunities emerging from US innovation policies. 

A new story

Any new narrative that the government can promote innovation and use it to foster economic prosperity is still very much a work in progress. It’s not yet clear how the various provisions in the different pieces of legislation will play out. Perhaps most worrisome, the large jumps in funding for R&D in the CHIPS and Science Act are simply authorizations—recommendations that Congress will need to work into the budget anew every year. A switch in political mood could quickly kill the funding.

But perhaps the greatest unknown is how the federal funding will affect local economies and the welfare of millions of Americans who have suffered decades of lost manufacturing and declining job opportunities. Economists have long argued that technological advances are what drive economic growth. But over the last few decades, the prosperity resulting from such advances has been largely restricted to a few high-tech industries and has mostly benefited a relatively small elite. Can the public once again be convinced that innovation can lead to widespread prosperity? 

One worry is that while the recent legislation strongly supports semiconductor manufacturing and assorted clean technologies, the bills do little to create good jobs where they are most needed, says Harvard’s Rodrik. “In terms of bang for the buck,” he says, investing in advanced manufacturing and semiconductors “is one of the least effective ways of creating good jobs.” There is, he says, a “kind of manufacturing nostalgia” and a belief that rebuilding this sector will bring the middle class back. But that’s illusory, he says, since today’s advanced manufacturing is highly automated, and facilities tend to employ relatively few workers. 

Rodrik proposes what he calls an industrial policy for good jobs that would move beyond manufacturing and target the service sector, where by far the most jobs are in the US. His plan calls for investing in new technologies and companies that would improve productivity in jobs long thought of as low-skilled. For example, he points to opportunities to increase the capabilities of people working in long-term care, an area that is exploding as the population ages, by giving them digital tools. 

We also need to drop the pretensions around Silicon Valley’s role in creating widespread prosperity. A little more than six years ago, I wrote an essay titled “ Dear Silicon Valley: Forget flying cars, give us economic growth. ” Even with the advent of AI and driverless cars, economists were fretting over slow productivity growth. The inability of those in Silicon Valley to develop and commercialize the types of technologies and innovations that produce growth across a broad swath of the economy was clear. 

The tech industry gave us Zoom to survive the pandemic, and Amazon went on a hiring spree, but none of this led to a widespread economic expansion. We’re still waiting for the long-anticipated economy-­wide productivity boom from AI. These days, I would tweak the message: Forget about Silicon Valley and look elsewhere for economic transformation. 

If not Silicon Valley and other centers of innovation, where will that transformation come from? Though federal legislation has kick-started the discussion about industrial policy and innovation strategies, any real change will have to happen through efforts by cities and states. Each city, says Breznitz of the University of Toronto, will need to figure things out for itself, creating innovation strategies that work for its people on the basis of its industrial base, educational resources, and type of workforce. And, he admonishes, cities need to stop pinning their hopes on an elusive high-tech strategy modeled on Silicon Valley. 

“Two hundred cities in the US are all trying to look like Silicon Valley,” Breznitz says, adding, “I don’t know why. Maybe they’ve never been to Silicon Valley?”

A key, he says, is recognizing that inventions are just one stage of innovation. Local governments need to support what he calls continuous innovation by helping local companies and industries offer improved and cheaper products and services. It might not be as glamorous as coming up with a novel idea for a radical new business, but it’s how most companies and regions become more productive and localities prosper. 

Creating a convincing narrative that large parts of the country buy into will take time. But that, says UCSD’s Victor, is precisely the point of industrial policy: “You begin to change the facts on the ground. You create new industries and jobs. And then the politics shift.”

Before that happens, of course, lots can go wrong. Successful industrial policy depends on consistent and disciplined choices by politicians. You can decide for yourself whether you think they will manage that. 

But one reason for renewed optimism is that today’s technologies, especially artificial intelligence, robotics, genomic medicine, and advanced computation, provide vast opportunities to improve our lives, especially in areas like education, health care, and other services. If the government, at the national and local level, can find ways to help turn that innovation into prosperity across the economy, then we will truly have begun to rewrite the prevailing political narrative.

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Promises and Pitfalls of Technology

Politics and privacy, private-sector influence and big tech, state competition and conflict, author biography, how is technology changing the world, and how should the world change technology.

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Josephine Wolff; How Is Technology Changing the World, and How Should the World Change Technology?. Global Perspectives 1 February 2021; 2 (1): 27353. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/gp.2021.27353

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Technologies are becoming increasingly complicated and increasingly interconnected. Cars, airplanes, medical devices, financial transactions, and electricity systems all rely on more computer software than they ever have before, making them seem both harder to understand and, in some cases, harder to control. Government and corporate surveillance of individuals and information processing relies largely on digital technologies and artificial intelligence, and therefore involves less human-to-human contact than ever before and more opportunities for biases to be embedded and codified in our technological systems in ways we may not even be able to identify or recognize. Bioengineering advances are opening up new terrain for challenging philosophical, political, and economic questions regarding human-natural relations. Additionally, the management of these large and small devices and systems is increasingly done through the cloud, so that control over them is both very remote and removed from direct human or social control. The study of how to make technologies like artificial intelligence or the Internet of Things “explainable” has become its own area of research because it is so difficult to understand how they work or what is at fault when something goes wrong (Gunning and Aha 2019) .

This growing complexity makes it more difficult than ever—and more imperative than ever—for scholars to probe how technological advancements are altering life around the world in both positive and negative ways and what social, political, and legal tools are needed to help shape the development and design of technology in beneficial directions. This can seem like an impossible task in light of the rapid pace of technological change and the sense that its continued advancement is inevitable, but many countries around the world are only just beginning to take significant steps toward regulating computer technologies and are still in the process of radically rethinking the rules governing global data flows and exchange of technology across borders.

These are exciting times not just for technological development but also for technology policy—our technologies may be more advanced and complicated than ever but so, too, are our understandings of how they can best be leveraged, protected, and even constrained. The structures of technological systems as determined largely by government and institutional policies and those structures have tremendous implications for social organization and agency, ranging from open source, open systems that are highly distributed and decentralized, to those that are tightly controlled and closed, structured according to stricter and more hierarchical models. And just as our understanding of the governance of technology is developing in new and interesting ways, so, too, is our understanding of the social, cultural, environmental, and political dimensions of emerging technologies. We are realizing both the challenges and the importance of mapping out the full range of ways that technology is changing our society, what we want those changes to look like, and what tools we have to try to influence and guide those shifts.

Technology can be a source of tremendous optimism. It can help overcome some of the greatest challenges our society faces, including climate change, famine, and disease. For those who believe in the power of innovation and the promise of creative destruction to advance economic development and lead to better quality of life, technology is a vital economic driver (Schumpeter 1942) . But it can also be a tool of tremendous fear and oppression, embedding biases in automated decision-making processes and information-processing algorithms, exacerbating economic and social inequalities within and between countries to a staggering degree, or creating new weapons and avenues for attack unlike any we have had to face in the past. Scholars have even contended that the emergence of the term technology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries marked a shift from viewing individual pieces of machinery as a means to achieving political and social progress to the more dangerous, or hazardous, view that larger-scale, more complex technological systems were a semiautonomous form of progress in and of themselves (Marx 2010) . More recently, technologists have sharply criticized what they view as a wave of new Luddites, people intent on slowing the development of technology and turning back the clock on innovation as a means of mitigating the societal impacts of technological change (Marlowe 1970) .

At the heart of fights over new technologies and their resulting global changes are often two conflicting visions of technology: a fundamentally optimistic one that believes humans use it as a tool to achieve greater goals, and a fundamentally pessimistic one that holds that technological systems have reached a point beyond our control. Technology philosophers have argued that neither of these views is wholly accurate and that a purely optimistic or pessimistic view of technology is insufficient to capture the nuances and complexity of our relationship to technology (Oberdiek and Tiles 1995) . Understanding technology and how we can make better decisions about designing, deploying, and refining it requires capturing that nuance and complexity through in-depth analysis of the impacts of different technological advancements and the ways they have played out in all their complicated and controversial messiness across the world.

These impacts are often unpredictable as technologies are adopted in new contexts and come to be used in ways that sometimes diverge significantly from the use cases envisioned by their designers. The internet, designed to help transmit information between computer networks, became a crucial vehicle for commerce, introducing unexpected avenues for crime and financial fraud. Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, designed to connect friends and families through sharing photographs and life updates, became focal points of election controversies and political influence. Cryptocurrencies, originally intended as a means of decentralized digital cash, have become a significant environmental hazard as more and more computing resources are devoted to mining these forms of virtual money. One of the crucial challenges in this area is therefore recognizing, documenting, and even anticipating some of these unexpected consequences and providing mechanisms to technologists for how to think through the impacts of their work, as well as possible other paths to different outcomes (Verbeek 2006) . And just as technological innovations can cause unexpected harm, they can also bring about extraordinary benefits—new vaccines and medicines to address global pandemics and save thousands of lives, new sources of energy that can drastically reduce emissions and help combat climate change, new modes of education that can reach people who would otherwise have no access to schooling. Regulating technology therefore requires a careful balance of mitigating risks without overly restricting potentially beneficial innovations.

Nations around the world have taken very different approaches to governing emerging technologies and have adopted a range of different technologies themselves in pursuit of more modern governance structures and processes (Braman 2009) . In Europe, the precautionary principle has guided much more anticipatory regulation aimed at addressing the risks presented by technologies even before they are fully realized. For instance, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation focuses on the responsibilities of data controllers and processors to provide individuals with access to their data and information about how that data is being used not just as a means of addressing existing security and privacy threats, such as data breaches, but also to protect against future developments and uses of that data for artificial intelligence and automated decision-making purposes. In Germany, Technische Überwachungsvereine, or TÜVs, perform regular tests and inspections of technological systems to assess and minimize risks over time, as the tech landscape evolves. In the United States, by contrast, there is much greater reliance on litigation and liability regimes to address safety and security failings after-the-fact. These different approaches reflect not just the different legal and regulatory mechanisms and philosophies of different nations but also the different ways those nations prioritize rapid development of the technology industry versus safety, security, and individual control. Typically, governance innovations move much more slowly than technological innovations, and regulations can lag years, or even decades, behind the technologies they aim to govern.

In addition to this varied set of national regulatory approaches, a variety of international and nongovernmental organizations also contribute to the process of developing standards, rules, and norms for new technologies, including the International Organization for Standardization­ and the International Telecommunication Union. These multilateral and NGO actors play an especially important role in trying to define appropriate boundaries for the use of new technologies by governments as instruments of control for the state.

At the same time that policymakers are under scrutiny both for their decisions about how to regulate technology as well as their decisions about how and when to adopt technologies like facial recognition themselves, technology firms and designers have also come under increasing criticism. Growing recognition that the design of technologies can have far-reaching social and political implications means that there is more pressure on technologists to take into consideration the consequences of their decisions early on in the design process (Vincenti 1993; Winner 1980) . The question of how technologists should incorporate these social dimensions into their design and development processes is an old one, and debate on these issues dates back to the 1970s, but it remains an urgent and often overlooked part of the puzzle because so many of the supposedly systematic mechanisms for assessing the impacts of new technologies in both the private and public sectors are primarily bureaucratic, symbolic processes rather than carrying any real weight or influence.

Technologists are often ill-equipped or unwilling to respond to the sorts of social problems that their creations have—often unwittingly—exacerbated, and instead point to governments and lawmakers to address those problems (Zuckerberg 2019) . But governments often have few incentives to engage in this area. This is because setting clear standards and rules for an ever-evolving technological landscape can be extremely challenging, because enforcement of those rules can be a significant undertaking requiring considerable expertise, and because the tech sector is a major source of jobs and revenue for many countries that may fear losing those benefits if they constrain companies too much. This indicates not just a need for clearer incentives and better policies for both private- and public-sector entities but also a need for new mechanisms whereby the technology development and design process can be influenced and assessed by people with a wider range of experiences and expertise. If we want technologies to be designed with an eye to their impacts, who is responsible for predicting, measuring, and mitigating those impacts throughout the design process? Involving policymakers in that process in a more meaningful way will also require training them to have the analytic and technical capacity to more fully engage with technologists and understand more fully the implications of their decisions.

At the same time that tech companies seem unwilling or unable to rein in their creations, many also fear they wield too much power, in some cases all but replacing governments and international organizations in their ability to make decisions that affect millions of people worldwide and control access to information, platforms, and audiences (Kilovaty 2020) . Regulators around the world have begun considering whether some of these companies have become so powerful that they violate the tenets of antitrust laws, but it can be difficult for governments to identify exactly what those violations are, especially in the context of an industry where the largest players often provide their customers with free services. And the platforms and services developed by tech companies are often wielded most powerfully and dangerously not directly by their private-sector creators and operators but instead by states themselves for widespread misinformation campaigns that serve political purposes (Nye 2018) .

Since the largest private entities in the tech sector operate in many countries, they are often better poised to implement global changes to the technological ecosystem than individual states or regulatory bodies, creating new challenges to existing governance structures and hierarchies. Just as it can be challenging to provide oversight for government use of technologies, so, too, oversight of the biggest tech companies, which have more resources, reach, and power than many nations, can prove to be a daunting task. The rise of network forms of organization and the growing gig economy have added to these challenges, making it even harder for regulators to fully address the breadth of these companies’ operations (Powell 1990) . The private-public partnerships that have emerged around energy, transportation, medical, and cyber technologies further complicate this picture, blurring the line between the public and private sectors and raising critical questions about the role of each in providing critical infrastructure, health care, and security. How can and should private tech companies operating in these different sectors be governed, and what types of influence do they exert over regulators? How feasible are different policy proposals aimed at technological innovation, and what potential unintended consequences might they have?

Conflict between countries has also spilled over significantly into the private sector in recent years, most notably in the case of tensions between the United States and China over which technologies developed in each country will be permitted by the other and which will be purchased by other customers, outside those two countries. Countries competing to develop the best technology is not a new phenomenon, but the current conflicts have major international ramifications and will influence the infrastructure that is installed and used around the world for years to come. Untangling the different factors that feed into these tussles as well as whom they benefit and whom they leave at a disadvantage is crucial for understanding how governments can most effectively foster technological innovation and invention domestically as well as the global consequences of those efforts. As much of the world is forced to choose between buying technology from the United States or from China, how should we understand the long-term impacts of those choices and the options available to people in countries without robust domestic tech industries? Does the global spread of technologies help fuel further innovation in countries with smaller tech markets, or does it reinforce the dominance of the states that are already most prominent in this sector? How can research universities maintain global collaborations and research communities in light of these national competitions, and what role does government research and development spending play in fostering innovation within its own borders and worldwide? How should intellectual property protections evolve to meet the demands of the technology industry, and how can those protections be enforced globally?

These conflicts between countries sometimes appear to challenge the feasibility of truly global technologies and networks that operate across all countries through standardized protocols and design features. Organizations like the International Organization for Standardization, the World Intellectual Property Organization, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, and many others have tried to harmonize these policies and protocols across different countries for years, but have met with limited success when it comes to resolving the issues of greatest tension and disagreement among nations. For technology to operate in a global environment, there is a need for a much greater degree of coordination among countries and the development of common standards and norms, but governments continue to struggle to agree not just on those norms themselves but even the appropriate venue and processes for developing them. Without greater global cooperation, is it possible to maintain a global network like the internet or to promote the spread of new technologies around the world to address challenges of sustainability? What might help incentivize that cooperation moving forward, and what could new structures and process for governance of global technologies look like? Why has the tech industry’s self-regulation culture persisted? Do the same traditional drivers for public policy, such as politics of harmonization and path dependency in policy-making, still sufficiently explain policy outcomes in this space? As new technologies and their applications spread across the globe in uneven ways, how and when do they create forces of change from unexpected places?

These are some of the questions that we hope to address in the Technology and Global Change section through articles that tackle new dimensions of the global landscape of designing, developing, deploying, and assessing new technologies to address major challenges the world faces. Understanding these processes requires synthesizing knowledge from a range of different fields, including sociology, political science, economics, and history, as well as technical fields such as engineering, climate science, and computer science. A crucial part of understanding how technology has created global change and, in turn, how global changes have influenced the development of new technologies is understanding the technologies themselves in all their richness and complexity—how they work, the limits of what they can do, what they were designed to do, how they are actually used. Just as technologies themselves are becoming more complicated, so are their embeddings and relationships to the larger social, political, and legal contexts in which they exist. Scholars across all disciplines are encouraged to join us in untangling those complexities.

Josephine Wolff is an associate professor of cybersecurity policy at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Her book You’ll See This Message When It Is Too Late: The Legal and Economic Aftermath of Cybersecurity Breaches was published by MIT Press in 2018.

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Meteorological Records: This is How We Started to Record the Climate

Which openmind book are you, openmind books, scientific anniversaries, alessandro volta, from current in frogs to the electric battery, featured author, latest book, technological change and the evolution of the u.s. “national innovation system”, 1880-1990.

Technological change has played a central role in US economic growth since the 19th century. The pioneering work of Solow (1957) and Abramovitz (1956) both suggested that expansion in labor and capital accounted for no more than 15% of total growth in US output per head between the middle of the 19th century and the 1950s. The remaining 85%, labeled the “residual,” is widely interpreted as a measure of the economic effects of technological change, although Abramovitz famously referred to it as a “measure of our ignorance”. This essay explores the changing characteristics of innovation and the relationship between innovation and US economic growth during this lengthy period.

The transition from the 19th to the 20th centuries was accompanied by a shift in the sources of US economic growth from exploitation of a rich domestic endowment of natural resources to the exploitation of “created” resources based on knowledge and trained scientists and engineers. Advances in technology and knowledge aided the exploitation of the US resource endowment during the 19th century, enabling the United States to overtake the global economic leader of the time, Great Britain. Beginning in the late 19th century, however, the United States embarked on a prolonged transition from resource-led to knowledge-led economic growth.

Institutional innovation was an indispensable complement to technological innovation during and after this period in US economic development. Public and private investments in new organizational structures for the support of knowledge creation, innovation and education were essential to the changing trajectory of US economic growth in the 19th and 20th centuries. State and federal government investments supported the creation of a higher education infrastructure that eventually proved to be an important source of scientific and engineering knowledge and personnel (Goldin and Katz, 2009). Industrial investment in the development of new technologies also made important contributions during the 20th century. And the 1945-89 period, dominated by geopolitical tensions that sparked massive investment of public funds in defense and related missions by the federal government, witnessed a further transformation of this complex mix of public and private institutions devoted to supporting innovation.

This essay surveys the development of the US “national innovation system” from the late 19th to the late 20th centuries. The “national innovation system” framework for analyzing innovative performance and policy is the subject of a substantial body of scholarship that has flourished since the first articulation of the concept in Freeman (1987; see also Lundvall, 1992 and Nelson, 1993). “National” innovation systems typically include the institutions, policies, actors, and processes that affect the creation of knowledge, the innovation processes that translate research into applications (either for commercial sale or deployment in such “nonmarket” contexts as national defense), and the processes that influence the adoption of innovations.

Accordingly, the US national innovation system includes not just the institutions performing R&D and the level and sources of funding for such R&D, but policies—such as antitrust policy, intellectual property rights, and regulatory policy—that affect technology development, the training of scientists and engineers, and technology adoption. Institutional elements, such as national systems of higher education and corporate finance and governance, represent other important components of national innovation systems. The structure of a nation’s innovation system is the result of complex historical processes of institutional development that are affected by public policy and other influences. Moreover, the performance of these systems depends in part on the actions and decisions of private enterprises that can reinforce or offset the effects of government policies.

Overview of US economic “catch-up,” 1800–1910

US economic growth during the 19th century has been characterized by Abramovitz and David (2000), David and Wright (1997), and Wright (2007) as more capital- and natural resource-intensive than Western European growth during the same period. The capital-intensive trajectory of US economic growth during the 19th century reflected the high rates of investment and significant innovation in the transportation and communications infrastructure (canals, railways, the telegraph and telephone) that contributed to the development of another major factor in 19th-century US economic growth—the large, unified domestic market that manufacturers in particular exploited in the wake of the Civil War. Through much of the 19th century, this domestic market was characterized by relatively low levels of income inequality, by comparison with Great Britain and other European economies, resulting in a large, homogeneous profile of consumer demand. Reliable all-weather inland transportation also facilitated the export of the produce of the abundant and relatively fertile expanse of farmland within the United States.

