ROME — The Trump administration’s new National Security Science & Technology Strategy points to a broader shift in Washington: science, national security and competition with China are increasingly being treated as parts of the same strategic challenge.
The intellectual framework behind that shift can be found in “Science: a New Golden Age,” a report released in late July by Michael Kratsios, the White House science and technology policy director.
That is the argument made by Stefano da Empoli, president of I-Com, in an analysis published by our sister news site Formiche.net. His reading suggests the new strategy is about more than protecting sensitive technologies: it also seeks to rethink how the U.S. government supports and steers research, capital and technological development.
This analysis with Prof. Uricchio is part of a broader series by Formiche.net and Decode39— covering dimensions ranging from the military to biotechnology and academy — on what is one of the most strategically consequential documents produced by the Trump administration.
Why it matters:
- China is the organizing challenge. Beijing appears throughout both Kratsios’ vision and the security strategy, explicitly or implicitly, as the competitor against which U.S. technological strength is increasingly measured.
- The public-private boundary is shifting. The old model in which government funds basic research and companies take care of applied innovation no longer fits an era of AGI ambitions and enormous private R&D budgets.
- Allies are part of the equation. Access to U.S. technology, capital and cooperation could increasingly depend on how convincingly partners demonstrate their distance from actors Washington considers adversaries — above all China.
- Washington wants speed as well as security. For partners that pass that test, the strategy envisages streamlined screening and authorization processes, while researchers and innovators at home would face fewer administrative constraints.
The big picture: Da Empoli argues that understanding the new security strategy requires looking beyond the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy to Kratsios’ “Science: a New Golden Age.”
- The title is deliberately ambitious. Kratsios places his project in conversation with Vannevar Bush’s landmark 1945 report “Science: the Endless Frontier,” which helped shape the postwar American research system and was followed by the creation of the National Science Foundation.
- But Kratsios sees a different competitive environment today.
- The Soviet Union was a formidable technological rival. China, in his assessment as reconstructed by da Empoli, presents a harder challenge — not only because of its demographic scale but because of its innovation capacity and its ability to combine public and private resources.
The Kratsios factor: Kratsios has emerged as a particularly influential figure in the Trump administration’s technology policy.
- Unlike several figures who moved from Silicon Valley and corporate boardrooms into Trump’s Washington, his trajectory has been heavily rooted in government. He became U.S. chief technology officer in Trump’s first term while still in his thirties and later served as undersecretary of defense for research and engineering.
- His influence has become still more pronounced since David Sacks returned to San Francisco and his venture-capital activities, while remaining a presidential adviser.
- That background matters because the emerging approach is not simply a call for government to spend more on science. It is an argument for government to play a more active role in directing the conditions under which technological development takes place.
Beyond the old R&D model: One of the most consequential elements highlighted by da Empoli is the challenge to the traditional division of labor between government, universities and business.
- The linear model associated with the postwar era — public money supporting basic research before private companies transform discoveries into applications — has become increasingly difficult to sustain.
- Huge private technology budgets have blurred those distinctions. China’s public-private mix has complicated them further, producing what da Empoli describes as a dramatic technological acceleration despite the indebtedness and overcapacity associated with Beijing’s model.
- Kratsios’ answer is not to reproduce the Chinese system. Both documents retain a distinctly American emphasis on free-market dynamism.
Yes but… they do point toward deeper collaboration among government, researchers and companies, designed not only to accelerate technological cycles but also to orient them toward strategic objectives.
- That marks a departure from a more laissez-faire conception of science and technology policy and from a government role largely limited to correcting market failures.
The China test. Security is the other side of that transformation. Kratsios attributes part of China’s technological rise to massive intellectual-property theft, but also to Beijing’s ability to benefit opportunistically from the excellence of American universities and from direct or indirect U.S. investment, according to da Empoli’s analysis.
- The new strategy consequently pays close attention to who can access American research, technology and capital. And that logic extends beyond China itself.
- For U.S. allies, cooperation could increasingly come with a geopolitical test: demonstrating sufficient distance from entities Washington considers hostile.
- The incentive works in both directions. Partners judged sufficiently secure could benefit from easier screening and authorization procedures.
Between the lines: There is a tension at the heart of the emerging model. Washington wants tighter control over strategic technologies and their international circulation while simultaneously trying to remove barriers that slow down American researchers and innovators.
- Kratsios’ vision places the individual researcher near the center of that effort: less administrative work, faster career progression and greater recognition for achievements such as patents, including inside government.
- Public institutions, meanwhile, would be judged more heavily on outcomes — and encouraged to tolerate greater risks in pursuit of more ambitious objectives.
- The result, at least on paper, is a model that combines stronger strategic direction from Washington with an insistence that American innovation still depends on the dynamism of researchers, entrepreneurs and markets.
What we’re watching: Implementation is the central uncertainty.
- Da Empoli argues that neither Kratsios’ science agenda nor the new technology-security strategy lacks ambition or vision. The harder test will be translating those principles into detailed policies — and maintaining the discipline required to carry them out.
- That will determine whether the promised American scientific “golden age” becomes an operating model or remains a strategic blueprint.
Th bottom line: The new U.S. technology strategy is not only about winning individual races in AI or other technologies. As da Empoli’s analysis shows, it points toward a broader attempt to reorganize the relationship between science, markets and national security around one overriding competition: China.
