Foreign Policy in the Age of Technology Competition: Charting the Course for U.S. Global Leadership
Our adversaries recognize the appeal of the United States and other free societies to those behind a “Great Firewall.” They understand that the individual freedom for which we stand — and to which humanity aspires — strikes at the very core of their authoritarianism. These adversaries refuse to address the failures of their systems of government; instead, they seek to exaggerate and disparage the flaws of our own in order to diminish freedom’s appeal. They stifle the spread of democratic values among their people, silencing calls for freedom, transparency, and self-government. They have made some headway by building a narrative against American leadership, values, and interests, and by using technology to disseminate lies at a speed the truth cannot match.
To be sure, there will always be those who will criticize the United States for any apparent gap between its principles and its foreign policy practices. Yet what sets the United States and other free societies apart is the fact that we are willing to openly acknowledge and rectify our shortcomings. Autocracies, by contrast, insist upon their infallibility, and scarcely tolerate any calls for self-improvement.
The principles that define our nation have not changed. Yet the technological landscape demands an evolution in their application. Just as our competitors and adversaries seek to mold the world in their image, so too must the United States and its allies and partners work to shape a global order that mirrors our ideals and serves our interests.
Technology is power, and technology strategy is now a quintessential part of grand strategy. How well nations organize themselves to compete for technology leadership will permeate across foreign policy, economic, and military dimensions, and determine the character of the global order. We already see what our adversaries intend: they lack an affirmative vision for either themselves or the world, and instead seek to leverage technology to control their people and undermine our values, interests, and the world order. Our purpose must be to offer a new vision for how free societies can leverage their technological advantages, promote values to support human dignity and societal progress, strengthen the commitment to individual liberties, and safeguard our societies.
We recommend six elements to serve as the driving force of our foreign policy.
Technology platforms, from telecommunications to microelectronics, have clear and profound implications on national and global security. “Tech” can no longer be seen as a consumer product and a domestic regulatory policy, but must be treated as a strategic battleground upon which the United States and its allies and partners must seek an advantage. Democracies must harness their technological prowess not only to safeguard their own societies but to champion the cause of freedom worldwide. Their innovation power, much like their alliances, are exceptionally difficult for autocracies to replicate. To do this, we will need new strategies and organizations for how the United States and its allies and partners can work together to innovate, compete for, and build out the technology platforms that will shape the future.
The United States and its allies and partners built and shaped the prevailing global architecture and international institutions to promote peace and stability over the previous eight decades. The unfolding complexities of the global stage demand a reevaluation, reconstruction, and reimagination of these institutions. The United States and its allies and partners must once again lead this effort. These new institutions must be robust enough to enforce the norms and standards of today, and chart those of tomorrow, including for governing the emerging technology landscape. This next generation of institutions can establish an environment conducive to peaceful cooperation and technological exchanges for the development and deployment of open, safe, trustworthy, and secure technologies around the world.
Europe was the focal point of competition and conflict in the 20th century. While we must not lose sight of winning in Ukraine or the risk of escalating conflict in the Middle East and Northeast Asia, the Indo-Pacific region will most certainly be the focal point of geopolitical competition for the rest of the 21st century. At the same time, demographic disparities between different regions of the world may also signal shifts of economic influence. On the technology front, the concentration of the chip industry in Taiwan and extreme ultraviolet lithography machines in the Netherlands have highlighted geographical opportunities and risks in tech supply chains. Fields such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and biotechnology are becoming crucial, as leadership in these areas significantly affects national security and global standing. Understanding how geography, geopolitics, and technology will interact in the future will be vital to ensuring the United States and its allies and partners can focus on key strategic regions and technologies.
The storytelling power of the United States was a critical tool of statecraft as our nation became a global superpower. Through words and images, we conveyed the promise of our society, values, and policies throughout the world. In an era where information is both a weapon and currency, strategic communications become even more important. The United States must refine its ability to effectively communicate its values and counteract the narratives propagated by the Axis of Disruptors. Reinvigorating our strategic communications tradecraft will require a comprehensive strategy that includes diplomatic channels, media engagement, and digital platforms to ensure that our message resonates globally and that we push back against the lies that our adversaries spread. By clearly articulating our stance and debunking the misinformation spread by adversarial forces, we reinforce our posture and reaffirm our commitment to the principles of freedom and prosperity.