During the last two decades of the 19th century, the US economy began a prolonged transition from the extensive growth trajectory that relied on expanding capital, resource, and labor inputs to a more knowledge-intensive growth trajectory that was associated with higher rates of total factor productivity growth (Abramovitz and David, 2002). One of the most dramatic illustrations of this gradual shift was the increased exploitation of scientific and technical knowledge in US resource extraction industries that began in the late 19th century (David and Wright, 1997). As David and Wright pointed out, the United States pioneered in the development of new institutions for research and education in mining engineering, geology and related fields that supported expansion in US output of minerals and related raw materials during this period. Based in part on a growing endowment of economically relevant natural resources, US firms had moved to the technological frontier in mass-production manufacturing, particularly in metalworking and machinery industries, by the late 19th century (Nelson and Wright, 1994: 135).1

Many of the first academic institutions specializing in these fields of research and education were publicly funded, illustrating another important characteristic of the post-1870 period of economic catch-up. The 1862 Morrill Act established a foundation for publicly funded higher education, and (along with the 1887 Hatch Act) expanded federal and state government funding for research and extension activities in agriculture. The development of mass higher education in the United States occurred in parallel with the emergence of the first US “research university” (Johns Hopkins University, founded in 1876), which was based on the German research university structure that had proven to be effective in supporting scientific research and collaboration with industry. Although decades (and billions in public funding) were required to bring US universities to positions of global scientific leadership, even before their attainment of research excellence these institutions played a crucial role in training generations of scientists, engineers, and managers, and developed networks of collaboration in scientific and technical research with US industry that contributed to US economic growth in the late 19th and 20th centuries.

Much of the technological innovation that drove US economic development during the 19th century was “pre-scientific,” relying as much on trial-and-error experimentation by skilled practitioners as on activities that might be described as “R&D”. The reliance of 19th century innovation on “tinkering” declined in the final decades of the century, with the growth of new areas of industrial production and innovation that relied on more complex technologies that were linked to the frontiers of scientific and engineering knowledge. Their reliance on more formalized knowledge meant that the growth of the “new industries” of the Second Industrial Revolution, particularly chemicals and electrical machinery, was associated with investments in R&D within the firm, an activity with little precedent in most US firms.

The pioneers in this organizational innovation were the large German chemicals firms of the last quarter of the 19th century, whose growth was based on innovations in dyestuffs. But by the early 20th century, a number of large US firms had also established in-house R&D organizations. The growth of these laboratories almost certainly could not have occurred without complementary changes in institutions external to the firm, ranging from the development of US universities to the growth of new mechanisms for industrial finance. Nonetheless, the rise of the industrial R&D laboratory represented a fundamental shift in the structure of the US national innovation system.

The Growth of US Industrial Research in the “Second Industrial Revolution,” 1890-1945

By the first decade of the 20th century, a number of large US manufacturing firms had established in-house industrial research laboratories as part of a broader restructuring that transformed their scale, management structures, product lines, and global reach. Many of the earliest US corporate investors in industrial R&D, such as General Electric and Alcoa, were founded on product or process innovations that drew on advances in physics and chemistry. The corporate R&D laboratory brought more of the process of developing and improving industrial technology into the boundaries of US manufacturing firms, reducing the technological and economic importance of the independent inventor (Schmookler, 1957).

But the in-house research facilities of large US firms were not concerned exclusively with the creation of new technologies. Like the laboratories of the German dyestuff firms, these US industrial laboratories also monitored technological developments outside the firm and advised corporate managers on the acquisition of externally developed technologies. Many of Du Pont’s major product and process innovations during this period, for example, were obtained from sources external to the firm, and Du Pont further developed and commercialized them (Mueller, 1962; Hounshell and Smith, 1988; Hounshell, 1995).2 In-house R&D in US firms developed in parallel with independent R&D laboratories that performed research on a contract basis (see also Mowery, 1983a). But over the course of the 20th century, contract-research firms’ share of industrial research employment declined.

The evolution of industrial research in the United States was influenced by another factor that was absent in Germany during the late 19th and early 20th centuries — competition policy. By the late 19th century, judicial interpretations of the Sherman Antitrust Act had made agreements among firms for the control of prices and output targets of civil prosecution. The 1895-1904 merger wave in the United States, particularly the surge in mergers after 1898, was one response to this new legal environment. Since informal and formal price-fixing and market-sharing agreements had been declared illegal in a growing number of cases, firms resorted to horizontal mergers to control prices and markets.3

The Sherman Act’s encouragement of horizontal mergers ended with the Supreme Court’s 1904 Northern Securities decision, but many large US firms responded to the new antitrust environment by pursuing strategies of diversification that relied on in-house R&D to support the commercialization of new technologies that were developed internally or purchased from external sources. George Eastman saw industrial research as a means of supporting the diversification and growth of Eastman Kodak (Sturchio, 1988, p. 8). The Du Pont Company used industrial research to diversify out of the black and smokeless powder businesses even before the 1913 antitrust decision that forced the divestiture of much of the firm’s black powder and dynamite businesses (Hounshell and Smith, 1988: 57).

Although it discouraged horizontal mergers among large firms in the same lines of business, US antitrust policy through much of the pre-1940 period had little effect on efforts by these firms to acquire new technologies from external sources. The development of industrial research, as well as the creation of a market for the acquisition and sale of industrial technologies, also benefited from reforms in US patent policy between 1890 and 1910 that strengthened patent-holder rights (See Mowery, 1995).4 Judicial tolerance for restrictive patent licensing policies further increased the value of patents in corporate research strategies. Although the search for new patents provided an incentive to pursue industrial research, the impending expiration of these patents created another important impetus for the establishment of industrial research laboratories. Both American Telephone and Telegraph and General Electric, for example, established or expanded their in-house laboratories in response to the intensified competitive pressure that resulted from the expiration of key patents (Reich, 1985; Millard, 1990: 156). Intensive efforts to improve and protect corporate technological assets complemented the acquisition of patents in related technologies from other firms and independent inventors.

Many of the elements of the “Open Innovation” model, defined by its leading proponent as a new model for managing corporate innovation in which “firms can and should use external ideas as well as internal ideas” (Chesbrough, 2003), were present in the early development of US industrial R&D. The in-house R&D facilities of leading industrial firms served as monitors of external technological developments that supported the purchase by their parent firms of important innovations from independent inventors and other firms.

Another area in which the pre-1940 era in the development of industrial research resembles that of the past two decades is the evidence of collaborative linkages between industrial and academic research. Furman and MacGarvie (2005) show that pharmaceuticals industry R&D facilities founded during 1927– 46 in the United States tended to locate near leading research universities, and provide other evidence of university-industry collaboration in pharmaceuticals during this period. Other scholars (Mowery et al., 2004; Rosenberg, 1998) have emphasized the importance of university-industry collaboration during this period, not least in the development of such important fields of university research as chemical engineering.

Training by public universities of scientists and engineers for employment in industrial research also linked US universities and industry during the first decades of the 20th century. The Ph.D.s trained in public universities were important participants in the expansion of industrial research employment during this period (Thackray, 1982: 211).5 The size of this trained manpower pool was as important as its quality; although the situation was improving in the decade before 1940, Cohen (1976) noted that virtually all “serious” US scientists completed their studies at European universities. Thackray et al. (1985) argue that American chemistry research during this period attracted attention (in the form of citations in other scientific papers) as much for its quantity as its quality.

Federal expenditure for R&D throughout the 1930s constituted 12-20% of total US R&D expenditure, and industry accounted for about two-thirds of the total. The remainder came from universities, state governments, private foundations, and research institutes. One estimate suggests that state funds may have accounted for as much as 14% of university research funding during 1935-36 (National Resources Planning Board, 1942: 178). Moreover, the contribution of state governments to non-agricultural university research appears from these data to have exceeded the federal contribution, in sharp contrast to the postwar period. The modest role of the federal government in financing US R&D during the 1930s changed radically as a result of the political events of the next 20 years.

The transformation of the US innovation system, 1945-1989

The global conflict of 1939-1945 transformed the structure of R&D throughout the industrial economies. In few if any other industrial economies, however, was this transformation as dramatic as in the United States. The structure of the pre-1940 US R&D system resembled those of other leading industrial economies of the era, such as the United Kingdom, Germany, and France: industry was a significant funder and performer of R&D, and central government funding of R&D was modest. But the postwar US R&D system differed from those of other industrial economies in at least three aspects: 1. US antitrust policy during the postwar period was unusually stringent; 2. small, new firms played an important role in the commercialization of new technologies, especially in information technology;6 and 3. defense-related R&D funding and procurement exercised a pervasive influence in the high-technology sectors of the US economy.

A central characteristic of the institutional transformation of the US national innovation system during this period was increased federal support for R&D, most of which was defense-related. Defense-related R&D spending accounted for more than 80% of total federal R&D spending for much of the 1950s, and rarely has dropped below 50% of federal R&D expenditure during the entire 1949-2005 period (figure 1; data from US Office of Management and Budget, 2005). Since federal R&D spending accounted for more than 50% of total national R&D spending during 1953-78 (data for overall national R&D investment are available only after 1952), and only dropped below 40% in 1991 (its postwar low point of 25% appeared in 2000, as Figure 2 shows; data from National Science Board, 2006), the significance of the federal government’s defense-related R&D investment is obvious—in some years during the postwar period (e.g., the late 1950s and early 1960s), public defense-related R&D investment accounted for nearly one-half of total national R&D spending.

Figure 1. Federal and Nonfederally funded R&D, 1953-2002

Figure 2. Defense & Nondefense share of total federal gov’t R&D outlays, 1949-2005

Defense-related R&D programs affected innovation throughout the postwar US economy. Much of the “R&D infrastructure” of the postwar economy, including large research facilities in industry, government, or academia, was built with funding from defense-related R&D programs. In addition, defense-related funding for academic research in fields ranging from computer science to oceanography supported the training of thousands of scientists and engineers. A second important channel of influence was associated with technological “spinoffs” — technological advances developed for defense-related applications that found large markets in the civilian economy. Such spinoffs proved to be particularly significant in aerospace and information technology.6

A third important channel through which defense-related spending on new technologies advanced civilian technological applications, aiding the exploitation of technological “spinoffs”, was procurement. Postwar defense-related R&D programs typically were complemented by substantial purchases of new technologies. The US military services, whose procurement requirements typically emphasized performance above all other characteristics (including cost), played a particularly important role during the post-1945 period as a “lead purchaser,” placing large orders for early versions of new technologies. These procurement orders enabled suppliers of products such as transistors or integrated circuits to reduce the prices of their products and improve their reliability and functionality.7 Government procurement allowed innovators to benefit from production-related learning and cost reductions by expanding output of early versions of a new technology. Reductions in production costs led to lower prices for the technologies, by opening up civilian markets, which typically are more price-sensitive.

Examples of technological “spinoffs” from defense-related R&D spending in the postwar United States include the jet engine and swept-wing airframe that transformed the postwar US commercial aircraft industry. Major advances in computer networking and computer memory technologies, which found rapid applications in civilian as well as military programs, also trace their origins to defense-supported R&D programs. Defense-related procurement was particularly important in the postwar US information technology industry. In other areas, however, such as numerically controlled machine tools, defense-related demand for applications of novel technologies had detrimental effects on the commercial fortunes of US machine tool firms (Mazzoleni, 1999; Stowsky, 1992). And the light-water nuclear reactor technologies that were first developed for military applications proved to be poorly adapted to the civilian sector (Cowan, 1990).

The “spinoff” and “procurement” channels of interaction were most significant when defense and civilian requirements for new technologies overlapped significantly and/or when defense-related demand accounted for a large share of total demand for a new technology. In both aerospace and information technology, the economic and technological significance of military-civilian spinoffs appear to have declined as a result of growing divergence in the technological requirements of military and civilian products, as well as the growth of civilian markets for these products. Moreover, in some cases, such as information technology, the influence of defense applications on the overall direction of technical development not only declined by the 1990s; defense technologies in some areas lagged behind those in the civilian sector, reflecting the reduced influence of defense-related demand and R&D investment on the innovative activities of private firms.

Although defense-related R&D programs typically are dominated by spending on “development,” rather than “research, the sheer size of the overall investment of public funds meant that government defense-related R&D supported academic research in a diverse array of disciplines in the physical sciences and engineering. But federal R&D funding in the bio-medical sciences, which was allocated largely to research, also grew substantially during the post-1945 period. Although the primary federal funder of biomedical research, the National Institute of Health (NIH), was established in 1930, its extramural research program received significant support only after the founding in 1937 of the National Cancer Institute, the first of 28 research institutes within the NIH (Swain, 1962) and during the late 1940s, NIH’s extramural research programs began to grow more rapidly.8 By 1970, NIH funding of academic research amounted to $2 billion (in 2000 dollars), which had grown to more than $13 billion by 2009.

Rapid growth in the NIH budget, along with slower growth in defense-related R&D after 1970, shifted the disciplinary composition of federally funded research away from the physical sciences and engineering and toward biomedical research. Growth in federally funded biomedical R&D has been more than matched by growth in privately funded R&D investment in the US pharmaceuticals industry since 1990. By the early 21st century, federally funded R&D spending accounted for less than 40% of overall R&D spending in this sector.9 The NIH now supports half of all federal non-defense R&D and over 60% of federally funded research in American universities.10

NIH support of academic research contributed to the scientific advances in molecular biology and related fields that gave rise to the biotechnology industry during the 1970s and 1980s. Scientific advances at such universities as Columbia, Stanford, and the University of California at San Francisco held out considerable potential for applications in pharmaceuticals and related industries. All three of these universities, as well as others, became important “incubators” for new firms, and increasingly patented faculty discoveries. Even before the passage of the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, important patents had been filed on behalf of these three universities, and university licensing in biomedical fields grew rapidly during the 1980s and 1990s (See Mowery et al., 2004).

In contrast to federal investments in IT, federal R&D policy in the biomedical sector did not combine federal procurement-related “demand-pull” with its large investments in research. But the dominance of third-party payment (from both public and private sources) for the majority of US healthcare meant that patients and doctors alike were more responsive to performance than to price. As a result, new technologies tended to command a higher price premium in the United States biomedical market than in other industrial economies, where public insurance systems often limited prices and margins. These incentives to adopt and apply new technologies quickly may well have influenced the commercial exploitation by US pharmaceutical, medical device, and biotechnology firms of the knowledge and techniques produced by NIH R&D investments.

As I noted earlier, an internationally unique characteristic of the US national innovation system that dates back to the late 19th century has been the unusually stringent character of US antitrust policy, which exerted great influence on the early R&D strategies of many leading US industrial firms. Antitrust policy continued to affect the development of industrial R&D during the postwar period. US antitrust policy during the 1950s and 1960s made it more difficult for large US firms to acquire firms in “related” technologies or industries, and increased their reliance on intra-firm sources for new technologies (see Fligstein, 1990). In the case of Du Pont, the use of the central laboratory and Development Department to seek technologies from external sources was ruled out by senior management as a result of perceived antitrust restrictions on acquisitions in related industries. As a result, internal discovery (rather than development) of new products became paramount (Hounshell and Smith, 1988 emphasize the firm’s postwar expansion in R&D and its search for “new nylons”11), in contrast to the firm’s R&D strategy before World War II. The inward focus of Du Pont research appears to have impaired the firm’s postwar innovative performance, even as its central corporate research laboratory gained a sterling reputation within the global scientific community.

In other US firms, senior managers sought to maintain growth through the acquisition of firms in unrelated lines of business, creating conglomerate firms with few if any technological links among products and processes. Chandler (1990) and others (e.g., Ravenscraft and Scherer, 1987; Fligstein, 1990) argue that diversification weakened senior management understanding of and commitment to the development of the technologies that historically had been essential to the competitive success, eroding the quality and consistency of decision-making on technology-related issues.12

Another novel characteristic of the US national innovation system during the 1945-90 period — one that contrasted with the pre-1940 period –was the prominence of new firms in commercializing new technologies. In industries that effectively did not exist before 1940, such as computers, semiconductors, and biotechnology, new firms played important roles in the commercialization of innovations. These postwar US industries differed from their counterparts in Japan and most Western European economies, where established electronics and pharmaceuticals firms retained dominant roles in the commercialization of these technologies.

Several factors contributed to the importance of new firms in the postwar US innovation system. The large basic research establishments in universities, government, and a number of private firms served as “incubators” for the development of innovations that “walked out the door” with individuals who established firms to commercialize them. Although Klepper (2009) argues that a similar pattern of entrepreneurial exit and establishment of new firms within the same geographic region also characterized the US automobile industry in the early 20th century, the evolution of the postwar US biotechnology, microelectronics and computer industries was heavily affected by such new-firm “spinoffs” from established firms. Indeed, high levels of labor mobility within regional agglomerations of high-technology firms served as an important channel for technology diffusion and as a magnet for other firms in related industries to locate in these areas. Such labor mobility also aided in the transfer of knowledge and know-how within many of these nascent high-technology industries.13 The importance of new firms in commercializing postwar innovations in these new industries in the postwar US economy also relied on the extension to much smaller firms of the equity-based system of industrial finance that distinguished the US economy from those of Germany and Japan.

Along with other industrial economies, the United States shifted from an economy whose performance was based on the exploitation of domestic natural resources, including agricultural resources, to a “knowledge-based economy” during the 20th century. This transition took decades, but it also was characterized by a number of phenomena widely cited as hallmarks of 21st-century innovation. “Open innovation,” for example, in which large corporations utilize intra-firm capabilities to scan the technological horizon for potential acquisitions of new technologies, accurately describes the strategies of many of the large US corporate pioneers of in-house R&D during the early 20th century. Their acquisitions of technologies from external sources also relied on the operation of a market for intellectual property that was widespread during the early decades of the 20th century, although its importance was subsequently supplanted by the in-house technology development activities of large firms.

This brief survey also highlights the close interaction among technological, policy, and institutional influences within the evolution of the US national innovation system. The discussion underscores the linkages between the processes of technological innovation and adoption that are essential to economic growth in all industrial economies. Much of the economic influence of post-1945 federal R&D spending, for example, flowed from the effects of public policy on both support for the development of new technologies and support for their rapid adoption. Moreover, in fields such as information technology, the widespread adoption by US users of such innovations as desktop computers and computer networking created a vast domestic platform that supported user-led innovation. For this “general purpose technology” in particular, innovation and adoption interacted and accelerated one another. Public policies to address future technological challenges such as global climate change or public health must take into account the importance of consistency and support for both technological innovation and adoption.

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1 “These new turn-of-the-century achievements may be thought of as the confluence of two technological streams: the ongoing advance of mechanical and metalworking skills and performance, focused on the high-volume production of standardized commodities; and the process of exploring, developing, and utilizing the mineral resource base of the national economy.

2 The research facilities of AT&T were instrumental in the procurement of the “triode” from independent inventor Lee de Forest, and advised senior corporate management on their decision to obtain loading-coil technology from Pupin (Reich, 1985). General Electric’s research operations monitored foreign technological advances in lamp filaments and the inventive activities of outside firms or individuals, and pursued patent rights to innovations developed all over the world (Reich, 1985: 61). The Standard Oil Company of New Jersey established its Development Department precisely to carry out development of technologies obtained from other sources, rather than for original research (Gibb and Knowlton, 1956: 525). Alcoa’s R&D operations also closely monitored and frequently purchased process innovations from external sources (Graham and Pruitt, 1990: 145-147).

3 See Stigler (1968). The Supreme Court ruled in the Trans Missouri Association case in 1898 and the Addyston Pipe case in 1899 that the Sherman Act outlawed all agreements among firms on prices or market sharing. Data in Thorelli (1954) and Lamoreaux (1985) indicate an increase in merger activity between the 1895-1898 and 1899-1902 periods. Lamoreaux (1985) argues that other factors, including the increasing capital-intensity of production technologies and the resulting rise in fixed costs, were more important influences on the US merger wave, but her account (p. 109) also acknowledges the importance of the Sherman Act in the peak of the merger wave. Lamoreaux also emphasizes the incentives created by tighter Sherman Act enforcement after 1904 for firms to pursue alternatives to merger or cartelization as strategies for attaining or preserving market power.

