U.S. Innovation Competitiveness Summit - Key Technology Focus Areas

welcome to csis online the way we bring you events is changing but we'll still present live analysis and award-winning digital media from our drakopolis ideas lab all on your time live or on demand this is csis online good afternoon everyone it's afternoon in washington it may be morning some places else but we're delighted to have you all here and this is the uh really the high point for this week-long series of conferences that we've been hosting with our colleagues from the university of kentucky and from from autumn and of course for for columbia university uh on monday we looked at the imperative of innovation as a such a crucial thing for america's future on on tuesday we took a deep dive on intellectual property and the crucial crucial role the government plays in providing protection rights for inventors and balancing public good and private well-being and a very good session you know on on wednesday we looked deeply at the question of how do we do technology transfer you know one of the great great things that happened for america was buy dole act you know where we started to find pathways where you know research that is that could have great potential for everybody else in america could be brought to that market it was an excellent day and then of course today we've been this morning we focused on the crucial role of venture capital uh and the essential way in which we can you know transmit those ideas and turn them into products it's a tough thing but we had a great consensus that we need to broaden that base of innovation and financing in america so it's not just in the great wonderful hot spots you know of sand hill road and in cambridge but we're bringing it out to heartland america it was a very good morning and now today this afternoon with walt koppen's leadership we're going to dig into some new really path-breaking opportunities for america's future we're going to be looking at several topics all of which are cutting edge which will really define america over the next 20 years and it's going to be an exciting afternoon i'm very grateful dr walter kopan is going to be leading this conversation he's the co-director of the um this renewing american innovation project at csis and you're going to take it from here for a very exciting afternoon walt let me turn it to you john thanks so much and uh welcome to all of you the conversation that we'll have today is about key technology focus areas for the world america's advantage and how we capture it for the long term america is in unprecedented territory with regard to our competitiveness globally america has major advantages including science and technology capacity inventive strengths and a pioneering culture that's open to taking risk and entrepreneurship to kick off our program today raphael reiff wanted to share his thoughts with us he wasn't able to join us actually in person today so he pre-recorded his keynote remarks uh leo rafael reif is a venezuelan-american electrical engineer a writer an academic leader and currently serving as the 17th president of the massachusetts institute of technology mit he previously served as the institute's provost and head of mit's department of electrical engineering and computer science and he was a director of the mit microsystems technology laboratories he did his undergraduate studies in venezuela and came to the us to complete his phd studies at stanford and now has contributed so much to america's system of innovation from his role at mit so let's now hear from rafael reif thank you very much for the opportunity to speak with you today on this extremely important topic i'm sorry i'm unable to join you live i believe the title of this session raises exactly the right questions or is the us advantage in technology innovation and how do we capture it the first question of course is the easier and more comfortable one to discuss one key advantage is that we are the home to top quality universities which are the home to top quality human capital were also the home to smart investors and funders of course much of that is the case because the us has been a magnet for top talent from around the world and most who come as graduate students in science and technology fields remain here so you would ask why worry well u.s leadership is not mandated by some law of nature we will retain it only if we continuously strengthen our efforts and adapt to new circumstances today we face serious challenges to our technological leadership most notably from china which is willing and able to invest large sums of money both in advancing technology and in bringing it to market their investments are paying off in some of the fields that will be critical to our economic future in national security including artificial intelligence quantum technology quantum computing and clean energy technologies china has of course taken advantage of u.s innovation in ways both legitimate and illegitimate but that alone hardly explains their current success in any event the best strategy for competing with other nations is to believe and invest in ourselves and have a robust research and technology ecosystem in the united states you don't win a race by expending all your energy on tripping up your opponent the worst situation for our national security would be for us to produce nothing that anyone thinks is worth stealing so what is to be done i believe we need to make progress on two fronts one engaging in more use inspired basic research and two doing much more to accelerate the transfer of promising ideas from research to impact the latter especially true for what is sometimes referred to as tough tech that is science based innovations to address big challenges like climate change use inspired or use driven basic research is the kind of work that bell labs was famous for work that push the boundaries of knowledge in an effort to solve specific practical problems the classic example is the invention of the semiconductor that required advances in physics that were so significant they earned a nobel prize but the work was motivated by the need to find a replacement for vacuum tubes which were too big too unreliable to costly and to energy intensive a current example of use inspired basic research is the quest to create ai algorithms that rely on less data that among other things would eliminate the data advantage china has in the ai field such work requires increasing our fundamental understanding of how babies and toddlers learn since they don't need to see a million pictures of a cat to figure out how to identify one the federal government and the private sector grossly underfund use inspired research yet the results of past use inspired research are the foundation of much of our current economic success we certainly still need curiosity-driven discovery research to better understand the world and we still need translational research to help turn what we already know into products but if we neglect use inspired basic research we will not be positioned to sustain our future technological leadership we also need better ways to get the results of all kinds of research from the lab to the market for example today it is hard for companies young or established to get financing to develop advances in the physical sciences and engineering other than software which has a relatively quick potential payback we need to experiment with a variety of new institutions and finance mechanisms to fill that gap undeterred by pre-existing notions or ideology one possible mechanism is what we have put together at mit we created a new independent entity known as the engine it provides fledgling companies in tough tech with guidance facilities and patient financing the engine is now helping 32 companies working in a wide range of fields including fusion energy robotics biotech and steel production having other universities or consortia of universities starts at enterprises in different regions of the u.s might be one approach worth pursuing they might allow us to avoid what happens or too frequently today promising science-based ideas failing to spawn companies or when they succeed the companies either move overseas or simply wither on the vine for lack of financing fortunately there does seem to be a growing recognition in washington and around the country that the status quo is a recipe for slow decline for example the biome administration the senate and the house all support versions of a new directorate at the national science foundation focus on technology and use inspired basic research i strongly support that idea and i hope congress will move quickly to fund it appropriately the senate endless frontier act approved as part of a larger package would also create a program at nsf to help universities experiment with approaches like the engine and senator coons has introduced a bill to create a new federal financing mechanism for startup companies all this attention is welcome but these ideas need to move from proposal to enactment and do so with a sense of urgency the bottom line is this even with recognition of the serious challenge we face just putting more money into existing efforts will not be enough to secure us leadership we need to be inspired by vannevar bush who laid out the fundamentals of our current research system in his 1945 report signs the endless frontier bush was unafraid of proposing a new system for a new era he was uneasy about the future but the power of his report came from his quiet confidence in u.s potential we still have plenty of cause for confidence if we falter it will be because we have become too sad in our ways too complacent too worried about other successes and failings and not enough about our own instead we need to build on our assets in our strengths i look forward to hearing the results of today's discussion and i thank you thanks very much to dr reif for those thought-provoking and and positive remarks and indeed there are very encouraging signs with legislative