As technology permeates every aspect of national power and the international strategic context, the United States must recalibrate its foreign policy instruments. To begin with, this recalibration means integrating technological strategy at the core of our diplomatic engagements, economic policies, and defense postures. This will also mean modernizing U.S. foreign policy posture and resources around the requirements of technology competition. Importantly, this will require a Department of State with a tech-forward diplomatic corps and cutting-edge tools to lead and execute this foreign policy. We also need a more proactive presence among our allies and partners as well as adversaries to advance our interests and those of our allies. Finally, our governments cannot succeed in this era of global technology competition on their own. We will need new channels of engagement and collaboration to bring private sector partners to better understand and manage the opportunities and risks that lay at the frontiers of technology.
In dealing with the Axis of Disruptors, a nuanced strategy is required. We should not “self-deter” from taking action to prevent or roll back destabilizing activities the Disruptors may engage in to undermine our interests. These actors, either as a group or individually, must be confronted with tact and precision; a mix of diplomacy and coercion is needed to mitigate their adverse impacts. Our goals in these engagements should be clear: to discourage behaviors that threaten global stability and to encourage a return to compliance with international norms. This approach will maintain pressure on these actors while testing the proposition of whether they are willing to eventually integrate into a rule-based world order.
“The only question is whether peace shall be the whole aim of foreign policy; whether everything shall be yielded to that end. Clearly the answer must be no. The risks that arise from the possibility of war are great. But by resolutely accepting the risk — and by that alone — we gain a decent chance to avoid it.”
Prospect for America: The Rockefeller Panel Reports (1961)
Agile Warfare: Mastering Speed and Scale for Strategic Advantage
While diplomacy remains an indispensable tool, the advancement of liberty and democracy necessitates a credible foundation of hard power. The future strategic advantage of the U.S. military lies in the fusion of enduring operational principles with the next-generation of advanced technologies. This framework must make use of the transformative potential of AI and emerging technologies to offset potential adversaries, dissuade acts of aggression, and prevail decisively in armed conflict. Resilience, scalability, accelerated decision-making, adaptability, risk taking and mitigation, and optimized lifecycle costs constitute the essential and enduring elements of a future operational concept. The United States must integrate these attributes into the very heart of the Joint Force, thereby driving its transformation and securing the requisite capabilities.
Modern warfare has evolved beyond traditional domains, marked by cyberattacks that cripple critical infrastructure, disinformation campaigns that disrupt societies, and space-based assets crucial to military operations. To address this, military forces must abandon old paradigms and adopt a holistic approach to operations across all domains.
Adversaries exploit gaps between land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace with hybrid tactics that blend conventional warfare with cyberattacks and information warfare. In response, a unified and agile strategy is essential to outpace these multifaceted threats. Integrated warfare is key, enabling rapid adaptation and seamless interoperability across domains and with allies, thereby maximizing collective capabilities and minimizing vulnerabilities.
Looking ahead, the Department of Defense (DoD) should anticipate a global, multi-domain threat landscape that includes homeland threats. The Joint Warfighting Concept should guide preparations, emphasizing resilient, AI-enhanced command and control systems to meet these challenges. The DoD should reevaluate the Unified Command Plan to better align with global, multi-domain scenarios and should consider empowering Cyber Command (CYBERCOM) with expanded authorities to streamline cyber, information, and electromagnetic operations.
Additionally, proposals such as the creation of a Digital Service Academy and an Information Warfare Service aim to equip CYBERCOM with skilled personnel ready to handle the complexities of digital warfare, fostering a more robust public-private partnership in defense capabilities. These strategic adaptations are critical for maintaining a competitive edge in an era of sophisticated and evolving threats.
The DoD will be unable to build a relevant Joint Force if the United States fails to maintain technological leadership. In the 1950s, U.S. leadership in nuclear technology offset Soviet conventional advantages in Europe. Leadership in stealth, precision munitions, microprocessors, and telecommunications did so again in the 1970s and 1980s. During these periods, the U.S. Government was the prime mover in emerging technologies, with government imperatives and investments guiding the innovation base toward new frontiers. Today, the private sector leads the direction and pace of innovation,[1] out-investing the government in key areas of AI, quantum computing, autonomous systems, biotech, space, and other emerging technologies. As these technologies promise to create new capabilities, DoD will need the organizational structure to experiment with and integrate them at a rate faster than adversaries. To this end, the Department should stand up a “Joint Futures Command” whose mission is to scan the horizon and comprehend how new technologies will change the speed and character of warfare. This organization should provide prescriptions for the design of U.S. forces that are anticipatory and responsive to these changes, develop future concepts for employment, and — critically — be resourced to acquire select emerging capabilities that are of joint use.
