Science and Technology Net Assessment and Competitive Strategy
MITRE's Center for Strategic Competition (CSC) published its eighth Occasional Paper on December 21, 2022. Co-authored by Dr. Ford and Dawn Meyerriecks, it looks at the role of science and technology net assessment in supporting national decision-making in strategic competition. The paper can be found here, or can be downloaded by using the button below.
From the Executive Summary:
It is critical to U.S. national security and competitive strategy for our leaders to have a deep understanding of the science and technology dynamics that so powerfully shape the modern world. This makes the comparative assessments of trends, key competitions, risks, opportunities, and future prospects of national capabilities in the technology arena—that is, Science and Technology Net Assessment (S&TNA)—an essential tool of modern statecraft.
... If done right, S&TNA has many potential customers, both in the federal system and beyond, but the U.S. policy community is not yet getting the support it needs in terms of S&TNA collection and analysis for a number of reasons. ... A solid S&TNA system would need to draw heavily on contributions from Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs) as well as university research institutions, academic researchers, and commercial industry stakeholders. The United States should urgently take a number of basic initial steps to start building an effective S&TNA and S&TI system in support of its national competitive strategy, beginning with a pilot program to implement a set of S&TNA initiatives focused on current technology competitive challenges.
