I co-authored a commentary with Matt Sheehan about Congress’s competing proposals for a tech directorate at the National Science Foundation:
Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the America COMPETES Act, a wide-ranging bill intended to bolster U.S. innovation and secure a technological edge over China. The legislation now proceeds to a conference committee that will attempt to reconcile it with a similar bill—the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act—passed by the Senate last year. The two bills are largely aligned on topics such as supporting American semiconductor manufacturing but diverge on the most controversial and potentially transformative aspect: the creation of a new “technology directorate” within the National Science Foundation (NSF).
China’s emergence as a technological competitor that thrives on applied research has led many policymakers to rethink the NSF’s historic focus on advancing fundamental science, pushing instead for more application- and technology-driven work. However, the NSF has been reluctant to deviate from its core mission, and the House and Senate bills reflect this tension. The NSF hopes to carefully weave more applied research and commercialization into its existing work, and the House version largely adopts that approach, proposing a modestly funded tech directorate whose programs would be determined by the NSF. The Senate bill authorizes far more funding for the new directorate and dictates how that money must be spent—an attempt to insulate the directorate from interference by other parts of the NSF.