Threats are transforming in velocity, complexity, and reach. Borders are increasingly penetrable through new domains and asymmetric means. Future conflicts are unlikely to be theater- or domain-specific. The Joint Force of the mid-decade must be tech-adroit to deter our adversaries on this landscape. Prioritizing investment in critical technologies and capabilities is a deterrence strategy unto itself; assuming prime mover status at the leading edge of warfare invalidates adversary investments and concepts. If harnessed appropriately by the DoD, AI and emerging technologies can underpin the Joint Force’s ability to deter opportunistic aggression and prevail across the spectrum of conflict. Advanced technologies can and should be complementary to the legacy Joint Force and integrate allied and partner capability to a greater degree. The DoD must educate and exercise the Joint Force on these exquisite capabilities and revise deterrence models and concepts accordingly. The DoD should also identify a set of attributes to guide the development of new operational concepts. Such attributes could include accelerated decision-making, scalability, and adaptability. The United States needs to act now — with deliberateness and determination — to define these attributes, evolve the Joint Force to reflect them, and pursue the capabilities that they demand.
Future warfighters and government civilians will need to out-innovate, out-think, and out-navigate U.S. adversaries in a complex environment. Success rests on a workforce that is organized, trained, and equipped to win. This requires new thinking on human capital, emerging technologies, future warfighting concepts, and multi-domain challenges within the Defense enterprise. As part of this rethinking, the Department should establish digital career pathways within the Services that develop personnel with specialized technical expertise. Adequately upskilling all uniformed and civilian personnel for data- and AI-enabled operations should also be a top priority: currently, this is neither consistently provided nor sufficiently tailored to defense applications. The Department should further use existing authorities to bring able and experienced professionals with expertise in critical and emerging technologies in at higher pay scales and pay grades via non-traditional pathways. Greater use of flexible service options, including a viable reserve component (such as the Army’s 75th Innovation Command, the Marine Innovation Unit, or the Air Force’s Education with Industry program), would attract exceptionally skilled private sector personnel to maintain positions in the technology sector while also serving their country in a part-time capacity.[2] This approach would have the corollary effect of narrowing the gap between public and private sector innovation and unifying their efforts.
Strengthening U.S. Intelligence for the AI Age
Today’s U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) was designed to fight the Cold War and later successfully adapted to fight the Global War on Terror, but it is ill-suited to support the country’s needs in the techno-economic competition in the decade ahead. Historically, the IC has leveraged its unique sources and methods to provide high-level decision-makers with invaluable insights on a focused set of national security threats, particularly regarding strategic advantages for conventional warfare. Driven by the need to guard secrets and protect sources and methods, the IC’s reach and impact were constrained, and access to its data was mostly limited to federal government officials with a demonstrated “need to know.”
But the world has evolved. Data is now ubiquitous, and the tools and techniques to derive meaningful insights from the world’s data are rapidly advancing and becoming widely accessible to all. The key to providing “decision advantage” to policymakers no longer relies just on the possession of secret information, but rather on the ability of intelligence services to swiftly access, process, and deliver timely and actionable insights. While private industry and a growing number of foreign states recognize the trend and are building agile, data-centric systems to support their needs, the IC remains constrained by its culture that prioritizes collecting and protecting secrets.