proposals including those that that were just mentioned we have a terrific panel assembled today to consider the key technology focus areas including those mentioned by dr reif america's advantage and how we capture it i'd like to first introduce dr irwin gianchandani who is a senior advisor for translation innovation and partnerships at the national science foundation erwin thanks so much for joining us erwin joined the national science foundation a number of years ago and has served as the deputy assistant director for computer and information science and engineering it's a directorate with stewardship for more than 900 million in the annual budget and the proposal that's on the table now is is for substantial increase there as well and in the last several years he's led the development launch and implementation of several new nsf investment areas including smart and connected communities and platforms for advanced wireless research erwin thanks for joining us thanks for having me thanks steve binkley is the principal deputy director of the office of science at the u.s department of energy he's a senior career science official in the office of science which is the third largest federal sponsor of basic research in the u.s and primary sponsor and supporter for physical sciences efforts across the u.s dr binkley has held senior positions at sandia national labs the department of homeland security uh and elsewhere in the department of energy steve thanks so much for being part of the conversation well thanks thanks for having me today thank you and um we have next uh dr uh matthew mcmahon matt is director of seed at the national institutes of health well he'll hear a bit more about that today seed coordinates the nih national portfolio of early stage product development projects and provides technical and business support entrepreneurial training and private sector partnership opportunities so seed works with innovators to improve public health and to drive economic growth through leading-edge medical technologies so matt with a great background that you've had not only in the national institutes of health but also having had time working on the hill and uh and dealing with policy issues thanks so much for being in the conversation today thanks pleasure to be here thanks and last but certainly not least michael crazios who served as the fourth chief technology officer of the united states um he's currently managing director at scale ai a data platform for artificial intelligence machine learning and uh it's an exciting time indeed in that uh in that sector uh while he was at the office of science and technology policy he also then served as acting under secretary of defense with oversight for the research portfolios at dod um he uh prior to that was with field capital um principal and chief of staff and deep experience in the investment community early stage investment venture capital and beyond so michael thanks for being part of the conversation today thank you glad to be here so let's get into america's advantages and uh just building on the conversation uh and the opening remarks uh with dr rafael reif what do you see are the key signs of technology domains that are driving the future of the economy and why are they essential to u.s competitiveness so let's just start with your top three and then we'll kind of expand on this um steve let's start with you okay thanks thanks well so within the department of energy we're really focused on clean energy and climate these days uh those have been really strong themes of the research activities across all of the civilian parts of the department for some time and then in the office of science we're also focused on uh micro device technology semiconductors microelectronics etc and then quantum information science in the last couple of years has really risen to the forefront and i'll stop there and turn it over to irwin uh erwin you're top great thanks very much steve so uh first of all thanks very much for having me again and uh it's great to be a part of this discussion this afternoon i'm looking forward to it uh so i'll actually just note that at the national science foundation as folks know we really see ourselves as driving the frontiers of all of science and engineering across all different disciplinary areas and i think that has definitely paid dividends as it has for doe and other agencies on this panel and across the board in terms of the impacts of that fundamental research year in and year out years later in terms of what we see helping people in their daily lives day in and day out i'll just highlight a couple areas uh walt so one is artificial intelligence uh so ai machine learning is certainly an area that nsf has invested in heavily for many many years for for decades now in fact we're seeing the fruits of that labor emerging today in a variety of different settings and use cases across different domains from agriculture to transportation to health care and so forth and so when i talk about ai when we talk about ai at nsf it's really trying to span both foundational areas thinking about new approaches for learning and reasoning and planning and computer vision and so forth but then also use inspired areas i was really inspired by dr reif's comments when he talks about sort of use-inspired basic research thinking about how some of the challenges that we face in education today can potentially see can potentially seed directions for ai and potentially advance both ai as well as how we educate and train our workforce in the future so i'll highlight artificial intelligence and certainly as part of that thinking about aspects of trustworthiness uh fairness and equity as well designing into the systems uh the other one that i'll highlight just picking up on steve's comments quantum information science uh certainly an area that nsf also has long had investments all the way dating back to some of the early discoveries and quantum phenomena and when we talk about qis again we're imagining investments and we have investments across the spectrum from quantum sensing to quantum communication quantum networking quantum computation really across that spectrum trying to be able to forge advances great thanks for those insights irwin and and it's exciting actually to see across the science uh portfolio of uh of the united states the synergy of the work in in basic uh discovery science and uh and then use inspired and translational elements and so on the translational side let's turn it over to matt thanks walter well since i represent nih i'll say uh biotechnology and healthcare delivery but it's actually a good answer anyway because healthcare spending is almost a fifth of our gdp and growing so these areas are going to be so important going into the future and from the nih perspective it's not just our mission to increase our understanding of basic biology but it's to increase that knowledge and apply that knowledge to improve human health so our focus at nih is is not just on technology but it's on technology prevention um how we can integrate those discoveries into improving human health so i think as we go forward we'll be we'll be really focusing on not just technology development at nih but a more holistic view that incorporates basic science translational science clinical science implementation science all the way from discovery to patient impact that's great matt and uh indeed some of our earlier panels um and speakers have have spoken about the transformative impact of the bi-doll act and the ability then to move discoveries into commercial reality uh with the private sector [Music] terrific um michael let's turn it over to you yeah absolutely i think as as you mentioned the question that the crux of it is sort of what technological domains are driving the future of the economy and i think in in my view there's um there's there's actually i i think three that are that are worth mentioning those being artificial intelligence and machine learning quantum information science and in biotech and i think each of these have a very different role to play in the future of the economy but it's sort of a very macro level what what i tend to see in the first one at least with ai is something that that permeates across almost every industry that you can imagine whether you're doing drug discovery in boston whether you're doing resource extraction in texas whether you're doing agriculture in iowa finance in new york you will be using artificial intelligence to power your business and to be able to sort of grow and expand as a as a company and um these are fundamental technologies and and i think at its core ai is not something so we barely scratch the surface of its use cases among most industries in the us so there's a long runway ahead of us on the quantum information science question i think that's so fundamental economy because that's a that's a very good example of an early stage basic pre-competitive type of r d that the federal government should should be working on that will ultimately be able to to to power all the different things that federal and many others have mentioned um and and lastly i i could not agree more with matt on the the scale and size of of of the sort of health care as a piece of our larger economy and our ability as a country to be able to lead on the frontiers of biotech are going to be to be critical drivers of future economic growth great thank you all there's uh a lot of um kind of commonality and uh in the comments that you're making but i'm just wondering are there any other essential domains of science and technology that are important to competitiveness that we haven't yet mentioned um erwin yeah you know what one area that that didn't come up in that set of answers actually is advanced communication advanced networking wireless networks of the future for example and that's an area that i think is of particular interest to us at nsf you know other agencies across the government as well and to the private sector too i mean if you think about uh