4 These technology-acquisition strategies built on a domestic market for intellectual property that grew substantially during the 1880-1920 period. According to Lamoreaux and Sokoloff (1999), the development of a national market for intellectual property enabled independent inventors to specialize and thereby enhanced their productivity and the overall innovative performance of the US economy during this period. By the early 20th century, however, the increased costs of inventive activity and greater demand for formal scientific and engineering training led to the supplanting of independent by corporate inventors (Lamoreaux and Sokoloff, 2005).

5 Hounshell and Smith (1988: 298) report that 46 of the 176 Ph.D.s overseen by Carl Marvel, longtime professor in the University of Illinois chemistry department, went to work for one firm, Du Pont. According to Thackray (1982: 221), 65% of the 184 Ph.D.s overseen by Professor Roger Adams of the University of Illinois during 1918-58 went directly into industrial employment. In 1940, 30 of the 46 Ph.D.s produced by the University of Illinois chemistry department were first employed in industry.

6 Chandler and Hikino (1997) argue that established firms dominated the commercialization of new technologies in most sectors of the postwar US economy, with the significant exception of “…electronic data-processing technologies, based on the transistor and integrated circuit…” (p. 33).

7 New technologies undergo a prolonged period of “debugging”, performance and reliability improvement, cost reduction, and learning on the part of users and producers about applications and maintenance (Mowery and Rosenberg, 1999). The pace and pattern of such progressive improvement affect the rate of adoption, and the rate of adoption in turn affects the development of these innovations.

8 A substantial majority (80%) of the annual research budget of the NIH supports research conducted in laboratories at universities, generally in medical schools.

9 The US Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association estimated that foreign and US pharmaceuticals firms invested more than $26 billion in R&D in the United States in 2002, substantially above the $16 billion R&D investment by the National Institute of Health in the same year (See Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association, 2003, for both estimates).

10 National Science Foundation/Division of Science Resources Statistics, Survey of Research and Development Expenditures at Universities and Colleges, FY 2006. http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf08300/pdf/nsf08300.pdf

11 Hounshell and Smith (1988) and Mueller (1962) both argue that discovery and development of nylon, one of Du Pont’s most commercially successful innovations, was in fact atypical of the firm’s pre-1940 R&D strategy, which bore more than a passing resemblance to “open innovation.” Rather than being developed to the point of commercialization following its acquisition by Du Pont, nylon was based on the basic research of Carothers within Du Pont’s central corporate research facilities. The successful development of nylon from basic research through to commercialization nevertheless exerted a strong influence on Du Pont’s postwar R&D strategy, not least because of the fact that many senior Du Pont executives had direct experience with the nylon project. Hounshell (1992) argues that Du Pont had far less success in employing the “lessons of nylon” to manage such costly postwar synthetic fiber innovations as Delrin.

12 Graham’s discussion (1986) of the failure of RCA to commercialize its videodisk technology in the face of the firm’s extensive diversification into such unrelated industries as automobile rental agencies and frozen food is an illustrative analysis of the failures of technology management that accompanied the conglomerate-diversification strategies of many US firms in the 1960s and 1970s.

13 Discussing the development of laser technology, Bromberg (1991) highlights the importance of linkages among research funders and performers within the United States during the 1950s and 1960s that in turn were based on researcher mobility: “Academic scientists were linked to industrial scientists through the consultancies that university professors held in large and small firms, through the industrial sponsorship of university fellowships, and through the placement of university graduates and postdoctoral fellows in industry. They were linked by joint projects, of which a major example here is the Townes-Schawlow paper of [sic] optical masers, and through sabbaticals that academics took in industry and industrial scientists took in universities. Academic scientists were linked with the Department of Defense R&D groups, and with other government agencies through tours of duty in research organizations such as the Institute for Defense Analyses, through work at DoD-funded laboratories such as the Columbia Radiation Laboratory or the MIT Research laboratory for Electronics, and through government study groups and consultancies. They were also linked by the fact that so much of their research was supported by the Department of Defense and NASA.” (Bromberg, 1991: 224).

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U.S.-China technology competition

The scale and speed of China’s technological advancements in recent years have raised concerns in Washington and elsewhere over the implications for the United States’ overall economic competitiveness and its national security, as well as the impact on liberal values and good governance globally. There also has been growing concern about the fragmentation of the global technology sector, including the rise of divergent standards and norms, as the Chinese technology market increasingly decouples from those of the United States and the West more broadly.

To evaluate the merits of these concerns and identify potential policy remedies to them, Ryan Hass, Patricia M. Kim, and Emilie Kimball , the co-leads of the Brookings Foreign Policy project “ Global China: Assessing China’s Growing Role in the World ,” convened 10 additional Brookings scholars – Jessica Brandt, David Dollar, Cameron F. Kerry, Aaron Klein, Joshua P. Meltzer, Chris Meserole, Amy J. Nelson, Pavneet Singh, Melanie W. Sisson, and Thomas Wright – for a written exchange on the role of technology in U.S.-China competition. These experts, drawn from a range of disciplines, were asked to offer their best judgments on the implications of China’s growing technological capabilities and steps the United States could take to strengthen its own technological competitiveness and protect its values. The following are a few key takeaways from their exchange:

• While the policy prescriptions varied by expert and subject matter, one consistent thread was that doing more of the same would not suffice for the United States to protect its interests and values. Sustaining the status quo is neither tenable nor attractive as a policy objective, and sweeping measures are necessary to ensure better outcomes in all aspects of U.S.-China competition in technology.
• An open and competitive economic system maximizes global innovation. There is an important and unresolved challenge in delineating where to draw boundaries around key technologies that must be protected for national security reasons. This is not a unidirectional exercise. Both the United States and China are taking measures to guard against leakage of sensitive technologies.
• One of America’s asymmetric advantages in technological competition is its ability to develop coalitional approaches for accelerating innovation.
• China’s technological investments are guided by strategic clarity on objectives, including strengthening social control, expanding international influence, and enhancing military capabilities. The United States does not currently maintain the same level of clarity on its own technological priorities. It should work with like-minded partners to examine how technology can be employed to uphold shared values and international rules and norms.
• The United States is living through a paradigm shift in how technology is financed and developed. The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) no longer drives innovation priorities through focused research and development funding. Now, many of the breakthroughs are driven by the private sector and shaped by consumer preferences. The U.S. government needs to build partnerships with the private sector, academia, and non-governmental organizations to improve its ability to deliver technological solutions to key challenges. It should also work with international partners to coordinate on export control, standard-setting, and directing investments toward common strategic objectives.
• China is surging forward in its development and export of technologies that enable surveillance and repression. Unless the United States and its partners develop alternatives by aiding developing countries in building their digital infrastructure; participate more actively in standards-setting bodies; and lead by example to advance transparency and privacy norms, they could inherit a future where technology and norms around the world are oriented toward China’s preferences and practices.
• Open digital environments offer both strategic advantages and create vulnerabilities for the United States and its democratic partners, such as susceptibility to disinformation. In order to mitigate security risks without undermining their values, democratic governments should resist the temptation to respond to autocracies in kind, engage in careful risk assessments and balanced mitigation efforts, and support the free flow of information.

TECHNOLOGY AND THE ECONOMY

Will the global technology sector tend toward bifurcation or fragmentation, and if so, how might that process vary by subsector? Is it in America’s interests to seek to prevent bifurcation or fragmentation of the global technology sector? Is it possible at this stage for the United States to alter these trendlines?

DAVID DOLLAR: Technological innovation is spurred by open trade and investment policies. Open policies lead to large markets, competition among firms, and exchanges of products and people. In general, it is not the firms of only one leading country that create technologies and earn returns from innovation. There are a host of countries with successful, high-tech firms, typically in different niche areas. Also, much of the benefit of innovation ends up going to consumers, worldwide, through better products and lower prices. So to maximize global innovation we would want to have an open, competitive economic system.

Intellectual property rights (IPR) protection is one of the foundations of an open market economy.

Intellectual property rights (IPR) protection is one of the foundations of an open market economy. These rights ensure that innovators earn substantial returns on their ideas. IPR protection, however, is not designed to be perfect and permanent. That would create monopolies that limit the benefits of innovation. The system in the U.S. is designed to provide temporary monopoly. Furthermore, there is a lot of scope for legal copies of new technologies, which lead to rapid diffusion of the benefits of new ideas to consumers. Historically, less developed economies have had weaker IPR protection and have “borrowed” technologies from the frontier firms. All of the economies that have reached a high level of development so far have improved IPR protection along the way. A key question of debate is whether China is following this trajectory and whether there are specific reforms in China’s IPR system that would enhance the country’s innovation as well as global innovation. 

Another consideration with China is that it is potentially a security threat to the United States. An open innovation system may inadvertently build up China’s capability in technologies that have military application. The practical question here is whether the U.S. can distinguish sensitive from less-sensitive technologies and wall off the sensitive areas, while otherwise maintaining an open innovation system. Large-scale decoupling of trade, investment, and research will lead to less innovation and slower growth of real living standards for Americans.

AARON KLEIN: Payments is an example of a technology where Chinese firms innovated creating a new system using QR codes and smartphones powered by big tech companies instead of the Western system of plastic cards and magnetic stripe-reading machines running through big banks. Rather than exporting this new system in a way similar to what other technological leaders have done, China appears to be making a U-turn . China’s government has cracked down on big tech such as Alibaba (home of AliPay) and is instead promoting a new central bank digital currency to facilitate payments through commercial banks.

China’s U-turn is likely in America’s best interest. America’s global dominance of the payment system has been increasingly used to promote governmental interests through sanctions and other levers of foreign policy. If Chinese tech companies were to outcompete America’s payment system then America would lose this policy lever. Privacy and data concerns are also intertwined in control and operation of the retail payment system. However, if China’s digital yuan does take off as a global alternative this could result in a similar loss. In my opinion that is less likely for a host of reasons, not the least of which is that private tech firms tend to out-innovate central banks in designing new technology and it is far more obvious to consumers and foreign governments who is in ultimate control of data with a central bank digital currency as compared to a payment network run by non-governmental Chinese companies.

JOSHUA P. MELTZER: What is meant by bifurcation or fragmentation of the global technology sector? From the perspective of the global internet and opportunities for data flows, there is no bifurcation of the internet protocols. However, it is true that citizens and businesses in China are seeing and engaging with different content, information, and businesses. From this perspective, there is already a bifurcation at the content level between China and the rest of the world (Russia, North Korea, Iran, and some others are also heading in this direction). The reality today is that much of the information, apps, and websites available outside of China are not available inside of China — including Google, Twitter, Facebook, features of Amazon Web Services, Western media including for instance the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and any information that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) deems sensitive. This control over the internet — the so-called Great Firewall — is well-known and understood. 

Another form of technology bifurcation is happening at the market or economic level as the Chinese technology market becomes increasingly separate from those of the U.S. and the West broadly. This is happening as a result of the increasing array of forces pushing towards some level of economic disengagement between the U.S. and China, with a focus on technology specifically. Economic bifurcation will also happen as China seeks to reduce its dependence on U.S. technology, and aims at much greater self-sufficiency in technology from semiconductors to artificial intelligence (AI). Finally, technology bifurcation could also happen at the rules and regulatory level. This is also underway as China’s recently passed data privacy law and data security law further limit cross-border data flows. This regulation-driven bifurcation is also likely as China pushes its own technology standards in standards bodies and along the Digital Silk Road , potentially reducing interoperability in technology between China — and countries oriented to the Chinese market — and the U.S. and the West broadly.

The U.S. should seek to reduce risk of bifurcation where possible, consistent with economic and national security needs.

All of these outcomes are negative for the U.S. tech sector, and they are certainly also negative for the Chinese tech sector. For instance, many U.S. tech companies have been shut out of or have left the Chinese market. And we are now seeing the U.S. close its market to Chinese tech companies. A smaller global market for tech companies means less sales, less research and development (R&D), and less innovation.   

The U.S. should seek to reduce risk of bifurcation where possible, consistent with economic and national security needs. The economic costs of bifurcation should also be managed by focusing on championing markets — including India — that are increasingly open, integrated, dynamic, and rules-based. Success here can help offset the economic and broader social/political costs of bifurcation with China, support U.S. innovation and growth, and strengthen the United States and its allies in their competition with China.

DOLLAR: There are a number of common threads in the three comments in this section. First, a certain amount of technology bifurcation is already occurring because of actions from both the Chinese government and the U.S. government. Second, there will be some cost in terms of global innovation from this bifurcation and diminished interaction internationally among firms, universities, researchers, and students. Third, from a national security point of view, bifurcation in sensitive areas is in the U.S. national interest. Fourth, trying to ring-fence sensitive areas while otherwise welcoming an open innovation system is very hard in practice. There is a good chance that we will err on the side of caution and close off opportunities that would have led to greater innovation. Because China’s economy is more closed than ours in terms of investment, trade, and data exchange, it will be tempting to “reciprocate” China’s industrial policy. In my view this would be a mistake because openness has served the U.S. economy well, especially the movement of people and information. 

TECHNOLOGY AND SECURITY

How might China respond to coalitional approaches among the U.S. and its partners to strengthen their technological and military competitiveness vis-à-vis China? What opportunities are there for the U.S. to deepen both security and technical coordination with other partners, and what would be the best platforms for it to do so?

CHRIS MESEROLE: As the U.S. and its partners seek to counter China’s rise by investing in new coalitions and reinvigorating old ones, Beijing may seek to explore similar approaches of its own — but find its options lacking. The most natural move would be for China to draw closer to Russia, but there are limits to how closely Moscow and Beijing will be able to work together, particularly if that work involves sensitive military technologies. The Xi Jinping regime may also be inclined to draw on its partners in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), but the BRI hasn’t led to the kind of broad strategic realignment its authors may have intended, and nor is it clear which BRI countries would have both the incentive and knowledge base to meaningfully advance Beijing’s tech ambitions. 

What will get far less attention is that Taiwan represents the greatest point of strategic vulnerability for the U.S. and its partners in terms of tech competition.

Instead, China will likely seek to counter the coalitional approach of the U.S. and its partners by testing U.S. resolve on Taiwan. Most of the commentary on Taiwan will focus on its importance to Xi’s vision of national rejuvenation, particularly now that Xi has brought Tibet and Hong Kong much closer into Beijing’s orbit. But what will get far less attention is that Taiwan represents the greatest point of strategic vulnerability for the U.S. and its partners in terms of tech competition. The concentration of semiconductor manufacturing capacity in Taiwan — in terms of both the expertise and equipment housed on the island — may afford Taipei a “ Silicon shield ” for now, but the fact that its Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) fabrication plants are so central to the world’s digital economy also represents a point of leverage for Beijing. The specter of their capture or destruction, and the profound effect that either scenario would have on global trade, is something any U.S. or coalitional approach to tech competition has to take into account.

The obvious counter to Beijing’s saber-rattling over Taiwan, of course, is to increase semiconductor manufacturing capacity outside the region, far beyond the range of Chinese munitions. Fortunately, the U.S. has already started to make moves in that direction, with TSMC and Samsung recently announcing major new fabrication plants in Arizona and Texas , respectively. Yet ideally greater semiconductor capacity and expertise would not just come to the U.S., but to its allies and partners too.

MELANIE W. SISSON: China and the United States are not in competition over or for technology. Rather, technology infuses the competition between the United States and China. Unless governments make considerable isolationist and protectionist changes to their economic policies, the operation of the global economy will ensure that technology innovations don’t stay local but rather travel, and quite quickly. What will matter for geopolitical competition over the next 10 to 50 years, therefore, is not where technology innovation happens, but rather how it is used and for what purposes.

Compared to the U.S. and its allies, China has considerable clarity on each of those points. Beijing has identified and deployed applications of emerging technologies that are useful to its efforts to control citizens and to strengthen the CCP; it has expanded its regional and global influence by embedding digital infrastructure and connectivity agreements in its Belt and Road Initiative; and it has focused on aligning the acquisition and integration of technology into new information-driven military concepts and doctrines. It is far from apparent that any strategy that the United States pursues for purposes of fostering technology innovation, whether independently or in coalition, provides reason for China to adjust course in any of these areas.

The United States and like-minded partners need to match China’s strategic clarity. More precisely, they need to articulate how and for what purposes they will seek to use emerging technologies — and then put their efforts and money where their mouths are. They’ll need to begin by identifying the rules of today’s international order that cannot be compromised, and then assessing how emerging technologies can be applied to strengthen and to enforce them. 

MESEROLE: I like the idea of working backwards from existing international order with respect to technology — far too many tech debates miss the forest for the trees, and lose sight of broader strategic goals. How would you see that approach playing out for the United States and its allies? 

SISSON: Consider the international prohibition against territorial aggression. It might be bolstered by technologies that enhance intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance to deter surprise attack and faits accompli. Global human rights might be advanced by applying technologies to monitor the seas for human trafficking, and ecological conservation and economic security might be enhanced by technologies that aid in tracking and combating illegal fishing. And reducing the transnational risks and costs of ransoming, theft, and infrastructure intrusions achieved through cyberspace will require investment in the very tools and technologies that create those same risks and costs.

In short, when it comes to technology the United States is facing the most difficult of tasks in all of international politics: prioritization and coordination. The competition properly engaged isn’t about spurring technology innovation for its own sake, it’s about creating a virtuous cycle: implementing policies that use, and therefore incentivize the development of, technologies to further international security and generate widespread prosperity without demanding a loss of sovereign self-determination and individual agency in return.  

AMY J. NELSON: What does it mean for the U.S. and China to be in technology competition? Clearly the two countries are competing — not for access to new technology, but for primacy or the ability to “get there first.” Achieving technological superiority enables the offsetting capabilities each side seeks in the military sphere. 

“Minilaterals” like the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) between the U.S., Australia, India, and Japan pose a threat to China insofar as technology-innovation cooperation is indicative of intentions surrounding military cooperation and stands to increase the pace at which the U.S. may innovate. However, much of what Quad countries, for example, stand to gain from technology cooperation is largely economic. China may continue to look for any number of opportunities to undermine minilateral or bilateral relationships, particularly where cooperation on the innovation and production of dual-use technologies is concerned, certainly if Quad-level cooperation appears defense-oriented. For this reason, the U.S. should anticipate, prepare, and clearly message its intentions about cooperation directly to its allies (and indirectly to China). 

An important point to remember is that national models of innovation, the way in which technology is procured by a state, can be a powerful indicator of the potential for long-term cooperation. For example, the U.S. model for innovation is characterized by the quest for superiority through the monopolization of military innovation. It follows that the U.S. approach to the export or sale of sensitive military and dual-use items is implicitly based on the assumption that the United States has a monopoly on technology innovation (which yields superiority) and “helps” allies by exporting (selling) them sensitive items. India, however, has increasingly sought to co-develop or co-produce military technologies in lieu of purchasing them outright, and has been simultaneously looking to shore up/expand/solidify its defense industrial base for some time now. Successful long-term technology cooperation between the U.S. and India must, therefore, somehow accommodate both states’ objectives in this realm.

Furthermore, though China served as the four Quad countries’ unifying concern, their public statements support the notion that each country views the purpose of the partnership differently and seeks diverging benefits. Though scholars have argued that “each of the Quad nations has comparative advantages in developing cutting edge technologies,” national models tend to reveal the full scope of compatibilities and conflicts that may facilitate or hinder progress in the long run. As technology policy and foreign policy continue to meld, an understanding of the Quad countries’ preexisting partnerships and national models will go far for the U.S. in anticipating and preparing for future cooperation and inevitable obstacles. 

MESEROLE: Amy makes a great point about tech primacy. Of course, a core assumption about the importance of technological superiority is that the country with the better technology will also be the country with the better military. Yet whether that is true will hinge on each country’s ability to operationalize new technologies effectively. What do we know about how tech competition is informing U.S. and Chinese operational concepts? 

SISSON: In the military domain China has been implementing an information-based strategy that will enable it to conduct what is now being called “intelligentized warfare.” In short, China has designed its military strategy to use information technologies both to enable its own military operations and, importantly, to disable those of its adversaries. China therefore has invested heavily in the C4ISR (Command, Control, Communications, Computers (C4) Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance) networks that ingest, process, and deliver large volumes of data for use in wartime operations and decisionmaking, and has grown the industrial sectors that develop them.

