A Decision Support Tool for Critical Technology Investments in the Sino-American Competition Era
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The United States government has historically been a primary financier of technological breakthroughs that have ensured U.S. military dominance, and, in many cases, the dominance of U.S. companies in these technological areas. Today the U.S. faces an adversary in China significantly more capable than it faced with the Soviet Union, and this current-era great power competition is underpinned by a new set of critical technologies that will again define the world order militarily and economically. The U.S. and its allies currently maintain some advantages but those are rapidly eroding as Chinese ambition and executional ability rapidly increase. The U.S. Department of Defense struggles to identify and integrate leading critical technologies into its platforms partially, if not largely, because it struggles to attract leading emergent technology companies. Decades-old acquisition processes are encumbered by ancient support systems, creating market opacity and unpredictable budgeting cycles, which are anathema for businesses. As a result, many private sector companies, especially early-stage companies with critical technologies that could successfully compete with China, ignore the federal government, and DoD in particular, as a potential customer. DoD is often perceived as an unreliable partner for companies that might otherwise support its important mission. This Praxis aims to create a decision support framework for use by DoD, by analyzing data from historic periods of strategic conflict in which U.S. emerged as the global hegemon. It is the first known attempt at combining data in a way that allows for modeling of the federal capital required to be dominant in critical technology areas, especially as it relates to being prognostic when it comes to the critical technologies underpinning competition with China.
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