what we do on a day-to-day basis we are all connected right and and and that connectivity is so critical to being able to access information to being able to access critical life services like healthcare and so forth and so i think in many ways uh advanced communication networks particularly as we see a proliferation of devices and a proliferation of the internet of things those advanced communication services allowing for uh rapid response allowing for low latency and i think an area that we haven't spent as much time talking about in the wireless space until relatively recently is the notion of resiliency as well so really understanding how can you ensure that wireless systems of the future are are going to be resilient to you know one thinks of malicious attacks of course when i say resiliency one thinks of component failures but also there are a whole host of natural disruptions as well that we're seeing you know we saw it in texas earlier this year we saw it with the hurricane ida over the course of the last few weeks and there's a tropical storm hammering the gulf even as we speak today right and and i think every single one of those instances uh and illustrates for us just how critical uh next generation wireless connectivities that will not just be faster but will be resilient to these natural disasters man-made disasters and other service interruptions i think is is something that we don't talk enough about uh the other thing about this that i'll say is you know the impact of the pandemic over the last year year and a half has really illustrated the sort of digital divide that you see across the country as well and so trying to be able to find ways to deploy technologies at lower cost so that we can get wireless connectivity into rural communities wireless connectivities into the parts of the country that are unserved or underserved i think that's another element as far as next generation wireless systems are concerned so i'll throw that one out there all right thanks um matt what would you like to add well um irwin great comments agree with everything you said i'll take a slightly different take on this um as has been laid bare by the troubling example of vaccine hesitancy that we're facing in the united states i think we really need to think about think carefully about how to bolster the integration of new technology into society and that's really going to require a focus on social and behavioral sciences and scientific literacy and a lot of the the really hard problems that we have clearly not solved yet and progress in in a lot of those areas is going to be a prerequisite to realizing the societal benefits of technology in an equitable way and whether it's response to a changing climate or response to a pandemic or even uptake of of broadband and digital technologies i think we're really going to have to think hard about the the social and behavioral issues that that drive people to adopt and benefit from technology or else we're just going to continue to increase the divide between um the people that benefit from our latest technologies whether they be new drugs and medical devices or or electronic vehicles we really need to think hard about how to increase the integration of new technology equitably across our society yeah matt those are really really important points that you and uh and irwin have highlighted the uh the dimensions of society that need to be taken fully into account uh we haven't really spoken very much also about some of the elements of the energy sector that for example the role of critical minerals and and the way in which that industry functions there are really elements of social justice and equity that that global industry needs to address it's certainly an important part of the broad research portfolio um uh here in colorado at the school of mines and uh and and the uh kind of global connectedness for the supply chain advanced manufacturing is another area that we really haven't spoken about very much we're at a time where the semiconductor industry is going through tremendous flux and [Music] manufacturing lines at general motors are currently shut down because of the lack of semiconductor supply in the nation and designation mentioned by dr rafael reif in his opening remarks the beginning of the semiconductor industry was here and where are we today and where is our competitive advantage for the future um so i think that as we look to the future also and steve finkley i just mentioned this as well kind of thinking through the opportunities around around climate and the circular economy there are tremendous opportunities for the united states to uh to drive ongoing advantage [Music] any other topics that you want to raise on uh before we move on uh i would just like to echo certain uh irwin's comments generally on on connectivity and sort of advanced connectivity and in 5g and ultimate 6g in the future i think it's it's such a fundamental and similar ways to ai a fundamental building block to so many other um technologies and uh and i think the just the one thing to kind of add to irwin's comments is i think there's a very important and uh sort of geopolitical issue relating to that and you know our or their united states is sort of frustration or inability to to have a mainstream high quality hardware manufacturer for sort of these uh these sort of advanced communications devices currently i think has been has been a real problem as we try to ensure that you know our allies and and those we trust around the world are using trustworthy technology so it's not only a source of sort of economic growth within the country within our country ourselves but also a necessary concern as as we think around about competitors like huawei around around the world yeah thanks so much uh steve anything to add on this yeah there's one one feature that i would like to mention in this context it's not it's not actually a domain of technology per se but it's a it's a trend that we've been seeing uh here in doe and i know nsf has been seeing the same trends and that is that so many things that we're doing today like qis and machine learning are what i would call cross-disciplinary if you look at for example the doe quantum program uh it spans all six of our top-line programs you know there's materials chemistry advanced computing even in particle physics nuclear physics and even in the fusion programs and so um and you know we had to take special measures over the last four or five years to really nurture and grow that and i know from uh my colleagues in nsf they've seen some similar trends as well i'll stop there thanks so much uh steve that's uh that that's a great insight to add um i think there are really other societal issues as we look at the transition that that the nation needs to address uh as we look for example michael at the adoption of artificial intelligence much more broadly mobility autonomous systems there's going to be huge disruptions within the workforce as we look at goods movement for example and and the number of people who are involved in the in trucking and goods movement and uh and handling throughout the nation and so part of this conversation is also about how do we retool our workforce how do we retool our economy to take advantage of the productivity gains that these areas drive for for the future multiplier effect in in the us economy and our reach globally let's go on now to talk about where america's current advantages are in in these fields and uh and also what are the risks to america's leadership going forward uh michael let me turn it back to you you're on mute still so when when i think about these issues i i sort of generally um view sort of as as a framework or as the sort of fundamental basis for driving leadership and sort of any technological domain um to me it really rests on on four four key pillars that um we as the united states must kind of sort of pursue and maximize on and those are research and development regulations workforce and international cooperation and i think if we are able as a country to deliver on on each of those i think we can maintain our leadership position these in these critical domains and you know generally um if you look at the first at the first domain of reaches and development you know we um generally i think have a a strong advantage in in that space we have the best universities in in the world we we we fund that you know in the neighborhood about 150 billion dollars a year from from the federal government um over the last 50 years the the share of research that's actually done by the private sector has has increased dramatically and it's not only the federal government now that's pursuing this r d the links that are between our our private sector um our federal government and our academic institutions are stronger than ever and so i think from that standpoint um we're we're moving ahead quite quite quickly i think the one thing that we need to make sure that we're doing is that as a as a country we continue to recognize and understand what are the over the horizon technology we need to keep investing in and make sure that we don't we don't sort of miss that but but our general sort of free market approach to innovation i think is is is is in a great spot i think as the second domain around around regulations i think um as a country i think we still uh by far have uh the the greatest set of regulations to encourage innovation in the world um today i think even among um if you sort of uh just just exclusively look them on our sort of democratic allies as best potential competitors i think we by far have it much easier for for uh scientist innovators entrepreneurs to start businesses and to and to move projects forward i think what we as what the government should continue to always think about is how can you remove regulatory barriers innovation find ways to kind of encourage progress i think the third pillar of workforce i think is an area where um you know it goes back to some of the comments that president um reif made