The United States of course also is integrating emerging technologies into its operational concepts, especially for use in lethal attacks on opposing forces, but has struggled to develop an effective strategy for doing so. The Department of Defense continues to operate primarily on legacy information technology architecture that isn’t suited to modern advanced computing, and it faces considerable challenges in accessing the sources of technological innovation in the commercial marketplace. The overall impression — albeit perhaps a bit exaggerated in both directions — is that while China is busily implementing a technology-driven defense strategy, the United States is struggling to implement defense-strategy-driven technologies.  

PAVNEET SINGH: As the U.S. considers other partners in the technology competition with China, we shouldn’t restrict the conversation simply to our international partners alone.

We are living through a paradigm shift in how technology is financed, developed, and deployed. Where once defense-related R&D accounted for 36% of global research and development dollars, today that number is 3.1%. In the previous era, the DOD combined its vast technical resources and purchasing power to shape technical specifications and standards for resulting technologies, which resulted in breakthrough technologies like night vision and stealth aircraft. Today, however, the center of gravity is now in the private sector. Commercial enterprises account for a majority of technology R&D, such that consumers, through their purchasing preferences, now guide how technology should evolve. 

The shift from public to private-sector investment has far-reaching consequences for U.S. national security and economic competitiveness. I won’t wade into the “industrial policy” debate here, but at a minimum, the U.S. government will need to develop a more coherent approach to working with new partners in the private sector, academia, and non-government organizations to improve its comprehension of technology market trends. Being able to ingest information — such as what is being developed, who is developing it, what the supply chain looks like, how the product or service is financed, and how it is being used in the civilian and military domains — and then make informed decisions on that information has both practical and security importance. 

In order to be a productive partner, the government will need to exercise regulatory and policy tools that govern high technology development and trade, such as the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) and export controls, with far more precision and intentionality than before. It will have to be more creative with non-traditional national security policy tools such as tax, trade, and environmental policy — as those are key enablers to the innovation ecosystem. And in those technology domains where supply chains are less resilient or non-existent, the government will need to develop prudent strategies to provide non-dilutive capital or purchasing commitments to lever-up private sector activities in areas such as microelectronics, as Chris mentions above.

Of course, all of this activity is extensible to our international partners. Synchronizing investment screens and export controls will be less of a stretch. But developing coordinated R&D and commercial investment activities, procurement activities, and developing defensible trade policies in dual-use technology sectors will involve more friction given long-standing World Trade Organization (WTO) commitments, a high degree of existing technology integration with China, and a general unfamiliarity in government circles for these types of interventions. Before focusing on AUKUS (the new U.S.-U.K.-Australia security pact) or the Quad, the U.S. has to identify the right partners domestically and build the right structures for engagement. Simultaneously, as Melanie points out, we need to set the right strategic objectives. Building out international groupings from that foundation will prove to be more efficient and productive. 

One of the key questions for U.S. policy is how Washington should seek to organize democracies to cooperate on technology.

THOMAS WRIGHT: Great conversation so far. One of the key questions for U.S. policy is how Washington should seek to organize democracies to cooperate on technology. Some have argued that the Biden administration should create an alliance of techno-democracies. I have been working on a paper with our colleague Tanvi Madan that argues that this approach might be problematic for a number of reasons. It could mean that the alliance could only move at the pace of its slowest member. Democracies have different priorities with respect to technology. For instance, when it comes to export controls, some members of a D-10 or T-12 may have very little interest in certain technologies and may be wary of aggravating China in a way that could jeopardize other interests of theirs. Or cooperation could stall because some members link progress on one technology problem set with movement on another.

An alternative approach, which the Biden administration appears to be pursuing, is to create overlapping coalitions of like-minded governments — working bilaterally with the European Union, the Quad, AUKUS, and individual countries. This allows the United States to carefully tailor the agenda to reflect the priorities of the other party. For instance, the EU has a particular interest in data localization and privacy issues as well as regulating big tech. These individual dialogues are not about China per se — instead, they are about increasing international cooperation with like-minded partners on the rules of the road for new technologies. 

Beijing is likely to continue to use its enormous economic power to build asymmetrical ties to companies and countries that serve its interests but it will struggle to provide an alternative to the U.S. model of international cooperation on technology. It would have more levers it could pull to slow down a formal alliance but it will find it difficult to undermine a more diffused approach. 

TECHNOLOGY AND VALUES

How will Chinese technology exports and standards impact liberal values and good governance outside of China? What regulatory steps would be most impactful for democratic governments to take to strengthen the likelihood that technological innovations are good for humanity and are not used to strengthen surveillance or abet repression?

MESEROLE: The conventional fear with Chinese technology exports is that Beijing isn’t just going to send its technology abroad, but its governance model too. To some extent that fear is misplaced: As our colleague Sheena Chestnut Greitens has shown , there’s little evidence that China sells its surveillance stack primarily to socialist or communist regimes. 

The real fear is that autocrats, as well as democratically-elected populist leaders, will increasingly build out the next generation of telecommunications infrastructure on Chinese hardware.

Yet Beijing doesn’t need to bundle Huawei routers with Xi Jinping Thought to undermine liberal values. The real fear is that autocrats, as well as democratically-elected populist leaders, will increasingly build out the next generation of telecommunications infrastructure on Chinese hardware. The more they do so, the more U.S. and European leaders will lose a point of leverage — it’s much easier to insist on governing telecommunications and surveillance technology in line with democratic values when you are the supplier of that technology. 

Put differently, the big problem with Chinese technology exports is the downward pressure it places on democratic principles like transparency and accountability, particularly when it comes to the governance of surveillance technologies like facial recognition. If democracies fail to provide compelling alternatives, we’re going to find ourselves in a race to the moral bottom.

SISSON: Chris is quite right that which governments states buy their technology from matters. Purchasing technology from countries committed to open societies and human rights is an opportunity to encourage the adoption of liberal principles. As Chris also notes, China does not currently seem to use technology exports and financing explicitly as a means of also exporting socialism, communism, or authoritarianism more generally. It is possible, however, that the effect will be a spread of illiberalism all the same.

In addition to concerns about how already-illiberal regimes might use Chinese technologies, there is a risk of catastrophic success in all recipient states. It is possible that near-term material effects — felt in economic growth, rising quality of life, and popular satisfaction — will make deals with China appealing for various governments to get into and very hard for them to get out of. Over time these political and economic dynamics might enhance China’s influence — in bilateral relationships and in overall global market share — and could habituate societies into technical standards that run counter to liberalism, such as built-in restrictions on transnational flows of information and the denial of privacy protections. The longer these conditions persist, the more entrenched and normalized they become, and the more readily they can be used by regimes interested in exercising social and political control.

The problem, however, isn’t just what China is doing — it’s also what liberal states aren’t doing. Neither the United States nor any other country or coalition has yet offered a model for aiding developing nations to gain access to basic, much less transformative, technologies on a scale that is competitive with what China has done since 2015 with its Digital Silk Road. The EU’s newly-announced pledge to increase funding for digital connectivity in the developing world with the Global Gateway strategy suggests that Europe now recognizes the need to demonstrate a commitment to global technology infrastructure and to compete with China to set the rules of that digital road, but more can be done. For example, the United States could increase and better coordinate its financial and technical assistance to middle-income and developing countries that are investing in digital infrastructure, and participate more actively in international standards-setting bodies.

China’s technology exports and financing are returning benefits in areas with previously unmet needs, in real time. So long as this model continues to do so in the absence of a compelling alternative from the United States and its partners, the hollower, if not more hypocritical, their criticisms of China’s practices will seem. 

NELSON: Overall, the concern about the diffusion of (potentially dual-use) technologies speaks to the pressing need to shore up or otherwise strengthen the global governance architecture — the system of regimes that provides guidance on and regulation for dual-use technologies ( the Australia Group , the Missile Technology Control Regime , the Nuclear Suppliers Group , and the Wassenaar Arrangement ), and the norms against proliferation they support. In recent years, China has increased its engagement with multilateral dialogues for these regimes, in part due to sustained international pressure, but is not a member of any of the regimes. China does maintain export controls it claims are consistent with regime guidance.

However, as newer technologies continue to evade controls that haven’t yet been sufficiently modernized to regulate them, global governance architecture continues to weaken. My view is that a multi-pronged approach that seeks to shore up existing regimes through more rapid control list modernization, which requires a greater degree of resources and international cooperation on horizon scanning and technology assessments than currently in place, combined with sustained pressure on China to continue to participate in the international order as a precondition to further shoring up its superpower status, could go a long way towards aligning regimes with values.

CAMERON F. KERRY: Freedom House in 2018 documented Chinese sales of intelligent surveillance systems to some 18 countries. In response, democratic countries can offer a coherent and consistent counterexample to China’s techno-authoritarianism and the U.S. should strengthen its leadership and diplomacy on norms of surveillance. Following the Edward Snowden leaks, the U.S. made a huge cultural change in transparency about its foreign intelligence surveillance and in extending rule-of-law and privacy protections for “U.S. persons” to people around the world — initiating a new international norm in a world in which surveillance of non-nationals has been fair game. We should reinforce this leadership by codifying these changes into law, and enlist allies to join in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) discussions about norms for lawful government access and access to foreign as well as domestic data. China’s privacy law for the commercial sector went into effect in November 2021; meanwhile, the U.S. still lacks a comprehensive privacy law to address what Shoshana Zuboff terms “ surveillance capitalism .” This glaring gap is an invitation for “what-aboutism” from China. The U.S. needs to join every other liberal democracy in adopting a basic privacy law.

The U.S. has also extended arms control measures to surveillance technologies, both in restricting exports of intrusive U.S. surveillance and technology and recently placing NSO, the Israeli maker of the Pegasus software used to tap iPhones, on the “entities list” with other vendors of surveillance technology to authoritarian governments. This is another area where the U.S. can work in the alliances that Amy names and in other forums to exert upward pressure.

JESSICA BRANDT: I think the point Chris makes — that there is relatively little correlation between the state of democracy in a country and the likelihood that it will adopt Chinese surveillance technology — is exactly what has me so concerned. And to Melanie’s point, I don’t believe that China seeks a world converted to authoritarianism, as much as one that is safe for its worldview.

How should the U.S. and its democratic partners respond to the Chinese government’s ability to operate freely in their open digital environments? What are some ways to mitigate security risks without undermining our values?

BRANDT: Even as they confer tremendous strategic advantages in the long run, open digital environments create vulnerabilities for the United States and its democratic partners in the short term. The Chinese government can inject itself into, and try to shape, domestic political discourse — at low cost, and with plausible deniability. It can use its cyber capabilities to surveil journalists and activists abroad in order to repress criticisms of China’s rights record while stealing intellectual property that gives China a boost in the technology competition. Beijing tightly controls its own information environment, which affords it a degree of immunity to information manipulation. And because authoritarian systems impose virtually no normative constraints on government deception, it can pursue these activities with relative impunity.

In order to mitigate security risks without undermining their values, democratic governments should leverage advantages of their own to push back in places most conducive to its success.

Democratic governments would do well to remember that Beijing deploys these asymmetric tactics as part of a deliberate strategy to exploit the openness of democratic systems. Responding in kind would enable Beijing to dictate the terms of the competition and almost certainly ensure that the contest plays out on terrain where the United States and its democratic partners are at a disadvantage. In order to mitigate security risks without undermining their values, democratic governments should leverage advantages of their own to push back in places most conducive to its success.

With respect to the information competition, this could entail taking the “ persistent engagement ” approach that the United States Cyber Command has adopted and carrying it into the information domain. That could mean deploying concerted campaigns, grounded in truthful messaging, to expose corruption and repression. It could also entail upholding freedom of information worldwide — not just because it is consistent with democratic principles, but because it puts Beijing in a defensive position, given its fragility to open information.

With respect to the technology competition, a strategy for success should include protecting critical technologies by strengthening CFIUS, combating intellectual property theft by imposing costs on companies and individuals committing economic espionage, and working with partners to implement export controls on technologies for surveillance, facial recognition, and genetic analysis.

KERRY: We already have a bifurcated internet. China’s Great Firewall and internal controls on internet use and technology have forked what was a global internet, as Josh Meltzer and David Dollar describe. Going forward, upholding freedom of information means ensuring that this forking does not end in broader fragmentation. 

That will require strengthening America’s digital policymaking and diplomacy broadly. This has begun through increased G-7 focus on digital issues , the EU-U.S. Trade and Technology Council , and UK-U.S. science and technology collaboration under the new Atlantic Charter issued in June 2021, and other forums. It needs to expand across a network of like-minded networks. The “overlapping coalitions” Tom Wright describes should be distributed and redundant, like the digital networks of the internet. The challenges of China, flows of trade and information, disinformation and other malicious content, supply chain integrity and security, and other digital issues transcend national boundaries and require coordinated international responses.

On the national security front, the U.S. should be very precise in targeting threats. Advanced microchips are strategically important, but not  every chip or device has strategic value amounting to “ emerging and foundational technologies .” Nor is every research collaboration an invitation to espionage, much less every researcher with a Chinese surname a spy. These and other situations will require careful and balanced assessments based on concrete risk. The message should be that the U.S. is concerned with specific policies and behavior of the Chinese government, not with China per se.

Such assessments will have to be made with eyes wide open. A little over 10 years ago, I exercised the power of the Commerce secretary to block Huawei and ZTE from participating in interoperability testing for U.S. public safety communications networks. That decision rested largely on the basis that these companies were likely to respond to tasking from the Chinese government or CCP. That likelihood is many times greater now given the direction China has taken since. Businesses, universities, and other non-governmental institutions have difficult moral, political, and business risk assessments to make about doing business with China. But these should be distinct from the strategic balance the government needs to strike.

About the Authors

Senior fellow – foreign policy, center for east asia policy studies, john l. thornton china center.

Ryan Hass is a senior fellow and the Michael H. Armacost Chair in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings, where he holds a joint appointment to the John L. Thornton China Center and the Center for East Asia Policy Studies. He is also the Chen-Fu and Cecilia Yen Koo Chair in Taiwan Studies. He was part of the inaugural class of David M. Rubenstein fellows at Brookings, and is a nonresident affiliated fellow in the Paul Tsai China Center at Yale Law School.  

Patricia M. Kim

David m. rubenstein fellow – foreign policy, center for east asia policy studies, john l. thornton china center.

Patricia M. Kim is a David M. Rubenstein Fellow at Brookings and holds a joint appointment to the John L. Thornton China Center and the Center for East Asia Policy Studies. She is an expert on Chinese foreign policy, U.S.-China relations, and regional security dynamics in East Asia. Kim is also a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center and has held fellowships at the Council on Foreign Relations, Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and the Princeton-Harvard China and the World Program.   

Emilie Kimball

Senior project manager and executive assistant to the vice president – foreign policy, the brookings institution.

Emilie Kimball is a senior project manager and executive assistant in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution. Prior to working at Brookings, she served as a staff officer on the U.S. National Security Council from 2015 to 2018, where she helped manage the national security decisionmaking process in the Executive Secretariat and assisted with presidential travel.  

Jessica Brandt

Policy director – artificial intelligence and emerging technology initiative.

Jessica Brandt is policy director for the Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology Initiative at the Brookings Institution and a fellow in the Foreign Policy program’s Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology. Her research interests and recent publications focus on foreign interference, disinformation, digital authoritarianism, and the implications of emerging technologies for liberal democracies.  

David Dollar

Senior fellow – foreign policy, global economy and development, john l. thornton china center.

David Dollar is a senior fellow in the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution and host of the Brookings trade podcast, Dollar & Sense. He is a leading expert on China’s economy and U.S.-China economic relations.  

Cameron F. Kerry

Ann r. and andrew h. tisch distinguished visiting fellow – governance studies, center for technology innovation.

Cameron F. Kerry is a global thought leader on privacy, artificial intelligence, and cross-border challenges in information technology. He joined Governance Studies and the Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings in December 2013 as the first Ann R. and Andrew H. Tisch Distinguished Visiting Fellow. after serving as general counsel and acting secretary in the U.S. Commerce Department.  

Aaron Klein

Senior fellow – economic studies.

Aaron Klein is a senior fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution, focused on financial technology and regulation, payments, macroeconomics, and infrastructure finance and policy. Prior to joining Brookings in 2016, he directed the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Financial Regulatory Reform Initiative.  

Joshua P. Meltzer

Senior fellow – global economy and development.

Joshua P. Meltzer is a senior fellow in the Global Economy and Development program at the Brookings Institution. At Brookings, Meltzer works on international trade law and policy issues with a focus on the World Trade Organization and large free trade agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Specific areas of focus include digital trade where he leads the Digital Economy and Trade Project. Meltzer also works on financing for sustainable infrastructure.  

Chris Meserole

Director of research – artificial intelligence and emerging technology initiative.

Chris Meserole is a fellow in Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution and director of research for the Brookings Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology Initiative. He is also an adjunct professor at Georgetown University.  

Amy J. Nelson

David m. rubenstein fellow – foreign policy, center for security, strategy, and technology.

Amy J. Nelson is a David M. Rubenstein Fellow in the Brookings Foreign Policy program with the Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology. Her research focuses on emerging, evolving, and disruptive technologies and their impact on proliferation, as well as improving the efficacy of arms control. She was previously a Robert Bosch Fellow in residence at the German Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin, Germany.  

Pavneet Singh

Nonresident fellow – foreign policy, center for security, strategy, and technology, artificial intelligence and emerging technology initiative.

Pavneet Singh is a nonresident fellow in the Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology as well as the Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology Initiative at Brookings. He is currently examining how machine learning software and advanced analytics can solve complex data challenges in industries ranging from financial services, healthcare, and oil and gas.  

Melanie W. Sisson

Fellow – foreign policy, center for security, strategy, and technology.

Melanie W. Sisson is a fellow in the Brookings Foreign Policy program’s Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology where she researches the use of the armed forces in international politics, U.S. national security strategy, and military applications of emerging technologies. Sisson’s current work focuses on U.S. Department of Defense integration of artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities into warfighting and enterprise operations.  

Thomas Wright

Director – center on the united states and europe.

Thomas Wright is the director of the Center on the United States and Europe and a senior fellow in the Project on International Order and Strategy at the Brookings Institution. He is also a contributing writer for The Atlantic and a nonresident fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy.  

Acknowledgments

Editorial: Ted Reinert

Design: Rachel Slattery

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Information Technology and the U.S. Workforce: Where Are We and Where Do We Go from Here? (2017)

Chapter: 7 conclusion, 7 conclusion.

Progress in many of the basic computing and information technologies has been rapid in recent years, and the committee does not expect the pace of change to slow down in the foreseeable future. While some technologies are reaching maturity now, many important technologies have enormous future potential. As more of the world’s information is digitized and more people and things are networked, the economics of the digital, networked economy will become ever more important. This includes the ability to make copies of goods and services at almost zero cost and deliver them anywhere on the planet almost instantaneously. Furthermore, digitization of products, services, processes, and interactions makes it possible to measure and manage work with far more precision. Data-driven decision making and machine learning provide vast opportunities for improving productivity, efficiency, accuracy, and innovation.

The committee expects important innovations to come in the area of artifical intelligence (AI) and robotics. Several decades ago, humans were unable to converse with machines using ordinary speech; now it is done routinely. Machines are learning to effectively translate from one language to another, a task once seen only in science fiction. We are moving from an era where machines were blind, unable to recognize even simple objects, to an era where they can distinguish faces, read street signs, and understand the content of photographs as well as—or better than—humans. They are being put to work reading X-ray and MRI images, advising doctors on potential drug interactions, helping lawyers

sift through documents, and composing simple stories about sports and finance for newspapers. Machines are becoming much better at reasoning and can now defeat the best humans at most games of skill, from checkers and chess to trivia and Go. Machines are learning to drive cars, which could potentially save thousands of lives in the United States and millions worldwide. Bipedal robots are learning to navigate stairs and uneven terrain, while their cheetah-like brethren can outrun even the fastest humans. Many of the technologies with the greatest impact will likely look unlike any human or animal, but will transport shelves of inventory throughout warehouses, assemble basic electronics in factories, fly to disaster zones with medicine, swim beneath the waves to gather data for oceanographers, and haunt computer networks in search of cyberattacks. In fact, many of these exist in some form already, although they are likely to become more widespread and more competent.

