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71. Competitive Connectivity: Crafting Transatlantic Responses to China’s Belt and Road Initiative

Author:
Andrea Kendall-Taylor, Lisa Curtis, Jacob Stokes, Carisa Nietsche, Joshua Fitt, and Nicholas Lokker
Publication Date:
09-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for a New American Security (CNAS)
Abstract:
Given the uncertain future of BRI, researchers at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) identified the major drivers likely to influence the direction of the program and examined their numerous permutations. The authors selected three scenarios and focused on how conditions of each scenario would play out in Europe and the Indo-Pacific. For each scenario, the report identifies the risks and implications for the United States and its allies. The scenarios are designed to prepare policymakers and planners for the possible futures they could face, including key challenges and opportunities that may arise in the years to come. Lastly, this paper identifies additional policy steps that will prepare the transatlantic allies to both compete with China’s investments and increase their own resilience.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Infrastructure, Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Transatlantic Relations, and Strategic Competition
Political Geography:
China, Europe, and United States of America

72. Rewire: Semiconductors and U.S. Industrial Policy

Author:
Chris Miller
Publication Date:
09-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for a New American Security (CNAS)
Abstract:
As the United States considers industrial policy for the first time in decades, it should learn lessons from prior government efforts to shape the semiconductor industry, in the United States and abroad. The U.S. government has played a major role in the semiconductor industry since the invention of the first integrated circuit, via funding scientific research and via military procurement, which has driven the commercialization of new technology. However, though government—and specifically, the Defense Department—has had deep connections with the chip industry, it has played only a supportive role in building America’s semiconductor industry, with the key innovations and firms emerging from private-sector expertise. Other countries have experimented with industrial policy toward semiconductors too. Success stories in industrial policy generally have involved investing in skilled workforces and ensuring competitiveness by pushing domestic firms to sell to international markets. Simply pouring capital into a country’s chip industry rarely has been a winning strategy. Today, the U.S. government should focus policy toward the semiconductor industry around four main objectives: promoting technological advances, guaranteeing security of semiconductor supply, retaining control of choke points, and slowing China’s technological advances.
Topic:
Science and Technology, Strategic Competition, Industry, Semiconductors, and Policymaking
Political Geography:
China, North America, and United States of America

73. Building a Flywheel: The Biden Administration's Opportunity to Forge a New Path with North Korea

Author:
John Park
Publication Date:
02-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for a New American Security (CNAS)
Abstract:
As the United States seeks to maintain a level of stability in its increasingly competitive relationship with China, North Korea has the potential to complicate their intensifying rivalry. Dealing with North Korea is a complex endeavor that requires deft handling by both nations because the stakes are high and instability can spread rapidly. For decades, China has been seeking to bolster the stability of the Kim family regime and increase China’s economic engagement with North Korea, to the point where North Korea Inc.—the Kim regime’s network of elite state trading companies—has embedded itself in major commercial hubs throughout China. By prioritizing the stability of the North Korean regime over denuclearization in its policy actions, China created a loophole in which the North Korean regime could enjoy economic benefits without having to do denuclearization work. Beijing thus impeded the development of a connection to a larger process in which major denuclearization activity would be paired with major economic and diplomatic concessions. In contrast to China’s sustained engagement with North Korea, U.S. policy toward North Korea over the last decade has focused substantially on sanctions implementation. There was a brief period of summit diplomacy during the Trump administration, but those efforts failed to bring about progress toward denuclearization. The North Korean nuclear issue has mutated into a much more complex challenge that no longer fits into past policy molds that rely heavily on sanctions implementation. President Joe Biden’s administration will need to recognize that North Korea under Kim Jong Un has become highly resilient to U.S. policy tools such as sanctions, largely due to far-reaching advancements in the relationship between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) as well as the migration and embedding of North Korea Inc. deep inside the Chinese national economy.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Nuclear Weapons, Strategic Competition, Strategic Stability, and Joe Biden
Political Geography:
China, North Korea, and United States of America

74. When the Chips Are Down: Gaming the Global Semiconductor Competition

Author:
Becca Wasser, Martijn Rasser, and Hannah Kelley
Publication Date:
01-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for a New American Security (CNAS)
Abstract:
The United States is in a strategic competition with a well-resourced and capable opponent. China seeks a global role that is broadly at odds with the strategic interests and values of America and fellow democracies. Technology, a key enabler of political, economic, and military power, is at the center of this competition. Within this competition, semiconductors loom large. Chips are a driving force for breakthroughs in a range of critical technology areas, from AI to synthetic biology to quantum computing. Semiconductors are essential to the military systems used by the United States and its allies and partners to defend themselves and their interests. At a fundamental level, the day-to-day functioning of modern society hinges on dependable access to chips; critical infrastructure, transportation networks, and digital communication cannot function without them. Semiconductor supply chains form an intricate global web, with several countries and companies serving as important nodes. Some of these nodes have such outsized importance that any disruption would have significant and detrimental cascading effects for U.S. national and economic security. Taiwan is the central node in the semiconductor supply chain. Home to the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the world’s largest contract chip foundry, more than half of the world’s outsourced semiconductor manufacturing and nearly all leading-edge manufacturing capacity is in Taiwan. Secure access to the output of Taiwan’s semiconductor industry is therefore a strategic necessity. Yet, while policymakers understand the critical importance of Taiwan’s semiconductor industry, the myriad of factors and nuances essential to developing policies and plans that protect its integrity, mitigate risk, and reduce second-order consequences are insufficiently studied.
Topic:
Science and Technology, Strategic Competition, Industry, and Semiconductors
Political Geography:
China, Taiwan, Asia, North America, and United States of America