At the same time, the nature and scope of the threats facing the nation have changed and expanded. The United States and its allies now regularly suffer foreign attacks. Relatively few of these are physical attacks by military or terrorist organizations; most come in the form of cyber intrusions, theft of intellectual property or proprietary technologies, disinformation campaigns, or attempts to interfere in elections and the democratic process. And the list of targets — the country’s “attack surface” — has expanded well beyond U.S. government and military organizations to include individuals, private sector companies, academic institutions and research labs, state and local authorities, and civil society groups — many of whom enjoy little to no support from the IC.[3]
If the United States and its allies are to prevail in the coming decade, the IC must fortify its position as the nation’s first line of defense and key source of strategic advantage. The IC must undergo a fundamental transformation, moving away from its current highly centralized and insular business model to one that embraces collaboration and innovation by design. In addition to its traditional national security mission, the IC should prioritize protecting the country’s techno-economic resources and capabilities while also gaining a deep understanding of those held by our adversaries. Additionally, the IC must focus on countering foreign malign influence operations targeting our information space, acknowledging the significant impact these actions can have on our society’s trust in democratic institutions.
The IC should aim to provide information and insight to a wider range of government and non-government customers, including the public, on a broader set of national competitiveness and cross-cutting issues. While continuing to cultivate its unique, classified sources and methods, the IC must significantly enhance its ability to gather information from open and commercial sources using machine learning, artificial intelligence, and other advanced data analysis tools. Rather than relying on “secrets” as its sole source of value, the IC would better serve the nation’s purpose by acting as a bridge between the government, private sector, and allied nations to address the full array of complex technological, economic, and societal challenges ahead.
The IC must strengthen its ability to deliver techno-economic intelligence. To do so, the IC will need to expand its focus beyond what has traditionally been considered within the scope of national security to broader issues of national competitiveness. U.S. leaders should be able to count on the IC to provide in-depth assessments of PRC, Russian, Iranian, and North Korean trade and investment flows, detailed insights on their key companies and critical supply chains, and rich analyses of their technological advancements. U.S. intelligence will also need to understand foreign competitors’ emerging platforms in technology and finance, especially as these data-collecting, strategic platforms are exported abroad.[4] The IC should establish a National Techno-Economic Intelligence Center to analyze economic, financial, and technological intelligence and coordinate economic threat information.[5] Like an techno-economic equivalent of the National Counterterrorism Center, this center would warn of foreign threats to the U.S. economy, make sense of rivals’ grand strategies, apprise the U.S. industry about threats such as intellectual property theft and supply chain vulnerabilities, and evaluate opportunities to deploy tools of economic leverage.[6]
To be fully effective, the IC must have the legal authorities and incentives to perform techno-economic net assessments that would enable policymakers to weigh the United States’ comparative advantage — or disadvantage — in a particular technology. This would require the IC to expand its partnerships with U.S. companies and research organizations, and those of our allies, that are the key sources for technical insights or have the necessary connections to foreign suppliers and competitors.
The IC must also make efforts to more effectively protect the country from the harms caused by foreign malign influence efforts. Our adversaries are weaponizing existing social media platforms and utilizing generative AI to produce false and misleading information, interfere in democratic elections, and undermine social cohesion.[7] Technological advancements and the emergence of new media platforms have enhanced the speed, reach, volume, and persuasiveness of disinformation generated by foreign adversaries. The IC’s creation of the Foreign Malign Influence Center (FMIC) in 2022 was a good start,[8] but its analysis and coordination functions need to be augmented with operational authorities and technical capabilities to detect, monitor, and — when directed — thwart disinformation campaigns launched by foreign actors at their source. FMIC should also produce public warnings when foreign malign influence attacks occur and provide tailored intelligence support to U.S. entities that are targeted.[9]
A first step would be for the DNI to amend Intelligence Community Directive (ICD) 191 that establishes that IC agencies currently have a “duty to warn” U.S. and non-U.S. citizens only when it uncovers threats of violence.[10] This should be expanded to require IC agencies to warn U.S. persons and entities of critical, non-violent threats — including intellectual property theft, targeted disinformation campaigns, or cyberattacks — that are harmful to our democratic system and economic well-being.
Beyond helping to defend the country’s information space — by identifying, tracking, and countering foreign malign influence platforms, operators, and message payloads — the IC ought to play a more active role in supporting U.S. strategic messaging to counterbalance false and misleading narratives being put forward by Russia, the PRC and other authoritarian groups. This starts with putting more emphasis on sharing information and insights — not just a narrow slice of classified intelligence — with allies and like-minded nations and non-state entities on a wide range of cross-cutting issues. A new Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Strategic Partnerships should drive this more proactive approach toward developing common information environments with allies, and the IC should be directed to share more of its assessments with allies, particularly those on the front lines of strategic economic competition with the PRC.