While there are undoubtedly important technological breakthroughs to come, it is critical to note that the technologies that exist today and those under active development have important implications for the workforce. They create opportunities for new products, services, organizational processes, and business models as well as opportunities for automating existing tasks, even whole occupations. Many cognitive and physical tasks will be replaced by machines. At the same time, we expect new job opportunities to emerge as increasingly capable combinations of humans and machines attack problems that previously have been intractable.

Advances in IT and automation will present opportunities to boost America’s overall income and wealth, improve health care, shorten the work week, develop new goods and services, and increase product safety and reliability.

These same advances could also lead to growing inequality, decreased job stability, increasing demands on workers to change jobs, and changes in business organization. There are also important implications for other aspects of society, both intended and unintended, not the least of which include potentially profound changes in education, privacy, security, social relationships, and even democracy.

The ultimate effects of these technologies are not predetermined. Rather, like all tools, computing and information technologies can be used in many different ways. The outcomes for the workforce and society at large depend on our choices. Technology can be a powerful tool. What do we want for our future society? How do we decide this?

Potential future technological capabilities and innovations are largely unpredictable, and their implications and interactions are complex. Investing in extensive and effective data gathering, a robust infrastructure for analyzing these data, and multidisciplinary research will enable a deeper

understanding of emerging changes in technology and the workforce. The results of this research will inform the adoption of policies that will help maximize the resilience and prosperity of the institutions, organizations, and individuals in our society.

Recent years have yielded significant advances in computing and communication technologies, with profound impacts on society. Technology is transforming the way we work, play, and interact with others. From these technological capabilities, new industries, organizational forms, and business models are emerging.

Technological advances can create enormous economic and other benefits, but can also lead to significant changes for workers. IT and automation can change the way work is conducted, by augmenting or replacing workers in specific tasks. This can shift the demand for some types of human labor, eliminating some jobs and creating new ones. Information Technology and the U.S. Workforce explores the interactions between technological, economic, and societal trends and identifies possible near-term developments for work. This report emphasizes the need to understand and track these trends and develop strategies to inform, prepare for, and respond to changes in the labor market. It offers evaluations of what is known, notes open questions to be addressed, and identifies promising research pathways moving forward.

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Technology And The Future Of War

In our time of unconventional conflict and rogue actors, the most advanced countries have the most to lose. 

Editor’s note: This essay is an excerpt of the Hoover Press book America and the Future of War .

Over the past half century, American political and military leaders have attempted to make war less costly in human terms. As far as lowering American casualties in combat, that is a wholly worthwhile endeavor. But that effort has carried over into the creation of unrealistic rules of engagement governing the use of weapons and representing efforts to reduce civilian casualties. To a certain extent, this has driven the revolution in precision munitions. In the Gulf War of 1991, extensive interviews with Iraqi prisoners of war indicated that the coalition aircraft they most feared was the ancient—even at that time—B-52. Above all, they emphasized the terrifying shock that strikes carried out miles away had on their perspective of the war and morale.

Ironically, because the B-52 computers were misaligned, the heavy bombers never hit their targets at which they were aiming. It did not matter, because the impact of the B-52 strikes was largely on the morale of Iraqi soldiers hunkered down in the deserts of Kuwait and southern Iraq. The horrendous noise and shaking of the earth from strikes even a dozen miles distant affected them deeply. Ironically, in the bombing of ISIS, including its military forces and encampments in the desert, US military and political leaders have not been willing to use the B-52. The reason behind this unwillingness lies in a belief among the political leadership in Washington that precision strikes prevent all collateral damage, which they do not. Such beliefs entirely miss the purpose of the use of military force and air power in particular, which is to wreck the enemy’s morale as much as to achieve physical damage and kill his soldiers.

The emphasis on technology is not surprising, given that it has been one of the strengths of American society for more than a century. Yet, there are limits to what technology can achieve by itself, while the enemy will always get a vote, and the more sophisticated and competent he is, the more likely that he will seek out and discover means to disrupt and distort our technological capabilities. In the conflicts that spun out of the global war on terrorism, the United States has enjoyed a massive superiority in weapons and the technology of those systems over the capabilities of its opponents. Nevertheless, one should not forget that even with the Americans’ technological superiority, the ragged guerrillas of al Qaeda in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan have caused US and coalition ground forces no end of trouble since 2003.

The world is going through a technological and scientific revolution that in every respect rivals the great “military-social revolutions” of the past. But unlike the period from 1914 through 1990, where the military organizations were the primary drivers behind revolutionary changes in technology, the current period looks quite similar to the period before 1914, when factors outside the military were largely responsible for the technological revolution. The point here is that the technological changes occurring during the past three decades will make military adaptation to the complexities of combat with sophisticated opponents even more difficult for armies, navies, and air forces than was the case in the First World War. The result of that murderous process of adaptation on the Western Front to the technological and scientific changes of the period before the First World War was a bloodbath that destroyed the comfortable assumptions on which European and American progress rested.

The impact of the computer—driven, technological revolution on military capabilities and future potential has certainly become clear over the past quarter of a century. The British military thinker and professor Christopher Coker has noted the following about the rapid pace of technological development in military capabilities over the past two decades:

“It is the ‘intelligence’ gained from sensors that allows artillery to be integrated into a ‘system’ that permits coordinated fire from a multiplicity of platforms, such as attack helicopters and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, and the intelligence of some of these systems is already impressive. Take the Smart-155, a projectile which releases two sensor—fused sub—munitions from the shell case in mid—flight. Each can identify targets by size and their 3-D heat signatures (in other words, each can choose other targets if the initial one is found to be on fire). And with the introduction quite soon of 3-D mapping, an observer will be able to pinpoint the exact location of a target on a 3-D map and share it with the shooter. Soon artificial intelligence in command and control systems will come on-stream and allow the next generation of projectiles not only to identify targets but even to prioritize ‘kills.’ In the not-too-distant future, they will be able to determine autonomously whether to fire or not.”

At present, through the efforts of its scientists and technologists, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is pushing the envelope for the development of new weapons in a fashion that is unusual in the federal bureaucracy, particularly in an agency active since the 1950s. Clearly unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are already a game changer at every level, from marine corps and army infantry platoons to potential future fighter aircraft. The ability to hit terrorist targets virtually anywhere in the world from UAVs controlled from Nevada has enabled the United States to wage a war on terrorists that puts no one in danger except for the collateral victims. It is likely that the F-35 will be the last manned fighter produced by the United States to be replaced by pilotless aircraft. Unmanned robots will play a larger and larger role in ground war. Hypersonic missiles are at present being tested by the United States, Russia, and China. Traveling at the speed of Mach 10 or more, such missiles will make a defensive response almost impossible, given the time between detection and arrival on target.

But there are several caveats worth underlining. The first is that much of the advances in weaponry are largely targeted at the potential of high-end conflict against opponents who have capabilities—such as the Chinese—which are approaching those of the United States. Such opponents will also possess nuclear weapons and the reality is that, as with the standoff with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, improved conventional weapons will serve in the framework of deterrence. Thus, such weapons may never find themselves used in the fashion for which they have been designed. Improvements in missiles, UAVs, and aircraft carrying nuclear weapons will hopefully make deterrence work among the major powers in the coming decades as it did during the Cold War.

At present and for at least a decade, if current funding levels remain in place, the United States will enjoy a significant measure of military superiority over its potential opponents. Admittedly, a war with China would prove immensely costly for both sides, but in the end the Chinese would lose badly. But, given the Chinese buildup, a potential American victory may not be the case in another decade, unless there is a significant investment in American forces in the near future. Such an effort will require the far—sighted wisdom of the American people as well as their leaders, much like the Athenians and their leader Themistocles in the 480s BC.

One of the incalculables in thinking about future wars lies in the technological systems that mid-rank powers or groups such as ISIS might gain in the future. The most frightening would be the possession of a nuclear weapon by groups that have no sense of responsibility for the long—term effects of detonating such weapons. That, of course, is why the collapse of Pakistan into a failed state would have such dangerous consequences for the world. Moreover, a war between Pakistan and India would carry with it the dangerous possibility that it might go nuclear, which would create a humanitarian crisis of unbelievable proportions, while the fallout would pose a global threat.

Although the U.S. military enjoys extraordinary advantages at present, there are danger signs. The service forces and their capabilities rest on a robust communications network as well as cyber and electronic systems. Especially important are the space-based systems for a vast array of intelligence functions, communications, the accuracy of munitions, targeting, and even the movement of US combat vehicles on the battlefield. As one army officer noted to the author, “we can’t (and won’t) go to war without SATCOM, GPS, or space-based imagery.” The army and the marines, supposedly the least sophisticated of the services, underline how dependent the American military has become on technology. As one briefing recently noted, the army has evolved over the past decade “from a space-enabled Army to a fully space-dependent Army .” It added that, in fact, virtually everything involving US military operations relies on links to and through space—based systems. Just a small listing of the army support systems that depend on space suggests the extent of that dependency: GPS (Global Positioning System), SATCOM (satellite communication), RISTA (reconnaissance, surveillance, and target acquisition), SIGINT (signals intelligence), electronic sensors, JDAM (joint direct attack munition), Excalibur (155 mm extended-range artillery), and GPS-guided MLRS, for example. Simply put, the ground forces of the United States are dependent on technological and space-based systems to execute their most basic tasks on the battlefield. This is also true to an even greater extent for navy and air force.

There are difficulties. Again, to quote an army official: “capabilities create dependencies, and dependencies create vulnerabilities.” The problem is that both computer-based systems and space-based systems are vulnerable to being hacked by an enemy. Fred Kaplan, a national security reporter, recently noted the following on the current vulnerability of the defense department’s sophisticated communications network: “In several recent exercises and war games that [a defense science board] reviewed, Red Teams, using exploits that any skilled hacker could download from the Internet, ‘invariably’ penetrated the Defense Department’s networks, ‘disrupting or completely beating’ the Blue Team.”

What makes this so astonishing is that in 1997 the National Security Agency’s Red Team in an exercise with the title of ELIGIBLE RECEIVER basically broke into every system the department of defense possessed. Only one marine officer during that exercise recognized that something was wrong and disconnected his system. One would have thought that in the intervening period of nearly two decades, there would have been significant improvement in the defense department and the services’ ability to protect their communication and computer systems from hackers or simply their own incompetence. But then it is well to remember how easily Snowden downloaded the masses of highly classified material which he then uploaded to the Internet. In his case, it was largely the result of gross security breaches made by the contracting firms working for the National Security Agency.

I remember a briefing I received from a British Army brigadier in 2000 that examined the nature of special operations forces thirty years into the future. The officer posited that 70 percent of the force would look much as it did in the past. However, the other 30 percent would look very different. It would include women, because they could go places where men could not, particularly in the Middle East. But the key new group in British special forces would be twenty years old or younger, who would hardly fit into the military culture of the Special Air Service and the Special Boat Service, but who would possess extraordinary capabilities as hackers. There lies the problem with the hierarchical nature of the American military and the nation’s intelligence agencies. One can hardly imagine the use of such individuals or a willingness to reach out to them or, for that matter, other subject matter experts in most of the intelligence community. Admittedly, this author may be entirely wrong in that supposition, but the continued inability of America’s intelligence agencies and military organizations to close the gaps in its cypher systems suggests deeply troubling bureaucratic malaise in the system, one that refuses to judge individuals by competence rather than by age and seniority.

What is clear is that America’s opponents in future wars will also target the extensive space-based communications systems upon which the American military depends for the conduct of its global operations. The simplest approach to disrupting the satellites on which those systems depend would be to explode a relatively low-yield nuclear device in lower orbit. The resulting electromagnetic pulse (emp) would be sufficient to render useless virtually all the satellites in low orbit. It is unlikely that either the United States or China would explode such a weapon, because it would take out friendly systems as well as those of an enemy. Moreover, since none of the commercial satellites on which the Internet, civilian communications, television transmissions, among other commercial usages, are protected from an emp burst, the result would be catastrophic to the global economy on which both the United States and China depend. The effects caused by the frying of commercial satellites would considerably affect the military side as well. For example, Central Command depends on commercial satellites for more than three-quarters of its bandwidth.

If neither the Chinese nor the Americans are likely to explode a nuclear weapon in space, because of the damage it would cause to their own satellites, the same cannot be said for the North Koreans or the Pakistanis. One can well imagine a North Korea on the brink of collapse or confronted with American and Chinese major economic pressure taking the risks of such a move as a means to preserve the regime without the risks of actually killing people. The damage to a global economy dependent on communications systems for transferring funds and information can well be imagined. Would the United States and its South Korean allies actually risk war in response to a nuclear-armed North Korea? Doubtful.

If the Chinese would be unwilling to attack the US satellite system by exploding a nuclear weapon in space, they have already proven to have other means at their disposal: namely, antisatellite missiles aimed at taking out particular satellites that are in orbit. Such an effort would have a long-term impact on the Chinese as well, because the number of antisatellite attacks in a wartime effort to take out US systems would so clutter up lower orbits with smashed-up satellites that they would make further use of space virtually impossible. The larger point is that the American military had better be prepared in future conflicts in which it finds itself to operate with a significant portion of its capabilities degraded. Any war between sophisticated powers will, to a considerable extent, take part in the dark. And that raises the worrisome question as to how effective US weapons will prove in the event an opponent is able to degrade severely their capabilities. Similarly, how effective will American fighting forces be when the communication links fail, when commanders on the sharp end have to make decisions on their own, and when GPS no longer provides accurate readings or any readings at all?

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Technology in american education.

Teaching Machines: Learning from the Intersection of Education and Technology . by Bill Ferster. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014.

Most often, when I ask educational technologists about programmed instruction, I receive blank stares, guesses based on the two words, or a dismissive, “Oh, one of the failures of behaviorism.” That’s not surprising. Most people involved in the technologies of education today come from the computer sciences. They rarely have a background in psychology or education. Of those who do, few have looked back on the history of technology in education—no further back, at least, than the dawn of the digital age and the Apple IIe.

Apparently I’m not the only one to have noticed this. In his new book, Bill Ferster tries to fill in the gap between the use of educational technology in today’s “digital culture” and what was attempted in the past. Starting with the hornbooks of the later Renaissance, he follows the progression of technological devices in education through to today’s cloud-based possibilities.

Though the term teaching machine is directly associated with the programmed-instruction experiments of the late 1950s and early 1960s, Ferster pushes it back and pulls it forward. He never stretches it out of shape; he demonstrates that what we see today is more a progression from the past than a break or revolution. He understands educational tools in McLuhanesque terms, pointing out that contemporary technologies have yet to define their own Technology in American Education possibilities as media but are still replicating what came before.

Ferster is hopeful about the future of our devices for education, expecting that these nascent possibilities will be explored and developed to the benefit of education. I am more suspicious than he that these possibilities will come to define education instead of becoming its tools. The strength of this book is that it does not cut off this debate but, through the background it provides, seeks to make it productive, putting into historical context the development of American education in terms of its technological tools.

The heart of the book is a movement to devise mechanical devices to supplement education that reached its height in the early 1960s. Spearheaded by psychologist B. F. Skinner, this movement focused on individual pacing, mastery, immediate feedback, and adaptivity (modification of pathways based on student responses) and on what its adherents called programmed instruction or, more popularly (but less accurately), teaching machines. Perhaps the most comprehensive adaptation of programmed instruction to the classroom was Fred Keller’s Personalized System of Instruction, laid out in a 1968 article, “Good-Bye, Teacher . . . ,” that appeared in the Journal of Applied Behavioral Analysis. Though largely forgotten today, its influence on contemporary educational technology has been substantial.

Ferster begins with a historical overview of the development of devices to aid teaching, including the blackboard, McGuffey readers (primers for grade-school students), and other tools, as well as the development of means of educating through evolving communication technologies. Chautauqua assemblies, correspondence courses, and radio and television educational presentations are all covered. He then turns to the developments that led to educational psychologist Sidney Pressey’s teaching machine of the late 1920s before getting to the machines of the 1950s.

After a careful and detailed description of the programmed-instruction movement, Ferster describes how, starting in the 1960s, “computer scientists [took] the reins of teaching machines from the psychologists.” This change would have both good consequences and bad. The good was that the new technologists were able to take advantage of the cutting-edge tools of the new computerized world—and even helped hone that edge. The bad was that they lacked the psychologists’ understanding of how people learn, something few of today’s educational technologists have regained. One important early project involving the use of computers to aid instruction was the Programmed Learning for Automated Teaching Operations (PLATO), which was developed by Don Bitzer in 1960 and continued for decades. Though it had “no real educational or psychological theory as a foundation,” Ferster argues, PLATO did offer possibilities for effective classroom use. Economics stopped it, he says: “Bitzer and his team were never able to get the cost per instructional hour down to a point where it made financial sense.” That was the fate of many new educational technologies, at least until 1983, when A Nation at Risk , the report of President Ronald Reagan’s National Commission on Excellence in Education, “spurred the computerization of the American classroom for the following two decades.”

Ferster also discusses Logo, a programming language designed to serve as a teaching tool. Covering a great deal of ground quickly, Ferster describes the importance to the dissemination of educational technology of the CD-ROM, with its substantial storage capacity, and he looks at intelligent tutoring systems, a technology that, like PLATO (according to Ferster), has never realized its potential.

From there, Ferster considers the impact of the “cloud” in education and looks at relatively successful Internet projects such as the Khan Academy and other descendants of the correspondence schools. He then spends substantial time examining the massive open online courses (MOOCs), recently so popular, arguing that their potential to engage huge populations will provide “an ideal experimental laboratory for evaluating the effectiveness of a wide variety of techniques.”

At the end of the book, Ferster admits that “it will take more than better machines to make an impact on education. Teaching machines can be only as effective as the pedagogical methods they employ, the way they are diffused to the public, and how they stay focused on the learner.” Summing up the rationale for his book, he concludes that by “looking at the past, we can surely build more effective teaching machines for the future.” This key point, writes Ferster, has been missed by most contemporary educational technologists, people so enamored with visions of what lies ahead that they forget to learn from what lies behind.

Though I disagree with Ferster on a number of points (including his admiration for MOOCs), Teaching Machines is an important book. Ferster energizes a discussion that could provide an antidote to the technopologic (to adapt media theorist Neil Postman’s neologism) culture that has developed through the digital revolution—a culture that often fails to see the value of anything that came before it. He presents a history that has been long missing from discussions of educational technology and is sorely needed.

Ferster presents three great but distinct advantages to technology in education: increased accessibility (starting with the use of the mail for correspondence courses), potentially lowered costs, and improved classroom efficiency. He also illustrates its greatest danger: belief that the teacher and the education expert can be replaced with the machine and the technologist.

In “The Technology of Teaching,” a talk for the Royal Society of London in 1964, Skinner said that “teaching machines are widely misunderstood. It is often supposed that they are simply devices which mechanize functions once served by human teachers. . . . They thus imitate, and could presumably replace, the teacher. But holding a student responsible for assigned material is not teaching, even though it is a large part of modern school and university practice. It is simply a way of inducing the student to learn without being taught.” Later in the talk, Skinner observed:

It could well be that an effective technology of teaching will be unwisely used. It could destroy initiative and creativity, it could make men all alike (and not necessarily in being equally excellent), it could suppress the beneficial effect of accidents upon the development of the individual and upon the evolution of a culture. On the other hand, it could maximize the genetic endowment of each student, it could make him as skillful, competent, and informed as possible, it could build the greatest diversity of interests, it could lead him to make the greatest possible contribution to the survival and development of his culture.

Maximizing student achievement requires skilled and educated teachers, something Skinner emphasized, as does Ferster. Machines cannot replace teachers but are simply better tools for them. Today’s educational technologists sometimes forget this, leading them to tell teachers how to do things instead of listening as teachers explain how they need things to be done. Many colleges have processes certifying teachers in uses of technology, yet I have heard of none that certifies its technologists in the ways of teaching or in educational psychology.

Ferster opens up our conversations on technology in education in a way that has been needed for thirty years, bringing back into the discussion forgotten yet fruitful concepts and legitimate concerns about teaching methodologies. I hope this book is widely read by both teachers and technologists, and that the two groups use the opportunity to listen to and learn from each other.

Aaron Barlow is associate professor of English at New York City College of Technology, City University of New York, and faculty editor of Academe. His e-mail address is [email protected] .

