Herbert London, president of the London Center for Policy Research and former president of the Hudson Institute, warned of threats posed to the U.S. by China’s ascendance in the realm of technological innovation.
London spoke with SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight‘s co-hosts Rebecca Mansour and Joel Pollak on Monday, describing China as having “the edge” over the U.S. due to the one-party state’s focus on substantive technological innovation over endeavors such as Facebook and Snapchat.
London addressed the Trump administration’s blocking of Singapore-based semiconductor manufacturer Broadcom’s hostile takeover attempt of U.S.-based competitor Qualcomm. As reported by Breitbart News’s finance editor John Carney:
The Committee on Foreign Investment (CFIUS) has said that it is worried that Broadcom would slash research and development at Qualcomm. That could leave the U.S. hobbled in the race to develop next generation, 5G wireless technology, according to people familiar with the matter. The committee also said that the technology of Qualcomm–which makes wireless chips and licenses wireless patents crucial to smartphones and other–was too important to put into the hands of a foreign company with links to China.
According to London, Trump’s decision to black Broadcom’s hostile takeover of Qualcomm is part of a broader strategy to ensure global U.S. preeminence in technological innovation.
“The Trump people have finally come to the conclusion that its technology and innovation that are going to dominate the future,” said London:
The Chinese have this notion about the worldwide belt or their neo-Silk Road and, of course, the goal behind it is to control commercial activity worldwide. The United States obviously is a competitor; not sure it’s an enemy, yet, but there’s no question about the rivalry between the two nations. The United States needs, in my judgment, a Sputnik moment. We need a moment where we realize we need to move into STEMs. Very recently, I was engaged in a conversation, and someone said to me, “Well, the United States is so much larger than China. It’s an 18 trillion dollar economy versus a 12 trillion dollar economy,” and I said that that’s true.
Think about the future. We are offering Facebook. We are offering Snapchat. The Chinese are offering STEMS, that is science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Who has the edge? Clearly the Chinese do. We’ve got to start thinking very seriously about what we do in the realm of technology. I think this decision was the right one because it strikes me that we’ve got to do everything that we can to innovate in this area, and I do think that the Trump administration is to be admired for the stance it’s taken in this matter.
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