Knowledge Statecraft

I have a two part piece at the Diplomat reviewing some new think tank work on knowledge statecraft:

How can the United States recapture momentum in its technological competition with China? A new CNAS report titled Forging An Alliance Innovation Base lays out a long-term strategy for leveraging alliances to facilitate faster rates of innovation. Written by Daniel Kliman, Ben FitzGerald, Kristine Lee, and Joshua Fitt, the proposal effectively calls for is knowledge statecraft of the sort that the United States practiced after the end of World War II, but to some extent abandoned at the end of the Cold War. Their answer to the problem of China’s technological expansion is to pursue cooperative technology development with a select group of allies, and to build partner capacity to protect technological innovation from Chinese acquisition.

And part two:

Finally, the report does not linger on the question of how the presidency of Donald Trump has affected the ability of the United States to engage in multilateral ventures. To be sure, the combination of the Trump administration’s various trade wars with the global closing that has accompanied the COVID-19 pandemic have given the United States an opportunity to reset the terms of global technological innovation. But the Trump administration has also inflicted serious damage on some of the bilateral relationships that this consortium would require, not to mention undercutting global confidence in the ability of the United States to make and follow through on commitments. Trump will not be in power forever, but his presidency indicates an inherent instability in U.S. foreign policy that may make foreign partners sketchy about risking such tight regulatory and economic integration.