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• Essay on Apple

Sample Essay On The Technology Industry Of The United States

Type of paper: Essay

Topic: Apple , Steve Jobs , Information , Security , Law , Industry , Technology , Business

Published: 03/08/2023

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The technology industry in the United States has made significant steps in the past few decades. There has been several developments that have proved to be important in the business world and in taking the country’s development to a new level. Additionally, the technology industry has also seen developments that have eased the cost of doing business in the United States and the rest of the world. Businesses run using high technology that reduces the cost and create an easy way to operate.

Article summary

The New York Times article by Farhad Manjoo on Apple’s stance on privacy of information further highlights the improvement in the industry. According to the article, there is a conflict between Apple Inc. and the law enforcement agencies in the United States on the grounds of unlocking a suspect’s iPhone to get evidence. The article highlights the Apple’s stance on allowing access to information even if the phone was used by a terrorist. The author shows the negative effects of the rigidity in the IOS systems (Manjoo, 2016). The battle in court to see the law enforcing agency, the FBI, gain access to the suspect’s iPhone 5C, saw Apple Inc. loose the case thus forced to provide the passcode. However, even though Apple lost its case against the security agency, in the long run Apple plans to alter the security models of the future iPhones in such a way that the Apple engineers will not be able to crack the systems when compelled by the law. As a result, the article shows that the solution acquired by the law enforcing agencies is only in the short term basis (Manjoo, 2016). The article has shown the concerns raised by the law enforcement agency in gaining access to a suspected terrorist’s mobile phone. Apple’s denial to grant access at first is a sign of their respect to client’s confidentiality and security of information at large. The technology industry requires such firewalls that provide protection to information and details about people, companies or events.

The basic issue covered by the article is about personal information security. Apple ensured that its products are protected from hackers in such a way that any person who uses the product can lose the information. The economics of mechanisms principle shows the important of information security in the current world. The case of Apple Inc. denial of access to information to the law enforcing agencies in the United States was due to the need to provide protection to its client’s information (Manjoo, 2016). The case under discussion by the article shows that there will be a significant step in the technology industry in the world. The ability of Apple Inc. to create products that even the engineers from Apple will not be able to crack shows the step taken towards securing information. Whether information is incriminating or not, security is very important. In businesses, information security leads to confidentiality of information and availability. Whenever clients find that their information is not sufficiently secured, they are likely to lose trust on a business. As a result, a business might experience losses due to that mistrust and unavailability of information. The step taken by Apple is thus vital to the technology industry in the United States towards providing information security to the people, institutions, private businesses and companies.

References;

Manjoo, F. (2016). Apple’s Stance Highlights a More Confrontational Tech Industry. Nytimes.com. Retrieved 27 March 2016, from http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/18/technology/apples-stance-highlights-a-more-confrontational-tech-industry.html?_r=0

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• Technology Essay

Essay on Technology

The word "technology" and its uses have immensely changed since the 20th century, and with time, it has continued to evolve ever since. We are living in a world driven by technology. The advancement of technology has played an important role in the development of human civilization, along with cultural changes. Technology provides innovative ways of doing work through various smart and innovative means. 

Electronic appliances, gadgets, faster modes of communication, and transport have added to the comfort factor in our lives. It has helped in improving the productivity of individuals and different business enterprises. Technology has brought a revolution in many operational fields. It has undoubtedly made a very important contribution to the progress that mankind has made over the years.

The Advancement of Technology:

Technology has reduced the effort and time and increased the efficiency of the production requirements in every field. It has made our lives easy, comfortable, healthy, and enjoyable. It has brought a revolution in transport and communication. The advancement of technology, along with science, has helped us to become self-reliant in all spheres of life. With the innovation of a particular technology, it becomes part of society and integral to human lives after a point in time.

Technology is Our Part of Life:

Technology has changed our day-to-day lives. Technology has brought the world closer and better connected. Those days have passed when only the rich could afford such luxuries. Because of the rise of globalisation and liberalisation, all luxuries are now within the reach of the average person. Today, an average middle-class family can afford a mobile phone, a television, a washing machine, a refrigerator, a computer, the Internet, etc. At the touch of a switch, a man can witness any event that is happening in far-off places.  

Benefits of Technology in All Fields: 

We cannot escape technology; it has improved the quality of life and brought about revolutions in various fields of modern-day society, be it communication, transportation, education, healthcare, and many more. Let us learn about it.

Technology in Communication:

With the advent of technology in communication, which includes telephones, fax machines, cellular phones, the Internet, multimedia, and email, communication has become much faster and easier. It has transformed and influenced relationships in many ways. We no longer need to rely on sending physical letters and waiting for several days for a response. Technology has made communication so simple that you can connect with anyone from anywhere by calling them via mobile phone or messaging them using different messaging apps that are easy to download.

Innovation in communication technology has had an immense influence on social life. Human socialising has become easier by using social networking sites, dating, and even matrimonial services available on mobile applications and websites.

Today, the Internet is used for shopping, paying utility bills, credit card bills, admission fees, e-commerce, and online banking. In the world of marketing, many companies are marketing and selling their products and creating brands over the internet. 

In the field of travel, cities, towns, states, and countries are using the web to post detailed tourist and event information. Travellers across the globe can easily find information on tourism, sightseeing, places to stay, weather, maps, timings for events, transportation schedules, and buy tickets to various tourist spots and destinations.

Technology in the Office or Workplace:

Technology has increased efficiency and flexibility in the workspace. Technology has made it easy to work remotely, which has increased the productivity of the employees. External and internal communication has become faster through emails and apps. Automation has saved time, and there is also a reduction in redundancy in tasks. Robots are now being used to manufacture products that consistently deliver the same product without defect until the robot itself fails. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning technology are innovations that are being deployed across industries to reap benefits.

Technology has wiped out the manual way of storing files. Now files are stored in the cloud, which can be accessed at any time and from anywhere. With technology, companies can make quick decisions, act faster towards solutions, and remain adaptable. Technology has optimised the usage of resources and connected businesses worldwide. For example, if the customer is based in America, he can have the services delivered from India. They can communicate with each other in an instant. Every company uses business technology like virtual meeting tools, corporate social networks, tablets, and smart customer relationship management applications that accelerate the fast movement of data and information.

Technology in Education:

Technology is making the education industry improve over time. With technology, students and parents have a variety of learning tools at their fingertips. Teachers can coordinate with classrooms across the world and share their ideas and resources online. Students can get immediate access to an abundance of good information on the Internet. Teachers and students can access plenty of resources available on the web and utilise them for their project work, research, etc. Online learning has changed our perception of education. 

The COVID-19 pandemic brought a paradigm shift using technology where school-going kids continued their studies from home and schools facilitated imparting education by their teachers online from home. Students have learned and used 21st-century skills and tools, like virtual classrooms, AR (Augmented Reality), robots, etc. All these have increased communication and collaboration significantly. 

Technology in Banking:

Technology and banking are now inseparable. Technology has boosted digital transformation in how the banking industry works and has vastly improved banking services for their customers across the globe.

Technology has made banking operations very sophisticated and has reduced errors to almost nil, which were somewhat prevalent with manual human activities. Banks are adopting Artificial Intelligence (AI) to increase their efficiency and profits. With the emergence of Internet banking, self-service tools have replaced the traditional methods of banking. 

You can now access your money, handle transactions like paying bills, money transfers, and online purchases from merchants, and monitor your bank statements anytime and from anywhere in the world. Technology has made banking more secure and safe. You do not need to carry cash in your pocket or wallet; the payments can be made digitally using e-wallets. Mobile banking, banking apps, and cybersecurity are changing the face of the banking industry.

Manufacturing and Production Industry Automation:

At present, manufacturing industries are using all the latest technologies, ranging from big data analytics to artificial intelligence. Big data, ARVR (Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality), and IoT (Internet of Things) are the biggest manufacturing industry players. Automation has increased the level of productivity in various fields. It has reduced labour costs, increased efficiency, and reduced the cost of production.

For example, 3D printing is used to design and develop prototypes in the automobile industry. Repetitive work is being done easily with the help of robots without any waste of time. This has also reduced the cost of the products. 

Technology in the Healthcare Industry:

Technological advancements in the healthcare industry have not only improved our personal quality of life and longevity; they have also improved the lives of many medical professionals and students who are training to become medical experts. It has allowed much faster access to the medical records of each patient. 

The Internet has drastically transformed patients' and doctors’ relationships. Everyone can stay up to date on the latest medical discoveries, share treatment information, and offer one another support when dealing with medical issues. Modern technology has allowed us to contact doctors from the comfort of our homes. There are many sites and apps through which we can contact doctors and get medical help. 

Breakthrough innovations in surgery, artificial organs, brain implants, and networked sensors are examples of transformative developments in the healthcare industry. Hospitals use different tools and applications to perform their administrative tasks, using digital marketing to promote their services.

Technology in Agriculture:

Today, farmers work very differently than they would have decades ago. Data analytics and robotics have built a productive food system. Digital innovations are being used for plant breeding and harvesting equipment. Software and mobile devices are helping farmers harvest better. With various data and information available to farmers, they can make better-informed decisions, for example, tracking the amount of carbon stored in soil and helping with climate change.

Disadvantages of Technology:

People have become dependent on various gadgets and machines, resulting in a lack of physical activity and tempting people to lead an increasingly sedentary lifestyle. Even though technology has increased the productivity of individuals, organisations, and the nation, it has not increased the efficiency of machines. Machines cannot plan and think beyond the instructions that are fed into their system. Technology alone is not enough for progress and prosperity. Management is required, and management is a human act. Technology is largely dependent on human intervention. 

Computers and smartphones have led to an increase in social isolation. Young children are spending more time surfing the internet, playing games, and ignoring their real lives. Usage of technology is also resulting in job losses and distracting students from learning. Technology has been a reason for the production of weapons of destruction.

Dependency on technology is also increasing privacy concerns and cyber crimes, giving way to hackers.

FAQs on Technology Essay

1. What is technology?

Technology refers to innovative ways of doing work through various smart means. The advancement of technology has played an important role in the development of human civilization. It has helped in improving the productivity of individuals and businesses.

2. How has technology changed the face of banking?

Technology has made banking operations very sophisticated. With the emergence of Internet banking, self-service tools have replaced the traditional methods of banking. You can now access your money, handle transactions, and monitor your bank statements anytime and from anywhere in the world. Technology has made banking more secure and safe.

3. How has technology brought a revolution in the medical field?

Patients and doctors keep each other up to date on the most recent medical discoveries, share treatment information, and offer each other support when dealing with medical issues. It has allowed much faster access to the medical records of each patient. Modern technology has allowed us to contact doctors from the comfort of our homes. There are many websites and mobile apps through which we can contact doctors and get medical help.

4. Are we dependent on technology?

Yes, today, we are becoming increasingly dependent on technology. Computers, smartphones, and modern technology have helped humanity achieve success and progress. However, in hindsight, people need to continuously build a healthy lifestyle, sorting out personal problems that arise due to technological advancements in different aspects of human life.

Essay on Impact of Technology on Society

Students are often asked to write an essay on Impact of Technology on Society in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Impact of Technology on Society

Introduction.

Technology has greatly influenced society. It has changed how we communicate, learn, and even how we live our daily lives.

Communication

Technology, like smartphones and the internet, has made communication faster and easier. We can now talk to people across the world instantly.

In education, technology has made learning more accessible. Online classes and educational apps have made it possible to learn from anywhere.

Everyday Life

In our daily lives, technology helps us do tasks more efficiently. For example, we use GPS for navigation and apps for shopping.

In conclusion, technology has a significant impact on society. It has made our lives easier and more connected.

250 Words Essay on Impact of Technology on Society

The technological revolution has dramatically reshaped society, impacting various sectors such as communication, education, health, and business. The advent of technology has brought about significant changes, both positive and negative, that are reshaping our world.

Positive Impacts

Technology has undeniably improved our lives, providing unprecedented convenience and efficiency. In the realm of communication, digital platforms have bridged geographical gaps, fostering global connectivity and collaboration. In education, e-learning tools have democratized access to knowledge, enabling lifelong learning irrespective of location or socio-economic background. In healthcare, advanced medical technologies have improved diagnostic accuracy and treatment efficacy, enhancing patient outcomes and quality of life.

Negative Impacts

However, the pervasive influence of technology also poses challenges. The digital divide, a disparity in access to technology, exacerbates social inequalities. The over-reliance on technology can lead to sedentary lifestyles, contributing to physical and mental health issues. Moreover, the rise of digital platforms has increased the risk of cybercrimes, privacy breaches, and misinformation, posing threats to personal safety and societal harmony.

In conclusion, the impact of technology on society is multifaceted, bringing both benefits and drawbacks. It is crucial for society to harness the positive potential of technology while mitigating its negative implications. This balance requires thoughtful policy-making, education, and a collective commitment to using technology responsibly and ethically.

500 Words Essay on Impact of Technology on Society

Technology has undoubtedly become an integral part of our daily lives, influencing every sector from communication to health, education to entertainment. The advent of technology has significantly transformed society, shaping the way we interact, learn, work, and live. While the benefits of technology are numerous, it has also raised several concerns that demand careful consideration.

Enhanced Communication and Information Access

One of the most profound impacts of technology on society is the revolution in communication. The emergence of smartphones, social media platforms, and the internet has made communication instantaneous and borderless. Today, we can effortlessly connect with someone on the other side of the world in real-time.

Moreover, the internet has democratized information access. Online resources and digital libraries have made it possible for anyone with internet access to learn almost anything. This has significantly reduced the barriers to education and knowledge, fostering a global culture of continuous learning.

Technology and Work

The way we work has been radically transformed by technology. Automation and artificial intelligence have replaced many traditional jobs, leading to fears of job loss. However, they have also created new roles that didn’t exist before, such as data analysts, AI specialists, and digital marketers.

Moreover, technology has facilitated remote work, allowing people to work from anywhere, thereby promoting work-life balance. However, this also blurs the line between work and personal life, leading to potential burnout.

Healthcare Advancements

Technology has revolutionized healthcare, leading to improved patient care and health outcomes. Innovations like telemedicine, electronic health records, and wearable health devices have made healthcare more accessible and personalized. However, these advancements also raise concerns about data privacy and security.

Social Implications

Technology has significantly influenced our social interactions. On the one hand, it has enabled us to stay connected with friends and family, no matter where they are. On the other hand, excessive use of technology can lead to isolation and mental health issues.

Moreover, the rise of fake news and cyberbullying on social media platforms is a growing concern, highlighting the need for digital literacy and ethical tech usage.

Environmental Impact

Technology also plays a crucial role in addressing environmental challenges. Innovations like renewable energy technologies, precision agriculture, and digital twins are helping us combat climate change and promote sustainable development. However, the production and disposal of electronic waste also pose significant environmental threats.

In conclusion, the impact of technology on society is multifaceted, bringing both opportunities and challenges. As we continue to innovate and evolve, it is crucial to foster a culture of responsible technology use, ensuring that technological advancements contribute to societal well-being and sustainable development.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

• Essay on How Technology Changed Our Lives
• Essay on Benefits of Modern Technology
• Essay on Pros and Cons of Technology

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Essay on Technology – A Boon or Bane for Students

500+ words essay on technology for students.

In this essay on technology, we are going to discuss what technology is, what are its uses, and also what technology can do? First of all, technology refers to the use of technical and scientific knowledge to create, monitor, and design machinery. Also, technology helps in making other goods that aid mankind.

Essay on Technology – A Boon or Bane?

Experts are debating on this topic for years. Also, the technology covered a long way to make human life easier but the negative aspect of it can’t be ignored. Over the years technological advancement has caused a severe rise in pollution . Also, pollution has become a major cause of many health issues. Besides, it has cut off people from society rather than connecting them. Above all, it has taken away many jobs from the workers class.

Familiarity between Technology and Science

As they are completely different fields but they are interdependent on each other. Also, it is due to science contribution we can create new innovation and build new technological tools. Apart from that, the research conducted in laboratories contributes a lot to the development of technologies. On the other hand, technology extends the agenda of science.

Vital Part of our Life

Regularly evolving technology has become an important part of our lives. Also, newer technologies are taking the market by storm and the people are getting used to them in no time. Above all, technological advancement has led to the growth and development of nations.

Negative Aspect of Technology

Although technology is a good thing, everything has two sides. Technology also has two sides one is good and the other is bad. Here are some negative aspects of technology that we are going to discuss.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

With new technology the industrialization increases which give birth to many pollutions like air, water, soil, and noise. Also, they cause many health-related issues in animals, birds, and human beings.

Exhaustion of Natural Resources

New technology requires new resources for which the balance is disturbed. Eventually, this will lead to over-exploitation of natural resources which ultimately disturbs the balance of nature.

Unemployment

A single machine can replace many workers. Also, machines can do work at a constant pace for several hours or days without stopping. Due to this, many workers lost their job which ultimately increases unemployment .

Types of Technology

Generally, we judge technology on the same scale but in reality, technology is divided into various types. This includes information technology, industrial technology , architectural technology, creative technology and many more. Let’s discuss these technologies in brief.

Industrial Technology

This technology organizes engineering and manufacturing technology for the manufacturing of machines. Also, this makes the production process easier and convenient.

Creative Technology

This process includes art, advertising, and product design which are made with the help of software. Also, it comprises of 3D printers , virtual reality, computer graphics, and other wearable technologies.

Information Technology

This technology involves the use of telecommunication and computer to send, receive and store information. Internet is the best example of Information technology.

FAQs on Essay on Technology

Q.1 What is Information technology?

A –  It is a form of technology that uses telecommunication and computer systems for study. Also, they send, retrieve, and store data.

Q.2 Is technology harmful to humans?

 A – No, technology is not harmful to human beings until it is used properly. But, misuses of technology can be harmful and deadly.

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Feb 13, 2023

200-500 Word Example Essays about Technology

Got an essay assignment about technology check out these examples to inspire you.

Technology is a rapidly evolving field that has completely changed the way we live, work, and interact with one another. Technology has profoundly impacted our daily lives, from how we communicate with friends and family to how we access information and complete tasks. As a result, it's no surprise that technology is a popular topic for students writing essays.

But writing a technology essay can be challenging, especially for those needing more time or help with writer's block. This is where Jenni.ai comes in. Jenni.ai is an innovative AI tool explicitly designed for students who need help writing essays. With Jenni.ai, students can quickly and easily generate essays on various topics, including technology.

This blog post aims to provide readers with various example essays on technology, all generated by Jenni.ai. These essays will be a valuable resource for students looking for inspiration or guidance as they work on their essays. By reading through these example essays, students can better understand how technology can be approached and discussed in an essay.

Moreover, by signing up for a free trial with Jenni.ai, students can take advantage of this innovative tool and receive even more support as they work on their essays. Jenni.ai is designed to help students write essays faster and more efficiently, so they can focus on what truly matters – learning and growing as a student. Whether you're a student who is struggling with writer's block or simply looking for a convenient way to generate essays on a wide range of topics, Jenni.ai is the perfect solution.

The Impact of Technology on Society and Culture

Introduction:.

Technology has become an integral part of our daily lives and has dramatically impacted how we interact, communicate, and carry out various activities. Technological advancements have brought positive and negative changes to society and culture. In this article, we will explore the impact of technology on society and culture and how it has influenced different aspects of our lives.

Positive impact on communication:

Technology has dramatically improved communication and made it easier for people to connect from anywhere in the world. Social media platforms, instant messaging, and video conferencing have brought people closer, bridging geographical distances and cultural differences. This has made it easier for people to share information, exchange ideas, and collaborate on projects.

Positive impact on education:

Students and instructors now have access to a multitude of knowledge and resources because of the effect of technology on education . Students may now study at their speed and from any location thanks to online learning platforms, educational applications, and digital textbooks.

Negative impact on critical thinking and creativity:

Technological advancements have resulted in a reduction in critical thinking and creativity. With so much information at our fingertips, individuals have become more passive in their learning, relying on the internet for solutions rather than logic and inventiveness. As a result, independent thinking and problem-solving abilities have declined.

Positive impact on entertainment:

Technology has transformed how we access and consume entertainment. People may now access a wide range of entertainment alternatives from the comfort of their own homes thanks to streaming services, gaming platforms, and online content makers. The entertainment business has entered a new age of creativity and invention as a result of this.