you know we do have the best universities here in the united states but i think one thing back to what you were saying um waltel earlier is what people need to recognize is that you know only forty percent of of americans have college degrees there's six percent of americans who who are not college educated and it is incumbent on us as a country to make sure that we provide the tools and the resources in order to retrain and reskill so many of our fellow americans to be able to take advantage of these great technologies and as a federal government and as many private sector companies think about sort of their future and how they can sort of impact the country it's critical to to not only exclusively focus on on how we can have the most cutting edge technology but also how you know the rest of the population can can actually absorb that into the into the words that they do and i think the last area which we have seen sort of great progress over the last 50 or 60 years has been on this question of international cooperation how can we join with our sort of smart brilliant amazing allies around the world to work on sort of large uh scientific endeavors that we couldn't do alone and i think steve probably has a lot to comment on this but it's very obvious and does a leader in this that there's some projects we can't do alone it's fantastic that we can bring others into the fold um and i think if you zoom out even more and think about it from a sort of geopolitical perspective you know we must come together with our allies to make sure that our technologies the future are built in a way that reflect the values of the united states and our allies and there's there's many various actors and adversaries around the world today that do not share our values and and uh if we let them sort of run ahead um the issues are that that there are those technologies will affect those values instead of ours so generally i feel like for us it's it's very important that we that we focus on r d regs workforce international cooperation and broadly speaking i think we're well well positioned to to kind of maintain our leadership position if we do it right yeah absolutely steve let me turn it over to you i mean as we look at our international collaboration and really the role of big science big physics are working in the polar regions it is a it's an international uh collaboration for science um what uh what would you add there yeah i would say well obviously the particle physics program uh has been actively international for in essentially the history of the program um but i think in the last four or five years we've learned that we need to be broader in scope and really across all of the programs in the department of energy at least internationalization is really important is really key uh and as as michael pointed out there are some projects that are so large that they really cannot be undertaken by a single country and and so the history of working with cern is a good example of that um and then you know we're looking at international collaborations uh um beyond that and then the other the other thing that i think is important for keeping our edge in this area is the level of investment and the capabilities the scientific capabilities the scientific instruments light sources of neutron sources and so on high performance computing um and you can look at the pandemic as as an example where that has really paid off i mean there was an awful lot of work done at the light sources uh characterizing the covid uh virus uh in the early stage of the pandemic uh and then other you know other science aspects were brought to bear in that as well and i'll stop there great steve what are your views on our advantages and risks um i think our risks well a key risk is being too insular uh you know we with respect to international activities we need to be and we've been doing this nsf doe and other science agencies have been working with the state department pretty pretty hard over the last couple of years but i think we still have a ways to go in having robust uh collaborations with partners international partners that are like-minded uh i think that's that's one of the key areas that we really have to double down and work in yeah i mean i'm thinking too steve of the us position in uh neutron science for example and and the current um lack of capacity to support the uh kind of the breadth of the research community there and and from my perspective with these kind of key user facilities the united states needs to continue to look uh to drive the capacity forward to ensure that our research and application space is supported matt let me turn it over to you what are our advantages and our risks well i think um we we've heard uh a really nice overview michael's overview of the the different pillars of our of of our advantages are really clear i think uh one one interesting component of that is that the the diversity of our population and of the um the areas of interest that we have in the united states is really a key advantage because like there there's so much health disparity in the united states and and we've seen that in in the kovic response just striking just troubling disparities between the effect of covet on different populations but the way we the way we think of diversity in the biomedical space is that people people work on the issues that affect themselves and their communities and and those are the things that drive people and and spark their passion and their creativity and so that is the reason why we need diversity within the biomedical workforce it's not diversity for diversity sake it's it's the that diversity of opinion and life experiences will lead to a much greater diversity of solutions to our health care challenges and whether it's health care or agriculture or energy or even i.t i think that that diversity of opinion and that diversity of experience across our country we need to really harness that and turn that to our advantage um so that's one thing and then another thing that has been mentioned is we we've seen a real striking example around the need to kind of re-shore manufacturing and in the pandemic response whether it's in pharmaceuticals or or vaccine manufacturing and i think a real renewed focus on supply chain issues and um the the issues around maintaining not only our dominance in developing some of these advanced technologies but maintaining the capabilities in the supply chain and the labor pool that allows us to use that to keep the manufacturing here in the united states or bring it back to the united states it's not just around national security but it's around the economic security that spreads those those advantages over all levels of of our society not just at the highest levels where technologies that develop but in the in the manufacturing space too so those are a few areas i think are worth exploring some more yeah and really this whole theme of inclusion and nationwide participation in the in the emerging economy and in the innovation economy and and system has been just a theme that's flowed throughout uh this uh this conference uh and so that really speaks to the the need for uh for developing uh talent at all levels and in all parts for the benefit of the nation and especially to re uh retool and position ourselves for adopting the emerging technology that are going to drive productivity um let me turn it over to you at nsf has got a very strong uh role in workforce uh development in particular um the stem capable workforce uh what are your thoughts on our advantages and our risks yeah well thanks uh it's always tough going last with this group because there are some great ideas there that were just uh articulated but let me touch actually i'll come back to workforce in just a second if i may well let me touch on a couple of points actually because you asked the question what do we see as sort of our competitive advantages sort of what are our current advantages and risks and so i like to think of things as advantages and how do we play up those advantages and i think one that michael alluded to a bit others have alluded to a bit but that i'll just really underscore is the notion of public-private partnerships that we have in this country sort of the and i think this was covered on a panel earlier this week but the innovation ecosystem that we have here in the us is really incredibly unique in terms of being able to bring together academia industry as well as government and government at all levels i should say federal state and local to be able to cultivate some of the great advances that we see and that we're taking advantage of on a day-to-day basis and i think you know a lot of other countries actually look to emulate that innovation ecosystem that we have here in the u.s a couple of just you know examples that are just top of mind for me of some success stories in that regard you know we've talked a bit about the pandemic matt you talked about the pandemic for example you know there's the kogan 19 high performance computing consortium that was launched within days of the situation being declared a pandemic i think a partnership between ostp nsf doe ibm and a whole slew of other actors from across the public and private spaces bringing together computational resources of all different kinds and really making those resources available so that we could for example develop a computational model of the spike protein in sars cove 2 to much better understand precisely how the virus goes to work and really attacks the human body and i think um you know that that by the way that particular research effort on the coca-19 consortium won the gordon bell prize from acm association of computing machinery last fall and so i think that that's an example of a public-private partnership that really serves to have impact you know i keep coming back to sort of use-inspired basic research one of the themes that president reiff talked about at the outset and another example that i'll touch on because it's just near near to my