SECURING U.S. DOMINANCE IN CRITICAL AND EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES

America has the world’s most vibrant scientific enterprise and most dynamic private sector, which routinely turns novel ideas into new industries. But scientific leadership alone does not guarantee national strength or economic vitality.

We must tightly couple our science and technology enterprises to ensure that groundbreaking ideas invented in the United States are rapidly prototyped, tested, manufactured, and scaled domestically.

• Restore Permissionless Innovation: American regulators have grown skilled at weighing the risks of action, but blind to the costs of inaction. Developing good rules require real-world evidence, and building that evidence base only comes from letting innovators prototype and experiment. Extend the President’s reforms in nuclear, pharmaceuticals, and drones across other sectors. Weigh benefits alongside risks, streamline permitting, and use regulatory sandboxes to test new technologies under controlled conditions.

• Open Federal Infrastructure to American Builders: The Federal Government has facilities and testbeds no startup can replicate on its own. Broaden industry access to America’s laboratory research infrastructure, including at Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratories, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) centers, and Department of War (DOW) facilities. Consider innovative potential alongside scientific merit in use approvals, streamline Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs) and licensing, further leverage Other Transaction Authority (OTA) to enable private-sector engagement in co-designing research directions, and expand partnerships with the private sector to make joint investments into cutting-edge equipment.

• Strengthen Public-Private Partnerships and Talent Flows: The university is no longer the only home of America’s most innovative scientific research. Expand agency-adjacent foundations, focus Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs to build strategic capabilities, and support joint centers among industry, academia, and federal facilities. Scale industry Ph.D. and postdoc fellowships that move talent fluidly between sectors, drawing on America’s private sector strengths to bring industry-scale resources to our academic researchers.

• Organize Pre-Competitive Consortia and Grand Challenges: The Apollo Program and the Human Genome Project succeeded because the Federal Government marshaled scientific effort at a scale no single institution could match. Leverage grand challenges that pull breakthroughs forward, and create moonshot-scale missions for issues of national importance. Support industry consortia and use federal resources to break shared engineering bottlenecks in foundational areas, as Extreme Ultraviolet Limited Liability Company (EUV LLC) did for semiconductor lithography.

• Use Counties and States as Laboratories: Federalism is one of America’s greatest assets. States can experiment with regulation, permitting, and economic incentives in ways the Federal Government cannot replicate. Support state-led experimentation, partner with the jurisdictions that move the fastest, and let localities compete to support regional innovation. Ensure that innovation strategies that work spread across the nation, advancing science and technology in every county and state.