Negative impact on attention span:

However, the continual bombardment of information and technological stimulation has also reduced attention span and the capacity to focus. People are easily distracted and need help focusing on a single activity for a long time. This has hampered productivity and the ability to accomplish duties.

The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence And Machine Learning

The development of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies has been one of the most significant technological developments of the past several decades. These cutting-edge technologies have the potential to alter several sectors of society, including commerce, industry, healthcare, and entertainment. 

As with any new and quickly advancing technology, AI and ML ethics must be carefully studied. The usage of these technologies presents significant concerns around privacy, accountability, and command. As the use of AI and ML grows more ubiquitous, we must assess their possible influence on society and investigate the ethical issues that must be taken into account as these technologies continue to develop.

What are Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning?

Artificial Intelligence is the simulation of human intelligence in machines designed to think and act like humans. Machine learning is a subfield of AI that enables computers to learn from data and improve their performance over time without being explicitly programmed.

The impact of AI and ML on Society

The use of AI and ML in various industries, such as healthcare, finance, and retail, has brought many benefits. For example, AI-powered medical diagnosis systems can identify diseases faster and more accurately than human doctors. However, there are also concerns about job displacement and the potential for AI to perpetuate societal biases.

The Ethical Considerations of AI and ML

A. Bias in AI algorithms

One of the critical ethical concerns about AI and ML is the potential for algorithms to perpetuate existing biases. This can occur if the data used to train these algorithms reflects the preferences of the people who created it. As a result, AI systems can perpetuate these biases and discriminate against certain groups of people.

B. Responsibility for AI-generated decisions

Another ethical concern is the responsibility for decisions made by AI systems. For example, who is responsible for the damage if a self-driving car causes an accident? The manufacturer of the vehicle, the software developer, or the AI algorithm itself?

C. The potential for misuse of AI and ML

AI and ML can also be used for malicious purposes, such as cyberattacks and misinformation. The need for more regulation and oversight in developing and using these technologies makes it difficult to prevent misuse.

The developments in AI and ML have given numerous benefits to humanity, but they also present significant ethical concerns that must be addressed. We must assess the repercussions of new technologies on society, implement methods to limit the associated dangers, and guarantee that they are utilized for the greater good. As AI and ML continue to play an ever-increasing role in our daily lives, we must engage in an open and frank discussion regarding their ethics.

The Future of Work And Automation

Rapid technological breakthroughs in recent years have brought about considerable changes in our way of life and work. Concerns regarding the influence of artificial intelligence and machine learning on the future of work and employment have increased alongside the development of these technologies. This article will examine the possible advantages and disadvantages of automation and its influence on the labor market, employees, and the economy.

The Advantages of Automation

Automation in the workplace offers various benefits, including higher efficiency and production, fewer mistakes, and enhanced precision. Automated processes may accomplish repetitive jobs quickly and precisely, allowing employees to concentrate on more complex and creative activities. Additionally, automation may save organizations money since it removes the need to pay for labor and minimizes the danger of workplace accidents.

The Potential Disadvantages of Automation

However, automation has significant disadvantages, including job loss and income stagnation. As robots and computers replace human labor in particular industries, there is a danger that many workers may lose their jobs, resulting in higher unemployment and more significant economic disparity. Moreover, if automation is not adequately regulated and managed, it might lead to stagnant wages and a deterioration in employees' standard of life.

The Future of Work and Automation

Despite these difficulties, automation will likely influence how labor is done. As a result, firms, employees, and governments must take early measures to solve possible issues and reap the rewards of automation. This might entail funding worker retraining programs, enhancing education and skill development, and implementing regulations that support equality and justice at work.

IV. The Need for Ethical Considerations

We must consider the ethical ramifications of automation and its effects on society as technology develops. The impact on employees and their rights, possible hazards to privacy and security, and the duty of corporations and governments to ensure that automation is utilized responsibly and ethically are all factors to be taken into account.

Conclusion:

To summarise, the future of employment and automation will most certainly be defined by a complex interaction of technological advances, economic trends, and cultural ideals. All stakeholders must work together to handle the problems and possibilities presented by automation and ensure that technology is employed to benefit society as a whole.

The Role of Technology in Education

Introduction.

Nearly every part of our lives has been transformed by technology, and education is no different. Today's students have greater access to knowledge, opportunities, and resources than ever before, and technology is becoming a more significant part of their educational experience. Technology is transforming how we think about education and creating new opportunities for learners of all ages, from online courses and virtual classrooms to instructional applications and augmented reality.

Technology's Benefits for Education

The capacity to tailor learning is one of technology's most significant benefits in education. Students may customize their education to meet their unique needs and interests since they can access online information and tools. 

For instance, people can enroll in online classes on topics they are interested in, get tailored feedback on their work, and engage in virtual discussions with peers and subject matter experts worldwide. As a result, pupils are better able to acquire and develop the abilities and information necessary for success.

Challenges and Concerns

Despite the numerous advantages of technology in education, there are also obstacles and considerations to consider. One issue is the growing reliance on technology and the possibility that pupils would become overly dependent on it. This might result in a lack of critical thinking and problem-solving abilities, as students may become passive learners who only follow instructions and rely on technology to complete their assignments.

Another obstacle is the digital divide between those who have access to technology and those who do not. This division can exacerbate the achievement gap between pupils and produce uneven educational and professional growth chances. To reduce these consequences, all students must have access to the technology and resources necessary for success.

In conclusion, technology is rapidly becoming an integral part of the classroom experience and has the potential to alter the way we learn radically. 

Technology can help students flourish and realize their full potential by giving them access to individualized instruction, tools, and opportunities. While the benefits of technology in the classroom are undeniable, it's crucial to be mindful of the risks and take precautions to guarantee that all kids have access to the tools they need to thrive.

The Influence of Technology On Personal Relationships And Communication 

Technological advancements have profoundly altered how individuals connect and exchange information. It has changed the world in many ways in only a few decades. Because of the rise of the internet and various social media sites, maintaining relationships with people from all walks of life is now simpler than ever. 

However, concerns about how these developments may affect interpersonal connections and dialogue are inevitable in an era of rapid technological growth. In this piece, we'll discuss how the prevalence of digital media has altered our interpersonal connections and the language we use to express ourselves.

Direct Effect on Direct Interaction:

The disruption of face-to-face communication is a particularly stark example of how technology has impacted human connections. The quality of interpersonal connections has suffered due to people's growing preference for digital over human communication. Technology has been demonstrated to reduce the usage of nonverbal signs such as facial expressions, tone of voice, and other indicators of emotional investment in the connection.

Positive Impact on Long-Distance Relationships:

Yet there are positives to be found as well. Long-distance relationships have also benefited from technological advancements. The development of technologies such as video conferencing, instant messaging, and social media has made it possible for individuals to keep in touch with distant loved ones. It has become simpler for individuals to stay in touch and feel connected despite geographical distance.

The Effects of Social Media on Personal Connections:

The widespread use of social media has had far-reaching consequences, especially on the quality of interpersonal interactions. Social media has positive and harmful effects on relationships since it allows people to keep in touch and share life's milestones.

Unfortunately, social media has made it all too easy to compare oneself to others, which may lead to emotions of jealousy and a general decline in confidence. Furthermore, social media might cause people to have inflated expectations of themselves and their relationships.

A Personal Perspective on the Intersection of Technology and Romance

Technological advancements have also altered physical touch and closeness. Virtual reality and other technologies have allowed people to feel physical contact and familiarity in a digital setting. This might be a promising breakthrough, but it has some potential downsides. 

Experts are concerned that people's growing dependence on technology for intimacy may lead to less time spent communicating face-to-face and less emphasis on physical contact, both of which are important for maintaining good relationships.

In conclusion, technological advancements have significantly affected the quality of interpersonal connections and the exchange of information. Even though technology has made it simpler to maintain personal relationships, it has chilled interpersonal interactions between people. 

Keeping tabs on how technology is changing our lives and making adjustments as necessary is essential as we move forward. Boundaries and prioritizing in-person conversation and physical touch in close relationships may help reduce the harm it causes.

The Security and Privacy Implications of Increased Technology Use and Data Collection

The fast development of technology over the past few decades has made its way into every aspect of our life. Technology has improved many facets of our life, from communication to commerce. However, significant privacy and security problems have emerged due to the broad adoption of technology. In this essay, we'll look at how the widespread use of technological solutions and the subsequent explosion in collected data affects our right to privacy and security.

Data Mining and Privacy Concerns

Risk of Cyber Attacks and Data Loss

The Widespread Use of Encryption and Other Safety Mechanisms

The Privacy and Security of the Future in a Globalized Information Age

Obtaining and Using Individual Information

The acquisition and use of private information is a significant cause for privacy alarm in the digital age. Data about their customers' online habits, interests, and personal information is a valuable commodity for many internet firms. Besides tailored advertising, this information may be used for other, less desirable things like identity theft or cyber assaults.

Moreover, many individuals need to be made aware of what data is being gathered from them or how it is being utilized because of the lack of transparency around gathering personal information. Privacy and data security have become increasingly contentious as a result.

Data breaches and other forms of cyber-attack pose a severe risk.

The risk of cyber assaults and data breaches is another big issue of worry. More people are using more devices, which means more opportunities for cybercriminals to steal private information like credit card numbers and other identifying data. This may cause monetary damages and harm one's reputation or identity.

Many high-profile data breaches have occurred in recent years, exposing the personal information of millions of individuals and raising serious concerns about the safety of this information. Companies and governments have responded to this problem by adopting new security methods like encryption and multi-factor authentication.

Many businesses now use encryption and other security measures to protect themselves from cybercriminals and data thieves. Encryption keeps sensitive information hidden by encoding it so that only those possessing the corresponding key can decipher it. This prevents private information like bank account numbers or social security numbers from falling into the wrong hands.

Firewalls, virus scanners, and two-factor authentication are all additional security precautions that may be used with encryption. While these safeguards do much to stave against cyber assaults, they are not entirely impregnable, and data breaches are still possible.

The Future of Privacy and Security in a Technologically Advanced World

There's little doubt that concerns about privacy and security will persist even as technology improves. There must be strict safeguards to secure people's private information as more and more of it is transferred and kept digitally. To achieve this goal, it may be necessary to implement novel technologies and heightened levels of protection and to revise the rules and regulations regulating the collection and storage of private information.

Individuals and businesses are understandably concerned about the security and privacy consequences of widespread technological use and data collecting. There are numerous obstacles to overcome in a society where technology plays an increasingly important role, from acquiring and using personal data to the risk of cyber-attacks and data breaches. Companies and governments must keep spending money on security measures and working to educate people about the significance of privacy and security if personal data is to remain safe.

In conclusion, technology has profoundly impacted virtually every aspect of our lives, including society and culture, ethics, work, education, personal relationships, and security and privacy. The rise of artificial intelligence and machine learning has presented new ethical considerations, while automation is transforming the future of work. 

In education, technology has revolutionized the way we learn and access information. At the same time, our dependence on technology has brought new challenges in terms of personal relationships, communication, security, and privacy.

Jenni.ai is an AI tool that can help students write essays easily and quickly. Whether you're looking, for example, for essays on any of these topics or are seeking assistance in writing your essay, Jenni.ai offers a convenient solution. Sign up for a free trial today and experience the benefits of AI-powered writing assistance for yourself.

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• School Education /

Essay on Technology

• Updated on  
• Aug 25, 2023

The word technology comes from the Greek words ‘techne’ and ‘logos’. ‘Techne’ means skill, art, or craft, and ‘logos’ means a word, expression, or saying that can convey an idea. Therefore, technology means conveying an idea through skills or art.

Technology refers to the practical application of scientific knowledge to change or manipulate the human environment. Examples include artificial intelligence, printing, the internet, computers, and augmented reality. Students in grades 6-12 may be asked to write an essay on technology, and we have provided sample essays for reference.

Table of Contents

• 1 100 Words Essay On Technology Boon or Bane in English
• 2 200 Words Essay On Technology
• 3 800+ Words Essay On Technology
• 4 7+ Interesting Facts About Technology

100 Words Essay On Technology Boon or Bane in English

Also Read: Top Tech Courses in 2023

200 Words Essay On Technology

Also Read: Leverage Edu Reviews Career in Artificial Intelligence

800+ Words Essay On Technology

Also Read: Here Are the World’s Top Tech YouTubers 

7+ Interesting Facts About Technology

Here are some interesting facts about technology. These facts can be added while writing the essay on technology.  An essay on technology must include a proper introduction, body, and conclusion.

• The word technology was first used by Aristotle in 330 BC.
• Xerox is not the verb for photocopying. It is the name of the company that invented the technology.
• The first product of Nokia was toilet paper
• Amazon’s Alexa listens to the user’s conversations
• The Bitcoin founders’ identity has not yet been verified by anyone
• Japan offers the fastest internet connection in the world. That is, it is 319 terabits per second
• The word ‘robot’ has been taken from a Czech word. It means ‘forced labour’
• More than 92% of the world’s money is stored digitally.

A. The introduction of an essay on technology must include the main details about technology. The origin of technology terms, top technological innovations, and the impact of technology can be discussed in the introductory paragraph. However, it is important to make the introduction short, crisp, and engaging.

A. An essay on technology means the student must write about technology in a detailed manner. That is, the essay must include an introduction, body, and conclusion. Moreover, the student can add details about the history, advantages, and disadvantages of technology in the body of the essay.

A. There are several benefits of technology. Some of them are simplification of tasks, breaking the distance barrier, easy and fast access to information, providing entertainment, increasing effectiveness of task completion, and increased productivity and life expectancy.

Technology has its benefits and drawbacks. Hence while writing an essay on technology it is important to include both advantages and disadvantages. An essay on technology must follow a proper format. That is, it must contain an introduction, body, and conclusion. To discover more articles like this one consult the study abroad experts at Leverage Edu.

Blessy George

Blessy George works as a Content Marketing Associate at Leverage Edu. She has completed her M.A. in Political Science and has experience working as an Intern with CashKaro. She has written extensively on studying abroad, English Test preparation, visas, and online courses. During her free time, she likes to read and write poetry, and songs.

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United States of America Essay

The history of america.

The story of the United States is based on either the Native people’s prehistory or the 1492 voyages of Christopher Columbus to the land. USA or the United States, as it is sometimes called, is a federal republic made up of a federal district and fifty states. Native people, whose first appearance in the region was at North America, were the indigenous people in the country.

This group of people would compose of a number of distinct American ethnic communities and was called by controversial titles that were based on European language terminologies. The Voyages of Christopher Columbus, on the other hand, refers to the speculative journey of an Italian navigator and explorer by the name Christopher Columbus, across the Atlantic Ocean.

Columbus’s boat voyages were a successful exploration story, since they would lead to significant discoveries of the land. The discoveries of Columbus explorations contributed to general European awareness of the continent of America, thus necessitating its colonization by the Great Britain. This colonization begun at around 1600, and would go on for about 15 decades before the onset of the revolution war in 1775.

The first batch of Europeans to arrive in the region would languish alone for many years before a new stronger group of British settlers finally made their way into the region towards the end of the 17th century. These new settlers were indeed the first category of immigrants to bring the idea of commercial agriculture in the region, with tobacco and rice being the first agricultural products to be introduced.

The 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries would see a great number of immigrants flow into the region, with the intention of making good use of the abundant opportunities and resources that were available. Apart from the impact of these varied opportunities, many significant aspects in the American history such as industrialization and formation of the initial states would also take place in the course of this period, making America one of the most developed continents in the world those times(Wendell,2005).

However, the differences in cultural aspects arising from the diverse communities in the region would often lead to serious ethnic violence, social disruptions, and political tensions among the communities over the centuries. In fact, these pressures played a significant role in the facilitation of the American war of independence or simply the revolution war in 1775.

The American Revolution was an open confrontation that involved the Great Britain on one side, and the united colonies together with other European immigrants on the other side. The revolution would come as a result of heightening restrictions which had been placed upon the colonies by the Great Britain.

The confrontation is also said to have started as a result of disagreements over the manner in which the Natives were treated by their British colonizers, and the way they thought it was better for them to be treated. Some of these disagreements came by as a result of matters regarding taxations which the colonies believed were conducted unfairly.

While the Americans thought that their rights as the owners of the land were being trodden upon by the Europeans, particularly the British, the Great Britain would claim that it was their right to treat the colonies in every manner that suited the crown. These events would later lead to the British defeat by the Americans. This would come following the support of the latter by the French and other immigrants who had settled in the region.

The outcomes of this historic war eventually granted Americans their freedom from the colonizers. This historic achievement was realized on July 4, 1776, and the declaration of Independence would be signed officially two days later. This marked a new beginning for the Americans, since the thirteen states which had previously being under the harsh rule and domination of Great Britain for many centuries were now free to come together to establish an autonomous government.

The states could now form their own way of leadership, and be able to come up with own laws that would be suitable for them in all aspects. 37 more states were formed in the course of the 19th and 20th centuries increasing the number of states to 50 from the previous 13, thus giving rise to modern America.

1780s would see key nationalists from the 13 states come together to form a new constitution to serve as a foundation for this new nation that was too fragile to withstand any form of pressure that was likely to arise. The new constitution paved way for a stronger government with a powerful president and new laws.

George Washington, a renowned political figure who had played an active role in the revolutionary war was elected the first president of the country, under the new constitution in 1789. Ever since then, America has gone through smooth and tough, wars and treaties, and good and bad times, to emerge not only as one of the most developed countries in the world, but also as a global superpower. The United States has had 44 presidents so far, with Barack Obama being the current occupant of the Whitehouse.

Significant Events in the Country’s Life

The American life is marked by many significant events which include wars and diseases. Concerning wars, there have been all sorts of warring events in the country’s history. This would range from domestic conflicts to international conflicts where the Americans have been involved in conflicts with combatants from other countries.

Some of the well-known conflicts involving the Americans had taken place in the colonial times, while others would occur just after the independence and the years to follow. The King Philip’s War, which took place between July 1675 and August 1676, was among the first wars involving the Americans. This was followed by a conflict involving France and the English colonies, a confrontation that was known as King William’s War between 1689 and 1697.

There was also the King George’s war which took place between 1744 and 1748. This was followed closely by the French and Indian War involving the Great Britain and French colonies from 1756 to 1763. The Cherokee War between 1759 and 1761 would pave way for the Revolution War that was fought for eight consecutive years starting from the year 1775.

The Post-independence wars involving the US included Franco-American Naval War of 1798, Barbary Wars, War of 1812, Creek War, Mexican-American War, Spanish-American War, and the U.S. Civil War. Some of the major wars in the American history would include the Great War, World War II, the Cold War, Vietnam War, Invasion of Panama by the US, Persian Gulf War, the Invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, and the US disarmament war on Iraq.

The Iraq war which begun in 2003 and took not less than five years to end, is arguably one of the worst wars that have involved the Americans recently.

Apart from these notable wars and conflicts, America has also experienced a number of diseases. As it would be observed, Native Americans have been victims to various health concerns and diseases throughout history.

Most of these diseases, however, are said to have resulted from the interactions of the Europeans when they first invaded the American territories way back in 1600 and the years to follow. The most notable diseases and health concerns arising from these foreign invasions would include, but were not limited to, smallpox, measles, cholera, typhoid, tuberculosis, chicken pox, scarlet fever, influenza, whooping cough, yellow fever, bilious disorder, and sexually transmitted diseases (Matthew & Cliff, 2004).

Most of these diseases, however, occurred as sweeping epidemics which resulted to massive deaths, thus causing serious destruction to the affected communities. Some of these epidemics are seen as significant events in the country’s life, owing to their serious implications on people’s lives.

Even though the effects of these early diseases have declined tremendously over the past several decades, probably due to the current advancements in matters of health, a new batch of more serious ailments has sprouted in the contemporary world. These contemporary diseases, which have continued to place a heavy burden on the American economy, would include HIV/AIDS, malaria, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and liver cirrhosis, among others.

Recent Worth Noting Events

Apart from the wars and diseases that have affected the American since prehistoric times, there are also other worth noting events that have rocked the country. These include devastating events such as acts of terror, natural calamities or disasters, and incidents of mass shooting that have occurred in the country‘s history. As it would be observed, America has been a common target for many Islamic terror attacks.