heart right now is the notion of the nsf uh ai research institute's program uh and so that's an illustration of where we've worked collaboratively with our colleagues across the interagency so multiple federal agencies that have come together plus now multiple companies in the private sector space as well and as a result not only do we get additional resources to be able to support more institutes but we get that subject matter expertise in a particular area that's so critical to being able to shape the research questions inform the research questions that we're trying to tackle and allow us to also bring data sets and other types of resources and assets to there uh and you know i think some folks uh on the panel and in the audience probably are well aware the ai institute's program because of those partnerships today we've been able to touch 40 states plus the district of columbia with the ai institutes that we've funded across the last couple of years and and and we're working toward you know that geography of innovation across the whole of the country um briefly i know where i i took a little bit of time on that first point i'll just come back to the second point around talent creation you know that i could not agree more with matt's comment about uh people working on issues that impact them but also the need to be able to meet people where they are uh regardless of uh institution type regardless of geography community that they're located in regardless of their particular background and you know we have an opportunity i think to be able to advance curricular and instructional offerings at community colleges at minority serving institutions create partnerships again between schools government and private sectors so that we can provide students at all levels with experiential opportunities that pair with the curriculum that they get in the classroom so that they're much more ready to be practitioners or entrepreneurs for example on day one and so i think that there's an opportunity for us starting at the k-12 level and we've done some of this with advanced placement computer science principles the single largest launch of an ap class in the college board 60-year history because of the way the curriculum is taught all the way up to community colleges four-year universities and then beyond it's a real opportunity to really cultivate talent growth domestically here in the us combined with what we certainly have benefited from over the years with uh talent from abroad as well that's terrific uh thanks so much uh irwin let me let me address the next uh sort of combined question here to uh to matt and and to michael um so how does the united states need to secure a durable advantage in these areas and what roles do intellectual property and standards play in our competitive advantage matt you're involved in kind of the translational use inspired elements and seeing that come to the marketplace as your ultimate goal so why don't you start sure um great question um i think uh one of the things that erwin said is is so important to this issue which is about giving people thinking about um those how the work that they're doing can be fit into their life experiences that kind of experiential component i'm a big fan of use inspired research i think anything that helps bridge the gap between discovery and application it is really useful and i think that part of the goal there is maybe building on what erwin said is to to continue the goal of training more more kind of dual purpose people like clinicians scientists or scientists with an entrepreneurial background or encouraging people to cross borders between disciplines encouraging scientists to do more work in public policy encouraging scientists to do more work in public communications i mean i think that those kind of crossovers and getting people out of the silos that they work in giving them experience in other areas is really critical to kind of crossing that divide it's it's not so much just about pushing more of the basic science into use-inspired research it's more about creating an ecosystem that allows us to benefit from the serendipitous discoveries that occur in basic science and immediately start marching them through the r d pipeline in a really intentional way you know people talk about the valley of death but there are so many individual valleys of death depending on what area you work and you think your area is the valley of death and that's just because the every one of those transitions is an opportunity for that technology to to fail and not making it to the next level so i think just being more intentional about the process of innovation and understanding that process and strengthening those connections at the different points whether it be between basic science and early translational science or whether it be between um university development and handoff into the private sector um or or even you know uh manufacturing scale up from an existing technology so i think those are some areas where where we can really um make some improvements that will that will build upon the the solid foundation we have with the best research universities in the world and really sustained investments and and r d that that we will continue to have michael let me turn it over to you on the roles that intellectual property and standards play in our competitive advantage yes to me i think standards is probably one of the most most important things that is is sort of um most misunderstood generally in sort of our competitive race around you know in on these on these particular technologies i think i think one of the the most obvious examples to me that i think many people are probably familiar with is it's kind of the the challenges that we're facing with with 5g today versus um you know not the so many challenges we faced when when 4g rolled out many years ago and i think um you know standards played a very key role in our ability to kind of uh dominate in a sense the the way that sort of 4g networks were going were going to be built and in a way we we've struggled when it comes to 5g and i think it goes back i think to to something that's it's very interesting about the standards process and i think walt you probably have far more experience and more details on this than i do but at a very high level uh you know standards are not typically you know unilateral or not unilateral decisions made by government they're not a government-led negotiation this is something where it's actually very hard to coordinate you have a bunch of sort of private sector actors that all have their own individual goals that but generally they all sort of agree versus against other company other countries that have their own goals but i think trying to to sort of corral the private sector and kind of use the organizations like nist and others to sort of bring those organizations together is actually very very tough and if you can if you can get that recipe right you can make a big difference and i think we're seeing it today in a number of technologies whether it's first off with what we're what's going on with advanced connectivity and for 5g and 60 standards but we also see it with artificial intelligence where there's a wide variety of standards agencies across across the world and erwin is probably even more familiar than i am with these and we have we have sort of uh uh essentially adversaries out there that are pursuing standards which are in in in you know in support of use cases which we as americans can't stand for so how can we bring together industry uh along with our government actors in this sort of um you know very very federated approaches i think is a big is a big challenge for us absolutely and i think that there have been some recent proposals um to have nis take an even more visible uh coordinating role and the idea there michael of course is to have government to be the strongest possible partner to industry in a private sector-led system of of standardization um but with a competitive dynamic that that has moved dramatically with highly organized uh approaches by uh by the international community um and then the other aspect around intellectual property and the important role that that baidol has played um you know i think we've uh we've really seen just tremendous uh benefits but also um on ongoing risks that there's lack of clarity around the importance of ip to the uh to the entire innovation cycle and uh and to uh and to technology transfer so um let me turn it uh over to irwin now uh with any comments that you might make on uh and you mentioned public-private partnerships as being so essential for u.s innovation and for u.s advantage from public investments in in science and technology what are your thoughts about taking that to the next level yeah so that's a great question walt maybe i'll offer a couple of reflections actually building on what some of my colleagues said so first um you know matt pointed out how we have to really think about educating a cadre of folks for all different types of jobs right could be policy setting could be communications and so forth you know i'll i'll actually also note that in tandem with that we need to be doing i think a better job of thinking about technology transfer and where technology transfers to the what is the translational impact of the research that we support we spend a lot of our time talking about public private partnerships and cultivating lab to market platforms for example so we have for instance programs like small business innovation research small business technology transfer research nsf pioneered the icore program innovation core program that a number of agencies have adopted to try to take different cuts at how do you get across that proverbial valley um in different parts of that valley so that you don't get trapped and i think that that's absolutely something that we need to double down on as we think about uh how do we capitalize on the research that we're enabling and how do we think about technology uh transfer going