The New Geopolitical Battlespace: Academia, Research and US-China Tech-Competition

Abstract: Why is biotechnology a national security issue and increasingly at the center of policy discussions about competition? Over the past decade, developments in the biosciences have created new capabilities in biomedicine, agriculture, energy, materials, and the environment. These capabilities will have far-reaching societal, economic, and security implications. Beijing views technology—and the robust S&T infrastructure needed to develop it—as a national asset. The way it has structured its system to reach this goal is inherently at odds with key assumptions of globalization including open markets, reciprocity, transparency, and findings being shared equally and unencumbered. China's leaders make no effort to hide their views of the importance of technological and commercial dominance, and how they view a robust S&T infrastructure as key to building a modern advanced economy, not necessarily an open market economy. Today I will discuss some of the issues surrounding tech competition with China and the policies and programs China has put in place that present challenges to the global system of science.

Bio: Anna Puglisi is a Senior Fellow at Georgetown's Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET). Previously she served as the National Counterintelligence Officer for East Asia, advising senior U.S. and foreign government officials at the highest levels, academia and the private sector on counterintelligence (CI) issues. As a member of the Senior Analytic Service, she developed multidisciplinary efforts to understand global technology developments and their impact on U.S. competitiveness and national security, as well as efforts to target U.S. technology. Anna also started a government-wide working group looking at developments in biological sciences and has worked on several bio-security issues. She has received numerous awards including the FBI Director's Award for Excellence. Anna holds an MPA, an MS in environmental science and a BA in Biology with honors, all from Indiana University. She studied at the Princeton in Beijing Chinese language school and was a visiting scholar in Nankai University's Department of Economics, where she studied China's S&T policies, infrastructure development and university reforms. She is a co-author of the 2013 study Chinese Industrial Espionage, the first book-length treatment of the topic, as well as countless related proprietary studies.