Like many Americans, I worry about the future of our country. At 67, maybe it’s a function of my age, but I fear our nation’s global leadership is slipping. As the CEO of a major technology association, I am uniquely positioned to see how our innovation-focused competitive advantage is also fading. We can’t let it. America must rekindle its commitment to innovation and take a firm hold of its role as a leader on the global stage.
As a frequent traveler to Europe and Asia, I have a unique view of the world’s wildly varied approaches to regulating the innovation industry. One great example is South Korea, a U.S. ally home to well-known tech companies like Hyundai, Kia, LG and Samsung. South Koreans are entrepreneurial as a matter of survival. They are motivated, focused and hardworking, and prioritize studying math, science and engineering. It’s no surprise that more than 10,000 South Koreans, including top government officials, will travel to Las Vegas in January for CES, our global innovation event. Some 500 South Korean companies will exhibit at CES 2024.
The U.S. relationship with China ebbs and flows, but as the late Secretary of State Henry Kissinger noted in his last public speech in November, both countries can choose their destiny: working collaboratively to improve the world or engaging in destructive and bitter fights to destroy it. Chinese President Xi Jinping has prioritized social harmony and technological progress over individual rights, unlike the American approach that protects freedoms of association, marriage, religion and speech. Xi’s approach raises human rights concerns but drives progress in critical technology fields like self-driving cars and artificial intelligence.
Europe has chosen a different path. While respecting human rights and privacy, and boasting many premier innovation hubs, Europe’s laws burden businesses with heavy taxes and restrictions. At the same time, EU policymakers attack, fine and restrict America’s top technology companies.
While the U.S. still dominates innovation, our government’s recent actions are weakening our grasp. Rather than prioritizing and protecting the innovation lead that our country has built over decades, our policymakers have simply assumed that world leadership is our nation’s manifest destiny. This assumption threatens our future.
The facts are scary. We lag in science, math, and engineering. With a few notable exceptions, the business world prioritizes four-year college degrees over technical education or apprenticeship programs. Yet even students at our top universities are uninformed about basic historical facts like the Holocaust. Meanwhile, our political culture is marked by chaos, and our leadership is disconnected from most Americans’ views.
Perhaps even more concerning, many of our political leaders resist innovations that would disrupt the status quo. We lack a national strategy that encourages or allows self-driving vehicles. Trial lawyers block federal legislation to protect the money train flowing from traffic carnage. We are abandoning the American commitment to progress, as broadcasters spend millions in lobbying convince Congress to mandate century-old AM radio technology in new cars. Despite bipartisan concern about the exploding U.S. debt, the two parties’ leading presidential candidates refuse to discuss real solutions.
Worse, the U.S. government attacks and punishes our most innovative and biggest companies. The U.S. Trade Representative recently stopped fighting for pro-American digital trade rules out of fear that U.S. companies will benefit. The Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman disfavors big company acquisitions and even abandoned the antitrust legal standard favoring consumers and innovators. The FTC threatens to sue or often actually sues companies for providing Americans free services and low prices in times of high inflation. Not only do these policies crimp funding of new ventures, they hurt the U.S. economy. They also offer competitors like China a huge advantage in their campaign to surpass U.S. tech leaders.
Don’t get me wrong: it’s not all bad. The United States remains a leader in many cutting-edge technology fields, producing more “unicorn” startups than any other country. It’s no accident that early generative AI tools like ChatGPT were born in the United States. We have opted not to mimic the European Union by rushing into a permission-based approach to innovation. Instead, as I witnessed in a recent closed-door Senate AI Roundtable with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and a bi-partisan group of Senators, Congress is taking a thoughtful and collaborative approach to legislation on artificial intelligence, which is potentially this era’s most transformative and beneficial innovation.
History shows that global leadership is transient, and complacency leads to decline. The 21st century demands a re-focus on the values that propelled us to global leadership after World War II. Our commitment to innovation and technological preeminence must be reinvigorated before we wake up to the harsh realization that other countries have surpassed us. Global leadership is never a guarantee. It’s time to work together as a nation to make it our future.