forward in translation but we also need to think about other forms of translational impact too and that is examples might be open source ecosystems as well how do you cultivate for example pathways to non-profits that could then lend themselves to managing and stewarding an open source ecosystem how do you cultivate pathways to for example innovation at the uh state and local levels that can really engender change in terms of cities and communities and the services that folks provide right uh and so i think that uh you know there are education pathways too in terms of trying to enact uh institutional change that builds upon the research education research that we support institutional change across all different layers of the enterprise too so i'll just say that you know as i think about uh how do we sort of reinvigorate public-private partnerships how do we uh reinvigorate sort of tech transfer more generally one of the things that i always come back to is we should be thinking about tech transfer a bit more broadly perhaps than the way that we've generally thought of it up until this point thanks for those thoughts irwin and indeed it's a very uh very broad spectrum isn't it and it's all about taking advantage of all the dimensions of of technology transfer and and the the benefits of public-private partnership matt what would you add uh this is a big part of your whole uh portfolio with uh with seed yeah the the bi-dole act obviously is has been a tremendous assist has had a tremendous impact in biotechnology where the road the time in the pathway between an initial discovery and a product or a service that is available available to patients can be a decade or more and that's partly just because of the the safety and effectiveness requirements that are required to take a regulated medical technology all the way but the consequence of that is that the the moment of innovation is separated by a great amount of time between their and the potential patient and financial impact of of that discovery so the baidual act provides that that real incentive for those early the early stage innovators mainly the universities to really cultivate and de-risk those technologies because without that financial incentive that they hold on to at the very beginning it's very hard for them to to go through that process of de-risking and moving those technologies so so i think that's one piece that's really critical but but i i really want to agree with what erwin said about a broader view of of what technology transfer can can really be all about for us because buy dole is providing a financial incentive but but there really needs to be a broader understanding of the societal advantage of those um those transfers of technologies and as an example um repurpose drugs so drugs that no longer have patent protection but can have tremendous impact on on on populations around the world and in the united states indications new indications that might be um that might be very helpful for our health care system and a lot of the discussion and a lot of the um kind of issues that are under discussion around baidual are around tweaking the financial incentives for those kinds of activities um you know companies companies making decisions that are based solely on the intellectual property status of an invention that that allows that financial benefit but i think if if we have a much broader view especially at the university level of the potential societal impact of transferring technologies from um the university out into the wild i think it could have a huge impact and it's not just in healthcare i think it's in in many different areas open source and shared data is another great example people there's a big focus right now to kind of modify the promotion and tenure guidelines at universities to help value innovation and entrepreneurship as opposed to the more traditional measures of publications and things like that and i think that that also plays into this valuing innovation valuing open data and shared data sources at the university level will really go a long way to kind of operationalizing um a broader definition of what success is in the technology transfer world yeah i think thanks uh for those perspectives uh on that let's say one more thing yeah just just really quickly because i i was just inspired by something that matt said you know i'll just i'll just add you know this is why i think use-inspired basic research is is you know thinking about that not to say that we're going away from discovery strictly discovery curiosity driven research we need that just the same right that that is so critical you know my my boss at nsf the director of nsf these days talks about sort of this um double helix effect where you have exploratory research that feeds into use-inspired research which then feeds back to further exploratory research and certainly i resonate with that but i think that the notion of use-inspired research and co-design and co-creation where you have some of those folks who who have real use cases and challenges that they face on a day-to-day basis and have expertise in those areas whether it be in mobility or disaster response or what have you serving to help shape the research activities that we pursue uh and and motivate and inspire those activities so that they then in turn um can pilot out potential ai ai based algorithms uh potential wireless techniques and so forth in those very same settings and contexts i think that's so uh critical in many ways to being able to sort of turn the tide a little bit from this notion of kind of a market push when we do the research that we do in our country largely to more of a market pull a market demand where that research is work that is is really being is really critical to being able to advance a particular use case and there is a whole set of state there are a whole set of stakeholders who are deeply invested in the success of that research being translated again in a variety of different ways to market to small business to a startup but also to these other forms of translation that we talked about and i think that sort of paradigm shift from kind of a the traditional market push to more market just a little bit more of a market pull can be really valuable in some respects that's great let me turn michael to you i mean this whole notion of getting the balance right between uh sort of open source and open data versus those that are really commercially attractive and uh and can help drive economic advantage uh what's your take on that what's the right balance yeah i i think there is there's no there's no easy answer that i think uh you know a great example in the autonomous vehicle space that that often is discussed is sort of how how the avs how the av industry is developing here united states versus in in china and and there you can imagine there's you know essentially a standardized sets of maps and other types of of sort of you know prerequisites for ai to happen that are essentially that's just how it's done and every av company in in china has to do it while well in the us each of our you know individual sort of autonomous vehicle companies is relentlessly competing with each other to to kind of develop their own their own maps and standards around they kind of how how they're developing so i i i think in in some ways it's it can it can be it's important to think very carefully about where can you find collaboration in in respects in areas that don't necessarily um take away from your your ip or your competitive edge and i think just to you know stick with the av example i think one one area for example is where the department of transportation is thinking about how you can pool certain data together in order to create you know safer vehicles ultimately and if there is some data that you're able to to kind of as an industry come together and share it can it can make a difference um what i am curious is is sort of how how matt thinks about this issue because i think this this data sharing issue especially in this in the in the healthcare space is a huge huge issue and importance um you know the ability to to be able to sort of pool large data together now in order to drive to drive research everyone knows there's potential there but the the challenges associated with moving that data around has persisted for years and i think are you know certainly far from being solved yeah it's it's an important issue and i one of the ways that that we at nih think about this and it is it is related to standards and the the role of government is in healthcare um one of the things we like to do is start at the very beginning and and use our kind of convening power in our in our government role to to set common data elements and and define data dictionaries by by convening people together and getting a kind of early agreement on on issues like that from the very start and and that kind of work enables has has reverberating effects um as you go forward in a discipline so really like stepping up to the plate early in the game um when when an area when a specific area of biomedical research is is fresh and using our convening power to try and lock in some of those common data elements and and and voluntary standards is a real help and saves a lot of time later on yeah absolutely these are areas of focus that are now really high priority aren't they is getting to that point of of standards and in data and interoperability that will enable the greatest speed and agility um in our innovation process i'm going to turn it over now to steve uh for your thoughts on uh kind of these uh these broader issues of of of uh data sharing i mean certainly this has been a big part of the department of energy sort of big science programs but also then you mentioned at the very outset steve about one of the pillars of focus at department of energy is the future of quantum information science how do we prepare the workforce uh as we look to the future of what what qis is going to mean in all of its dimensions the future of