Something called the Australian Strategic Policy Institute tracks and forecasts which countries in the world are leading on what it considers the most critical technologies. Their definition of critical seems to be mostly technologies with military applications: “defence, space, energy, the environment, artificial intelligence (AI), biotechnology, robotics, cyber, computing, advanced materials and key quantum technology areas”. And their metrics seem to be based largely on number of scientific publications and patents. This approach can be critiqued, but nonetheless the results are interesting and striking.

These new results reveal the stunning shift in research leadership over the past two decades towards large economies in the Indo-Pacific, led by China’s exceptional gains. The US led in 60 of 64 technologies in the five years from 2003 to 2007, but in the most recent five years (2019–2023) is leading in seven. China led in just three of 64 technologies in 2003–2007⁴ but is now the lead country in 57 of 64 technologies in 2019–2023, increasing its lead from our rankings last year (2018–2022), where it was leading in 52 technologies…

China’s new gains have occurred in quantum sensors, high-performance computing, gravitational sensors, space launch and advanced integrated circuit design and fabrication (semiconductor chip making). The US leads in quantum computing, vaccines and medical countermeasures, nuclear medicine and radiotherapy, small satellites, atomic clocks, genetic engineering and natural language processing.

Building technological capability requires a sustained investment in, and an accumulation of, scientific knowledge, talent and high-performing institutions that can’t be acquired through only short-term or ad hoc investments.⁸ Reactive policies by new governments and the sugar hit of immediate budget savings must be balanced against the cost of losing the advantage gained from decades of investment and strategic planning. While China continues to extend its lead, it’s important for other states to take stock of their historical, combined and complementary strengths in all key critical technology areas.

I suppose the not-so-hidden agenda here is to get the Australian and other “western” governments to invest more in R&D long-term. That is something I would support. I would like to think that technological progress is not just a competition between nation-states but a shared project of our species and civilization. Utopian, I suppose.

Anyway – scientific publications and patents. I don’t think these are perfect measures of scientific or technological progress. Doubling these metrics will not mean that progress has doubled, but rather there must be some diminishing return. Once metrics like these are established, people are going to game the metrics to some extent rather than try to measure the underlying thing, which in this case is scientific and technological progress.

Do I have a better suggestion? Not really – well, I suppose total factor productivity is the most accepted metric of technological progress as far as I know. The holy grail would be to understand exactly how much and what types of R&D investments will maximize it over long periods of time. I am sure there are past and future Nobel laureates working on this problem, but if they have solved in conclusively I have not heard about it.

All that said, there is no excuse for the U.S. to be failing to invest in R&D. We need to ramp it up, and keep it up long term. But there is also an opportunity cost when the fire hose is focused on the military-industrial complex (not to mention the existential risks created for us and all humanity – do these alone outweigh the idea of ever winning the “competition” for dominance in horrible weapons?). Peaceful technologies that could improve human lives and our shared environment will not develop as fast as they could. And finally, to be a broken record, if we ever figure out the secret sauce to ramp up scientific and technological progress, the right thing to do is capture that value added to the economy and redirect it to improve the vast majority of human lives, protect the environment, and manage the risks we face, including risks created by the technologies themselves.