75. Starr Forum: Xi Jinping's Third Term: Challenges for the United States

Publication Date:
11-2022
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
MIT Center for International Studies
Abstract:
What are the implications of Xi Jinping's third term on US-China relations?
Topic:
Hegemony, Strategic Competition, Rivalry, and Competition
Political Geography:
China, Asia, North America, and United States of America

76. Inside China’s Techno-Security State

Author:
Tai Ming Cheung
Publication Date:
09-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC)
Abstract:
Since coming to power, Xi Jinping has significantly elevated the importance of national security and technological innovation in the country’s overall priorities. He has invested considerable time, effort, and political capital to establish an expansive techno-security state based upon his strategic and ideological vision. This brief examines the five major methods Xi’s administration has undertaken to develop its techno-security state: developing a national security state, innovation-driven development, military strengthening, military-civilian fusion, and economic securitization.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Diplomacy, Industrial Policy, International Security, Innovation, Strategic Competition, and Regional Security
Political Geography:
China, Asia, and Indo-Pacific

77. China and the U.S. Compete for Global Techno-Security Dominance

Author:
Tai Ming Cheung
Publication Date:
07-2022
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC)
Abstract:
In the struggle for global geostrategic and geoeconomic supremacy between the United States and China, the technosecurity sphere where economics, technological innovation, and national security meet has become a principal battleground. Two contrasting models are pitted against each other: China’s state-led top-down approach and the United States’ market-driven bottom-up system. Which of them will ultimately prevail will depend on how capable, robust, and adept they are in meeting the challenge of rapid and disruptive change? This brief examines the underpinnings of U.S.-China great power technosecurity competition and assesses what the countries’ different approaches imply for future techno-security rivalry.
Topic:
Security, Industrial Policy, Science and Technology, Strategic Competition, and Geoeconomics
Political Geography:
China, Asia, North America, United States of America, and Indo-Pacific

78. Next steps for the US-China strategic nuclear relationship

Author:
David Santoro, David C. Logan, Vahid Brown, Heather Williams, and Duyeon Kim
Publication Date:
10-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Pacific Forum
Abstract:
Conducted with the generous support of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, this study seeks to provide an in-depth analysis of strategic nuclear issues of significance to the bilateral relationship to pinpoint the challenges to, and opportunities for, improving the current state of affairs between Washington and Beijing. The study, in other words, aims to propose an assessment of key issues and, insofar as possible, solutions or mitigation measures to address US-China strategic nuclear problems, including those that are seemingly intractable. It is motivated by the idea that even (or perhaps especially) when stark pessimism dominates, it is essential to be clear about what is in “the realm of the possible” to improve the situation, and to act on it.
Topic:
Security, Nuclear Weapons, Bilateral Relations, Nonproliferation, Strategic Competition, and Strategic Interests
Political Geography:
China, Asia, North America, Korea, and United States of America

79. US-Chinese Competition and Transatlantic Relations: Implications for Germany and Europe

Author:
Markus Jaeger
Publication Date:
11-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP)
Abstract:
Germany is at risk of sustaining collateral damage in the face of intensifying US-Chinese competition and conflict. China’s ascendance and America’s desire to preserve the status quo lock Beijing and Washington into a classic security dilemma. The United States sees China as a potential regional hegemon in Asia and as an emerging global systemic challenger. China sees the United States as impeding its rise. Security competition is already well underway. So are geo-economic and geo-technological competition and conflict. For Germany, a position of relative neutrality or equidistance is not an option, it should consider pursuing a multi-track approach.
Topic:
Security, Transatlantic Relations, Strategic Competition, and Geoeconomics
Political Geography:
China, Europe, North America, and United States of America

80. Don’t Get Caught in the Middle: A Geo-Economic Strategy for Germany to Survive US-Chinese Rivalry

Author:
Markus Jaeger
Publication Date:
12-2022
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP)
Abstract:
The economic fallout from the war in Ukraine has been very significant. The consequences of a war in East Asia involving the United States and China would be much worse. And even if a Sino-US military confrontation can be avoided, geo-economic conflict between the two powers is going to intensify. Washington will put increasing pressure on Germany and Europe to align their policies with Washington’s geo-economic strategy.
Topic:
Economics, Strategic Competition, Rivalry, and Geoeconomics
Political Geography:
China, Europe, Asia, Germany, North America, and United States of America