jobs and uh in networking and um in devices and and in quantum computing so let me give you that combined uh question as you look at data sharing and workforce sure well let me start with workforce um in the quantum area getting the right level of skills and the right quality of people in the workforce is really a challenge uh there presently there are many many companies that are that are trying to hire people that have quantum expertise um and the pipeline is uh you know they're they're it's the pipeline is very weak actually and so um i think well as the department of energy what we're doing is targeted investments uh in workforce at multiple levels you know it's not just it's not just quantum engineers or quantum scientists but it's also technicians people that can fabricate devices um people that can write software and so on uh and so you really have to attack it at all all of those levels uh and obviously the place where places where the workforce come from are mostly universities and so you know we've been very careful to try to establish partnerships with key universities and provide funding for specifically for workforce development on the data front um you know it's that's really an area that has changed dramatically in the last decade especially in the biology area or biosciences there are you know dozens of data sets that are being generated with genomic data microbiomic data and so on and having those data sets the online and also the interoperable is is really really important and there's a fair amount of discussion going on in interagency meetings about how best to do this and it's also going to require some pretty significant sustained investments as we go into the future yeah so a follow-up to this and also one of our questions from the audience today is is tied in with all these broad issues around the the future of workforce um and how to improve scientific literacy and support for it in the united states as part of of uh addressing the workforce challenges um uh erwin let me turn that back to you for a moment yeah sure thanks walt so you know when i when i think about workforce i i'd say that they're actually as steve was alluding to several different dimensions of this right there is the current workforce and thinking about what are the steps that we can take to reskill and upskill the current workforce in anticipation of emerging technologies the introduction of new ai based techniques or quantum platforms for instance how do we get the workforce uh prepared for these emerging capabilities and i think that that's really a pervasive issue one that starts um with the workforce within the u.s government but then also expanding to across the country as well and we've been looking at ways in which we can potentially uh develop uh boot camps and other opportunities for being able to facilitate some of that uh you know one one one example is uh uh trying to train uh the teachers in some sense professional development for teachers at the k-12 level for new and emerging technology areas how do you put together professional development in a rigorous way for for teachers so that they can help train uh the next generation cadre as well um so that's that's one sort of dimension in terms of reskilling and upskilling the current workforce another one that i'll highlight is thinking about what does the future of of work look like and how do we anticipate that and again at the community college level at msi's at four-year universities how do we revise the curricular offerings and i'm a big fan as i said earlier of pairing those curricular offerings with experiential opportunities so that students have an ability to be able to test out what they're learning uh and and be better prepared for job prospects into the future and and we've actually been working on potential partnerships again here too it's not just about the research but also in the education arena how do we potentially partner with the private sector to infuse some of that expertise into the redesign of potential curricular offerings that we have and then the third one that um we haven't gotten into as much is training for the entrepreneurial workforce of the future as well so we've spent some time talking about tech transfer and and thinking through uh how you uh leverage bi-dole and various offerings but there are programmatics like i-core and then also broad notions of entrepreneurial fellowships where you allow students coming out of an i-corps instruction for instance to where they assess whether there is market potential for their research concept to then be able to take a year or two and and have the funding to be able to take that research result and and get it across that proverbial valley to be able to see how do you make the connections with private sector and investors and so forth to get something off the ground and i think that type of an effort can potentially be really valuable in training the next generation of entrepreneurs as well in terms of being prepared for uh the technology that's coming out of our laboratories uh into the future so just some thoughts in terms of thinking through these three dimensions and i do think that increasingly it's it's it's it's critically important for us to think about uh the you know designing into the curriculum at all levels a sense that speaks to you know the question that you referred to from the audience about uh scientific literacy and understanding the value add of science and technology to our day-to-day lives you got to start early to be able to engender that through throughout yeah absolutely i'm going to turn next to uh to matt um and uh and another kind of uh combined question here from uh from the audience um is looking at the role of social and behavioral sciences and and i know matt you've commented before about the importance of diversifying the biomedical workforce and the education process there as we look to organizational studies helping better understand the process of adoption and utilizing new technologies both technological and organizational changes are needed what what are your perspectives on matt and and also we're starting to see some real uh change within the private sector as well um what are your thoughts yeah it's a great question um at nih we're basically organized into 27 different institutes and centers that are for the most part focused on body type or or disease type but we we do have a cross-cutting office the office of behavioral and social sciences research and and part of what we're trying to do at nih is to instill those those types of activities and that kind of thinking across all of the different components that we fund um and i cover such a broad range of of topics that it's it's really um important to to think about those issues in all of the areas where we're working another another area that's key here is is really around interagency coordination and also cross-disciplinary coordination so things like behavioral economics um areas that are not traditionally funded by nih can be really powerfully combined with the types of work that we do find in some really interesting projects and and some of the work that nsf has supported in the science of team science is really critical to that how do we integrate how do we really effectively integrate um multi-disciplinary teams to be able to combine science and literature and literacy science and communication science and behavioral economics together to to really come up with durable solutions another example is just working together with the fda and the center for medicare and medicaid services so integrating a real thought process of okay if you look down the road what what is the use case what is the real world application of these technologies and ultimately what cms is worried about is what is the real world impact and are we willing to pay for that that's really the role of cms but bringing that perspective in early into the the development pathway is really important because it forces innovators to to bridge that gap between a potential technological solution and a use case and a real world impact so those are just a few ways that we're trying to address that at nih well and that's a great set of examples matt and having uh not too long ago joined colorado school of mines which is one of our leading engineering institutions there's a program on humanitarian engineering bringing together all the elements that are looking at uh at adoption and and societal issues and uh social justice and ethics and uh and anthropology and and kind of looking at native communities and their uh particular interests and and and needs uh and so it really does beg a much more broadly based uh focus of education and preparation if you will that looks holistically at the at the whole cycle of value creation and societal adoption that that looks at uh at the dimensions of of the the human side for sustainable uh development and growth there's another question that uh that has popped in on what role does blockchain and distributed ledger technology uh play within the spaces mentioned and obviously we've seen uh dramatic growth in cryptocurrencies including the uh crypto version of the yuan right so another dimension of uh competition between the united states and and china i'm going to turn that one over to michael um you know this is something that you've been been living with over the past years how do you see that uh plays into the technology areas that we've been talking about yeah you know in some ways a csr distributed ledger technology very similar to to even the ai or quantum discussions we're having these are technologies that can apply sort of in interesting ways across a wide wide variety of industries and i think um i think where we often get tripped up as sort of we we tend to sort of conflate things related to cryptocurrency with things related to distributed ledger technologies and and i think it's important to sort of separate those two and think about them a little bit differently and if you just you bracket crypto