Trump’s Tech Tensions

The White House released a new national security science and technology strategy this week, an addendum to December's broader strategy, focused on preserving U.S. tech leadership. The document acknowledges areas where unnamed adversaries — understood to mean China — are ahead, and calls for restraint rather than trying to match those capabilities move for move.

The strategy also pushes for cooperative dialogue with rivals to avoid arms races in some sectors, and for deeper cooperation with allies on export controls for technologies like drones, even as the administration has pushed NATO toward de-Americanizing and abruptly curtailed allied access to U.S. AI models. That tension is expected to surface when Chinese President Xi Jinping visits next month, with China's AI and robotics advances high on the agenda.

The contradiction: an 'America First' administration that has spent 19 months alienating allies now says allied cooperation is essential to keeping its technological edge — a pivot the piece notes may be arriving too late, given the damage already done to those relationships.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.