Transforming American Technology Policy: Security, Prosperity, and Environmental Sustainability in the Era of Fulcrum Technologies

Abstract:  Today, the United States faces the unprecedented challenge of simultaneously navigating three escalating factors: a denser international economic landscape, a more fiercely disputed geostrategic environment, and increasing sustainability concerns. From this trifecta a new category of technologies — which we call fulcrum technologies — has emerged. These technologies are simultaneously critical to American security, prosperity, and environmental sustainability. This emerging policy environment presents many challenges and opportunities and is common to such disparate technologies as AI, biotechnology, semiconductors, and solar photovoltaics. Worryingly, existing U.S. policy approaches are not well adapted to dynamically balancing three critical imperatives at once. Effective policy in this space will require unprecedented creative coordination between domestic and international stakeholders, from government to private industry. This includes breaking down silos, streamlining policy processes, adequately staffing policy bodies, and proactively identifying nascent fulcrum technologies as early as possible. The country that gets this right first will have major advantages, both in shaping global economic, strategic, and resource systems and in husbanding its own assets effectively. If the United States lags behind, it risks ceding the initiative, potentially to adversaries, and creating policies that make it less secure, prosperous, and well-resourced. In this talk, Dr. Griffith will explore the three escalating challenges facing the United States, explain what is meant by “fulcrum technologies,” and suggest policy approaches the United States should take to better manage them.

Dr. Melissa K. Griffith is a Lecturer in Technology and National Security at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and the Alperovitch Institute as well as a Non-Resident Research Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity (CLTC). From cybersecurity to tech security, Griffith works at the intersection between technology, national security, and economic statecraft with a specialization in cybersecurity, semiconductors, and machine learning/artificial intelligence. Prior to joining Johns Hopkins SAIS, She was the Director of Emerging Technology and National Security and a Senior Program Associate with the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Science and Technology Innovation Program (STIP); a Pre-Doctoral Fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC); a Visiting Scholar at George Washington University's Institute for International Science and Technology Policy (IISTP); a Visiting Research Fellow at the Research Institute on the Finnish Economy (ETLA) in Helsinki, Finland; and a Visiting Researcher at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) in Brussels, Belgium. She holds a Ph.D. and an M.A. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley and a B.A. in International Relations from Agnes Scott College. 

For additional information (including a comprehensive list of publications, prior positions and affiliations, presentations and public appearances, and teaching experience) please visit www.melissakgriffith.com.

Technical Contact: Brad Roberts            
Administrative POC: Katie Thomas, thomas94 [at] llnl.gov (thomas94[at]llnl[dot]gov)