for a second i think distributed ledger is something that you know obviously has a lot of interesting use cases has you know been applied sort of for supply chain purposes for some time now and many others you could sort of you know guarantee that the providence of certain certain items um i don't know if certainly matt maybe familiar with some of these examples or if you want to be tracking vaccines across the world as an example or uh or a type of technology you can use to to kind of track things so i i think to me it's it's something that that continues to to build and grow and just like any of these emerging technologies i think it's up to individual industries to think about the very unique ways that they can be applied absolutely these have really broad application areas and um and healthcare examples i think are are genuinely top of mind here um and uh considering uh you know elements of privacy and and cyber security and trust uh within the digital economy and health care system and so on they they really all come together we're coming towards the end of our time and i'm gonna throw one right back at michael you started off some of your earlier comments uh talking about four pillars uh so what more might we do that's to substantially strengthen u.s innovation policy and and support u.s leadership position as we're in this tremendous competitive dynamic at this time what comes to top of mind for you building on your four pillars yeah i think really the first when it comes to the the research and development question i think what's unique about the the us innovation ecosystem is that you know we are so diverse academics are doing stuff the private sector is even within federal government we don't have a ministry of science i mean we have you know folks from doe we have folks from nih with folks from nsf and many other agencies all conducting very very important research and sort of the beauty of our system is that those those individual organizations can pursue research independently but we all have sort of thematic goals that we're all trying to sort of at a high level try to achieve so i think where you can add a lot of value is being able to sort of help bring sort of some level of better coordination among all these various entities and we've seen bipartisan legislation establishing coordination offices for artificial intelligence and for quantum information science at the white house as examples of ways that you sort of can bring these agencies that have you know their own individual pursuits but somehow bring them together towards such a larger goal and i think a lot can be done to kind of keep that that coordination going i think on the on the regulatory front i think the one thing that the u.s needs to continue to do really is is to to make sure we don't fall into the trap that the europeans have for many years where their approach to regulation is the first thing we must ask is what are the harms and then figure out what rules we need to pass to eliminate those harms i think the better way to kind of approach a regulatory question is is what changes do we need to make to drive further innovation and if you if you look at the question through that lens versus the eliminating harms lens i think you end up with the system that we have today in the us which is much much more innovation friendly um to me on on what can we do better on the workforce front i think one thing that that we need to really need to continue to work harder on is better coordination among the federal scholarship dollars that are spent across our federal agencies we have tons of money going out for a wide variety of reasons to a large number of students all across the country and if there are certain critical and emerging technologies that are necessary for our national security economic growth we should prioritize scholarships and grants for for those particular um those particular types of studies and it's it's very hard to kind of get your arms around that i remember i was working with irwin and many others on this for years uh but but if we can one day i think we can we can make it we can make a very very big difference uh and just kind of in closing on international front um i think anyone who's sort of dealt in a national game and that 90 of what you do is just kind of talk about how important the issues are and get together um i think to me what we need to push sort of these international community organizations to do is move from principles to actual action what can we do to actually drive bench research and the areas that we and our allies all agree are the priorities i think we do those things we can we can really do uh really drive substantial strength in our system wonderful great uh summary comments uh michael part of our kind of closing lightning round here uh 30 seconds or less uh each of our speakers what final thoughts do you have that would uh would summarize your your thinking on america's advantages and how we capture them to deliver innovation value let me start with erwin sure 30 seconds i'll just say i think you've heard this afternoon what's what's so great about the innovation ecosystem that we have and the emerging technologies that we continue to have leadership roles in and there's a lot of talk of concern about uh maintaining that competitive advantage but i think that there's a tremendous opportunity potential for us to be able to continue to do that and there is as as president reich said at the outset bipartisan legislation that's working its way through congress um and so so i i think my outlook on on this is very positive as we look to the future wonderful steve over to you yeah i'll be brief also um i think darwin summarized it very nicely i think we're we're in a place where we can make really significant gains um and i think uh keeping the focus on the four pillars that michael mentioned is very important i especially resonate with the uh in our in the international area let's get down to actually doing some work together rather than just talking and and so um you know i think the outlook is very positive lots of challenges but uh overall positive great matt over you yeah great great comments all around in my view just building upon what we've already done strengthening all of those components the workforce the early stage rnd the handoffs to the private sector um and really really building upon all of those in an intentional way is is really the way to go and as far as kind of competitiveness goes um maybe maybe a way to to to reframe the international collaboration pieces it's not so much about competitiveness as it is kind of raising all boats with with technology and innovation and so many of our challenges like health care and and climate and energy are are really global issues and so um really capitalizing on what we've already built in the united states and thinking about how we can work together with our international partners to effectively address these global problems will will serve everyone well great uh with with that i'd just like to thank uh this group and uh and for that great uh set of summary uh items been an important part of the work center for strategic and international studies and its focus on intellectual property and innovation policy dr john hamrie let me just turn it back to you for your remarks as we bring this to a close well uh walton all of these remarkable colleagues thank you this has been a splendid conversation and i was taking notes and thank goodness it's recorded because i you know i'm going to have to go back and fill in the details so it was really splendid and on behalf of all of our listeners and all those who will be listening because we're getting a remarkable uh download from people wanting to see it later thank you thank you all for doing this i'll be very brief walt and of course my thanks to you for this session and for leading on this effort you know you know every president has a very simple mission statement and that is to do what it takes to survive as a nation and to prosper as a people i mean that's that's the mission statement for american government and with the the exception of the threat of nuclear war over the last 70 years america didn't have to worry about either one of those we didn't really have to worry about our national survival we didn't have to worry about our prosperity but now we do we're now entering a period of time where we have very real issues and america is a divided nation we are divided between people who have seen their wages be static for 30 years at the same time that we've got people that live in the digital economy and other advanced uh elements of our economy and their they've got wind in their back and they're racing into a bright future i don't know how we hold our country together unless we do a much more diligent and effective job of bringing innovation throughout the country to invent ideas to stimulate our universities to be creative to strengthen by dole by dole has as matt said by dole was a phenomenal uh accelerator of progress in america how we how we take a sensible approach in promoting venture capital how venture capital is going to help bring these ideas together we've got a lot we can do together and i believe it really comes down to that vital mission for the country to survive as a nation to prosper as a people and i think you've given us today a marvelous road map and i would say thank you to all the other speakers we've had throughout the week and so walt i thank you i thank the all of you you know the the four of you today for this marvelous presentation and we're very grateful to have this uh behind us now so that we can build on the next round thank you you

Channel: Center for Strategic & International Studies

Views: 1,118

Rating: 4.625 out of 5

Keywords: Center for Strategic and International Studies, CSIS, bipartisan, policy, foreign relations, national security, think tank, politics

Id: M3NMjyUQVz8

Length: 92min 18sec (5538 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 16 2021