Some of these attacks would result to loss of many innocent lives across the country whenever they did occur. Among these attacks, the events of September 11 are said to be the most devastating acts of terrorism to have ever happened in the country’s history. This was an act of terror involving Al-Qaeda terrorists hijacking four passenger flights in the U.S. and steering them into strategic points in Washington DC, leading to the deaths of nearly 3000 Americans and injuries of more than 1000.

Apart from terrorism events, mass shooting incidents have also become a norm in the United States recently. Most of these incidents are said to have occurred in entertainment zones, restaurants, and learning institutions, among other places. According to police sources in the U.S., more than 30 mass shooting incidents have occurred in the country in the last three decades alone .

The Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University incident, where an undergraduate student by the name of Cho shot and killed 32 fellow students is a worth noting event here. The April 2007 shooting, which is said to be the worst incident of mass shooting ever in the country’s history, has raised a lot of concern on the controversial issue of gun control in the country.

The McDonald’s massacre of July, 1984 is also another significant event. In this particular incident, James Huberty had invaded the Californian restaurant and opened fire on everybody who was inside. Only 19 out of the forty people who were said to have been shot in this incident had survived the ordeal, but with serious injuries.

US Government Structure

The current American government structure is divided into three major branches which include the Legislative, the Executive, and the Judiciary. Normally, the government is headed by the US president, who shares his authority and powers with the judiciary system and the Congress. Theirs being a Federal Republic, Americans do recognize the Constitution as the Supreme law which governs them.

Following is a simple diagram showing the current government structure of USA.

The Democratic Party and the Republican Party are the two major political parties in the states. Each of these parties has tried to exercise outstanding credibility and performance in governance affairs. Democratic is currently the ruling party, with president Obama being the 15th Democrat to occupy the Whitehouse as the 44th president of the United States. With a population of over 300 million people, the U.S. is arguably among the high-ranking countries in the world in terms of voter turnout every time there is an election.

However, the voter turn out in the country has never been constant, but it keeps on rising and dropping every now and then. According to the Center for the Study of the American Electorate, the recent voter turnout in the country stood at 57.5 percent of the total number of people who were eligible to vote. This rate, however, was a bit lower compared to the 2008 and 2004 general elections where percentages of 62.3 and 60.4, respectively, were observed.

Cases of Corruption in the US

The U.S., just like any other country in the world, has witnessed many cases of public corruption in its history. There has been a case of corruption in almost every administration that has governed the Federal Republic of the United States.

Some of the past administrations that have been associated with major corruption scandals in the country’s history would include the governments of Reagan, Clinton, Ford, Nixon, Johnson, George W. Bush, Kennedy, Carter, and George H.W. Bush. Of all the vast corruption scandals witnessed under the above administrations, the corruption case of William Jefferson is a worth noting scandal. This incident had taken place in the era of President George W.

Bush, and is one of the most recent corruption cases to have rocked the U.S. The fact that the case involved a Congressman was not the only reason that would make it one of the most significant corruption scandals in the country’s history, but also the fact that the 5-year investigation on the case, which had started on mid 2005 would reveal more than enough evidence to convict Jefferson (Nicholls et al., 2011).

This would see Jefferson being convicted of 11 accounts of corruption in August 2009, and getting a 13-year sentence. In this regard, Jefferson went into history as the first congressman to get the longest jail sentence on accounts of corruption and bribery.

Country Indicators and Statistics

As it would be observed, the major indicators of the United States are based on aspects of human development, climate and environmental matters, socioeconomic aspects, and information and communication technology matters, among other aspects.

The levels of Human Development in the US are assessed by bringing together the indicators of income, life expectancy and attainment of education. However, the levels of income would vary from state to state. The current Median Income of the households is said to be $45,019 per annum.

The life expectancy at birth in the US currently ranges between 77 years and 80 years for both male and women. Educational attainment for all ages, sex, race, and gender has increased significantly in the last several years. Based on the above indicators, it is patently clear that all avenues of human development in the country have improved greatly over the years, thus paving way for even better achievements as far as the country’s future economy is concerned.

Climatic indicators are also widely used in the U.S. to determine expected weather patterns. Most of these climatic indicators are aimed at assessing the key elements of weather that are likely to be observed in the country, such as weather patterns, greenhouse gases, and ecosystems.

Current economic indicators have shown USA as one of the most powerful economies globally. This great achievement, however, can be based on the behavior of the financial market as it is gauged using various economic indicators. Some of the common economic indicators that have continued to play a significant role in the United States include, but are not limited to, Gross Domestic Product, Inflation, and unemployment.

These indicators have proved to be effective in helping the Federal Reserve make the necessary decisions and plans in regard with the country’s economy. The current Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for the country is estimated to be $15.7 trillion. This actually stands as the largest national economy globally.

This is slightly higher compared with previous rankings, thus indicating a significant advancement in the job and business sectors. Currently, the U.S. inflation rate is recorded at 1.1 percent, and this is a significant drop compared to previous records which had stood at a higher mark. The unemployment rate in the US has also dropped to 7.5 percent this year from last year’s rate which stood at 7.6 percent.

Population Statistics

Currently, United States stands as the third most populous country in the world, with an approximate of about 315 million people. According to statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau, the country’s population has been growing steadily since prehistoric times, and it was in the year 2006 when the mark of 300 million was eventually reached.

This is a massive growth, considering the fact that the country had a population of only 350 people way back in 1610, when the first census was conducted on Native Americans. United States has a total area of 3.79 sq miles, and in that case, its population density stands at around 33.9 people per sq.km. Having a growth rate of nearly 1 percent, which is considered to be higher than that of any other developed nation in the world, the country’s population is projected to increase abundantly in the near future.

The total fertility rate in the United States stands slightly below the replacement value at 2.09. This, however, is a bit more higher compared to that of other developed countries in the world. The death rate in the country is observed to have dropped significantly in the past few years. In fact, this is one of the key factors which have contributed to the high growth rate witnessed in the country today.

Based on the current demographical data, the death rate stands at 8.4 deaths per every 1,000 population. The infant mortality rate normally constitutes the largest percentage of the overall number of deaths occurring in the country. Currently, the infant mortality rate in the U.S. stands at around 6.04 deaths per 1000 live births.

Most of these infant deaths are said to occur as a result of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and serious birth defects, among other causes. Even though the infant mortality rate is observed to have started declining in recent years after leveling off for quite sometime, it still remains a bit higher than that of many other countries in the world.

Armed forces, Conventional Weapon Holdings and Military Activities

Generally, the U.S. armed forces are comprised of five key branches which include the U.S. Army, the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Marine Corps, and the US Air force. The president, who is also the Commander-in-Chief, is the military’s overall head assisted by a federal executive department and the Defense Secretary, among other key units in the government.

All these units are entrusted with the responsibility of overseeing the complex operations of the armed forces in the whole country. Members of the U.S. armed forces are entitled to a variety of duties and assignments, as stated in the Constitution. Even though personnel from different units of the U.S. armed forces can perform similar tasks in most cases, their duties would tend to vary greatly sometimes, depending on their departments or units.

The typical duties of military personnel in the U.S. armed forces would include safeguarding the country from both domestic and external attacks, responding to matters of emergency in the country, helping in undertaking development projects, and assisting in carrying out the outstanding mission of the government in other countries through the U.S. foreign policy.

The U.S. armed forces are ranked among the best trained fighting forces globally. Moreover, they have also gained outstanding reputation and recognition from allover the world, for being in possession of the most sophisticated war weapons that have ever been introduced into the world.

These achievements have brought much glory and honor to the American fighting forces. Ever since their establishment way back in 1775, the U.S. forces have taken part in many military activities inside and outside the country (Ploch, 2010). Most of these involvements have been in the many warring events involving the Americans that would take place after the declaration of independence in 1774. The prevailing conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq are good examples here.

Apart from the wars, the U.S. armed forces have also taken part in other special missions outside the country, some of which are noteworthy events in the country’s history. A good example of the special activities in which the U.S. military forces have continued to take part is the UN peacekeeping mission of enforcing peace in war-stricken regions in the world. The American military forces have also played a crucial role in responding to natural disasters and events of terrorism in the world.

One important aspect which the U.S. enjoys out of their economic power and stability is their status as the strongest military power in the world. This outstanding status has been confirmed by previous war events which had involved the Americans, such as the Great War and the Spanish-American War, among others.

America’s status as a strong military and economic power would come after the Second World War, when it eventually became a global superpower. Today, the U.S. stands as the country with the highest number of military personnel in the world, constituting of volunteers and conscripted service men, both of whom are entitled to salaries and allowances.

When it comes to holding of conventional weapons, the U.S. military forces would come second to none in the whole world. As a matter of fact, the deadliest conventional war machines and equipment used in the world can be found in the U.S. armed forces arsenal. These deadly weapons include laser-guided bombs, the bunker booster bomb, anti-personnel mines, the AC-130 aerial gunship, and the .50-caliber sniper rifle, among others.

Education Structure

Education is compulsory for every child in the United States, just like in any other nation that values the future of its coming generations. The system of education in the U.S. is almost similar to that of any other country in the world. Basically, the system is divided into three major levels which include elementary school, middle school, and secondary school.

The educational system constitutes of twelve study grades which are achievable over twelve full years of primary and post-primary education in high school, before one becomes eligible for admission in college or university for further studies.

Early childhood is the first level of the education system in the United States. This normally comprises of toddler, preschool, and pre-kindergarten. The elementary school, which constitutes of kindergarten as the lowest level and five years of study in the primary school, comes next.

Learners are then taken through the middle school level where they undertake grades 6, 7, and 8, before proceeding to high school. After graduating with high school diplomas, they can then enroll for post-secondary education which comprises of tertiary education, vocational education, and graduate education. Adult education, which is not very common in the country, also falls under this category.

The following figure illustrates the education structure in the U.S.

Economic and Trade Activity

Apart from being the biggest economy in the world, America is ranked among the wealthiest nations in the world today. Moreover, the country enjoys abundant natural resources, integrated communication facilities, and well-developed infrastructure, among other modern aspects that are critical in boosting a country’s productivity and economy.

All these opportunities have continued to play a crucial role in promoting the country’s development and prosperity in terms of trade and economic affairs. Over the years, America has established strong trade ties with other countries in the world, thus playing a key role in shaping the global economy. According to Hanson (1996), the U.S. has proved to be less vulnerable to anything which threatens to interfere with its incredible advancement in various sectors of the economy.

America has been a major trade partner in the world for many years now and this progress in trade affairs has made the nation a global leader in matters of trade. Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) have become the most convenient way of opening up the country’s abundant exports to foreign markets.

More importantly, these agreements have also proved to be more important in giving the country an opportunity to import equipment and resources freely from their many trade partners around the world. Currently, the country has engaged in numerous trade agreements with other countries in the world. Some of the major free trade agreements involving the U.S. include North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Australia-U.S.

Trade Agreement of 2004, Singapore-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, Chile-United States Free Trade Agreement, Morocco-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, Peru-United States Free Trade Agreement, and Oman-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, among others. Currently, the country has engaged in negotiations with other nations in a bid to open more multilateral and bilateral free trade agreements across the world.

Despite the current economic nightmares arising from the most recent economic crisis, America has maintained a stronger economic health. If anything, the country’s outstanding strength in business has played a crucial role in enabling it to survive these economic setbacks. This achievement, however, has also been enhanced by the efforts of the U.S. government and other important sectors of the economy.

For instance, both public and private sectors in the country have constantly come together to exert considerable efforts that would be necessary in key areas of the economy. The government is the engine of the country’s economic growth, and for that reason, America’s potential economic benefits out of trade affairs are likely to remain inexhaustible for long.

Some of the ways by which the government influences economic activities in the country is through exertion of leverages on some key sectors of the economy and through implementation of antitrust laws aimed at preventing firms from engaging in unethical business practices.

Membership of international organizations

Apart from the Free Trade Agreements, the United States also takes part in numerous international organizations in the world. Some of the major international organizations in which the country participates include the World Trade Organization (WTO), World Health Organization (WHO), United Nations (UN), International Trade Union Confederation, International Monetary Fund (IMF), International Criminal Court (ICC), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Group of Seven (G7), International Olympic Committee (IOC), and African Development Bank Group, just to mention but a few.

Human Rights

Human rights in the U.S. are just as important as they are in any other nation in the world, and for that reason, they are legally protected by the law (Stephens, 2008). The organization of the human rights in the country dates back more than two centuries ago, when Anthony Benezet introduced the first human right standards in regard with the abolishment of slavery.

This makes America a leader in the creation of an international system which recognizes, promotes, and protects the rights of people in various sectors of life. Ever since after the independence, when the first human right requirements were introduced in the country, America has shown great consistence in recognizing and protecting the rights of all its citizens and other people in the world, regardless of their race, color, gender, and national identity, among other aspects.

To prove that they are the premier promoter of these standards in the contemporary world, Americans have expressed support to some standard international human rights through ratification of treaties. Some of the key areas of concern upon which the U.S. human rights are based would include, but are not limited to, legal aspects, equality issues, labor rights, freedoms, justice system, and health care.

Major Societal Trends

As it would be observed, modern societies in the U.S are characterized by a number of societal trends. One of the most common trends here, which has affected nearly all groups in the country, is the obsession with modern technology. For instance, Americans, just like people from other developed nations, have become big fans of the social media through interactive sites such as Facebook, you tube and twitter.

Waking up to conservative life is another significant trend which defines the current American society. It is only at this age when you will find more grown-ups in America living with their guardians, compared with the past. As a matter of fact, the percentage of parents living with their adult children has increased tremendous in the past few years.

On the same note, current generations are even more family-centric compared with their predecessors. This, however, explains the reason as to why current generations are bearing more children, compared with their predecessors.

America is also experiencing a big demographic shift presently than before, probably as a result of the rapid wave of globalization which is taking place in every part of the country, among other significant factors in the society. Efficient access to goods and services has also become a norm in the U.S. as a result of current advances in technology. Anxiety has also emerged as another common trend among the American societies nowadays.

Previous acts of terrorism, particularly the events of September 11, have left many citizens in the country slightly rattled. This has triggered feelings of fear and anxiety among some American citizens who have felt that the country’s security against terrorism is not fully guaranteed. Other major societal trends in the U.S. would include bulging business opportunities, innovations, and invention of sophisticated aspects of technology in all sectors.

State of Technology

Being a country associated with abundant opportunities and resources, America has over the time emerged as the most advanced nation in the world in matters of technology. These aspects have played a critical role in helping to facilitate the early industrial and technological development in the country.

For the past one century or so, America as a country has been integral in the development of many award-winning technology products in the world. The country has been associated with a series of inventions and innovations, especially in the ICT sector which has continued to serve as a platform for other major developments in the world. Based on these observations, there is no doubt that America has excelled in matters of technology.

Environmental record

The management of environmental matters has never been easy for any country in the world. However, the United States has made progressive efforts in ensuring that current and future generations are spared the implications of a wasted environment which could result from environmental pollution and air pollution.

As it would be observed, the U.S. has maintained a good environmental record, possibly through their strong environmental policy which is enforced by the federal government. 1960s and 1970s are significant years in America’s history, since they mark a time when important laws on the environment were passed by the Congress. It is worth noting here that it was also in the course of this time when the Environmental Protection Policy was first introduced in the country to help address environmental matters more efficiently.

On this note, the United States is said to be at the fore-front in the fight against pollution of air and the environment. More importantly, the country has also adopted the idea of going green in various sectors of its vast economy, thus becoming the first country in the world to show serious concerns in the fight against the devastating issue of global warming, among other serious climatic conditions affecting the global populations today.

Hanson, G. (1996). Economic integration, intra-industry trade, and frontier regions. European Economic Review, 40 (3), 941-949.

Matthew, R., & Cliff, D. (2004). Impact of infectious diseases on war. Infectious Disease Clinics of North America, 18 (2), 341-345.

Nicholls, C., Daniel, T., Bacarese, A., & Hatchard, J. (2011). Corruption and misuse of public office. United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.

Ploch, L. (2010). Africa Command: US strategic interests and the role of the US military in Africa . Berby, PA: Diane Publishing.

Stephens, B. (2008). International human rights litigation in US courts . Leiden: Brill Publishers.

Wendell, B. (2005). A literary history of America . Whitefish MT: Kessinger Publishing Company.

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Impact of Consumer Culture in the 1950s

This essay about the profound societal transformations in the United States during the 1950s explores the rise of consumer culture following World War II. It highlights the shift to mass production and consumption, the emblematic suburban home, the impact on women’s roles, and the integration of modern appliances into everyday life. The narrative discusses the influence of television and advertising in shaping public desires and the associated issues of conformity, materialism, and environmental challenges, ultimately illustrating how consumerism reshaped American values and societal norms.

How it works

The aftermath of World War II marked a profound transformation in societal norms across the Western world, particularly noticeable in the United States during the 1950s. This period was characterized by significant economic growth, advancements in technology, and the expansion of a consumer-driven culture, underpinned by the ideal of the American Dream—achieving prosperity and happiness through material wealth and consumption. The widespread influence of consumerism during this era touched every aspect of life, altering lifestyles, values, and personal identities.

At the heart of the burgeoning consumer culture in the 1950s was the twin phenomena of mass production and mass consumption.

As industries transitioned from military to civilian production, there was an explosion in the availability of consumer goods like cars, home appliances, and myriad other products. This increase in production met a growing consumer demand, fueled by a rising middle class with disposable income eager to indulge in symbols of affluence.

A quintessential symbol of this era was the suburban home, which became a key component of the American Dream. The economic boom allowed millions to achieve homeownership, exemplified by developments like Levittown, New York. These suburbs were more than just groups of homes; they represented a lifestyle centered around consumption, complete with tidy yards and spacious garages.

Within these suburban homes, modern appliances became central to consumer culture, offering convenience and shaping domestic life. Devices such as washing machines, refrigerators, and televisions not only saved time but also became status symbols, integral to the American family’s image of success. Advertisements played up these goods as essential for modern living, pushing consumers to acquire the latest items to keep up with societal expectations.

The era also significantly impacted women’s roles, confining many to the home as the primary users of new domestic technologies and reinforcing traditional gender roles through targeted advertising. While some women found fulfillment in this domesticity, others felt restricted, setting the stage for the feminist movements of the later decades.

Consumer culture extended beyond the household, influencing leisure and social interactions. Television, as a new mass medium, brought entertainment and advertising directly into homes, shaping public perceptions and desires. Popular television shows and strategic advertising campaigns on Madison Avenue made deep inroads into consumer psychology, linking products with personal success and social prestige.

Despite the outward prosperity, there was underlying unease about the conformity and materialism promoted by consumer culture. The pressure to conform to a standard of affluence led to conspicuous consumption, where personal worth was measured by material possessions, potentially stifling individuality and promoting uniformity.

Additionally, the consumer boom raised environmental and ethical issues, as the disposable nature of many products led to waste and pollution, and the incessant demand for goods strained natural resources. These issues hinted at the environmental challenges that would become more pressing in the future.

In conclusion, the 1950s were a transformative decade in which consumer culture deeply influenced American society, driving economic prosperity and changing daily life. From the creation of suburban paradises filled with modern conveniences to the pervasive impact of advertising, this culture permeated all aspects of life. However, this period also sowed seeds of concern about conformity, materialism, and the sustainability of such a lifestyle, leaving a complex legacy that continues to influence modern values and challenges.

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"Impact Of Consumer Culture In The 1950s." PapersOwl.com , 22 Apr 2024, https://papersowl.com/examples/impact-of-consumer-culture-in-the-1950s/

PapersOwl.com. (2024). Impact Of Consumer Culture In The 1950s . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/impact-of-consumer-culture-in-the-1950s/ [Accessed: 23 Apr. 2024]

"Impact Of Consumer Culture In The 1950s." PapersOwl.com, Apr 22, 2024. Accessed April 23, 2024. https://papersowl.com/examples/impact-of-consumer-culture-in-the-1950s/

"Impact Of Consumer Culture In The 1950s," PapersOwl.com , 22-Apr-2024. [Online]. Available: https://papersowl.com/examples/impact-of-consumer-culture-in-the-1950s/. [Accessed: 23-Apr-2024]

PapersOwl.com. (2024). Impact Of Consumer Culture In The 1950s . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/impact-of-consumer-culture-in-the-1950s/ [Accessed: 23-Apr-2024]

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