The U.S. Government should stand up a new agency that is entirely focused on OSINT, consolidating capabilities currently dispersed across CIA, DIA, NGA, and other civilian agencies. It could be placed either inside the IC or outside — there are sound arguments in favor of each path — but regardless of its position within government it should be staffed by experts on OSINT datasets and tradecraft, and virtually all of its work should be performed in an unclassified environment. The organization’s aim should be to bring data and capability to the IC and other U.S. departments and agencies for substantive experts to make use of and to inform collection strategies. Pairing the new agency with a nonprofit foundation (akin to In-Q-Tel) that would curate and organize private sector vendors and data suppliers would speed delivery of capability and reduce costs.[11]
The IC will not be able to enjoy the full benefits of OSINT unless it takes a radically different approach to data. The need to protect sensitive sources and methods will not go away, nor will the requirement to keep some datasets siloed, but the IC needs to pivot toward designing its data architectures in a way to foster and promote federated datasets so that it can operate at speed and scale. Likewise, the IC needs to fully embrace the use of large language and multi-modal AI models and machine learning to extract insight for the data it has. The goal should not be to replace intelligence collectors or analysts, but rather to construct human-machine teams that together are able to accomplish much more than humans or machines alone.
Build the Next Generation of Alliances
The global network of Alliances the United States has built since the end of World War II, and the degree of integration we have in values, capabilities, and operations, is unparalleled in the history of humanity. This is a core strength our nation and our allies hold over any competitor or adversary, and one we should continue to build out to advance our interest in peace, stability, and prosperity around the world.
However, we constructed our present network of alliances to handle an array of regional challenges that manifested during the preceding decades. As the geography of strategic and technology competition becomes global, we must rethink and reinvent our alliances.
Foreign Policy. Active promotion of democratic values, human rights, and the rule of law is not merely idealistic; it is a strategic imperative for shaping a world order conducive to our interests. We must leverage multilateral forums like the G7+, bilateral engagements, and support for civil society to counter authoritarian narratives, promote good governance, and foster resilient democracies. This includes targeted initiatives to bolster independent media, strengthen anti-corruption efforts, and support human rights defenders in partner nations. We must also not shy away from actively and directly promoting these values with populations inside adversarial and rival nations. Additionally, we must utilize platforms like the Global Initiative on Critical Emerging Technology (GiCET) to shape global technology standards, counter digital authoritarianism, and protect critical infrastructure from cyber threats. This involves promoting open, interoperable technologies, developing secure supply chains for emerging technologies, and countering disinformation campaigns.
Defense. Interoperability is no longer sufficient in an era of rapid technological change and multi-domain warfare. We must forge a truly integrated and interchangeable alliance defense posture, encompassing joint planning, training, capability developments, and operations across all domains. This includes leveraging AI, autonomous systems, and seamless data exchange to present a credible, unified deterrent against aggression. At the same time, maintaining our military advantage as allies requires sustaining robust and agile defense industrial bases, fostering collaborative research, development, and procurement of advanced technologies. We must prioritize interchangeability, shared standards, and rapid innovation cycles, investing in emerging technologies like hypersonics, directed energy weapons, and quantum computing, while ensuring responsible development and use. Capacity building among allies and partners is essential for burden-sharing and regional stability. We must tailor our assistance to their specific needs, providing training, equipment, intelligence support, and cyber defense capabilities, while fostering regional security architectures through integrated execution.
Intelligence. Expanding intelligence sharing and forging new intelligence relationships, particularly in open-source data, emerging technologies, and joint collection efforts, is vital for maintaining information dominance against the threats we are facing. Developing shared threat assessments, based on rigorous analysis and diverse perspectives, will guide coordinated action against common adversaries, including identifying emerging threats, assessing vulnerabilities within our alliance network, and developing proactive strategies to mitigate risks. Strengthening efforts to detect and counter espionage, cyberattacks, predatory trade and economic espionage, and other malicious activities aimed at our alliance network is critical. We must share information, best practices, and cutting-edge technologies to enhance our collective resilience and protect sensitive information. And similar to our defense efforts, the intelligence community should also consider developing new capacity-building programs that it could leverage to strengthen existing liaison relations and to pursue new ones.
Economic. Mobilizing the economic power of the free world is essential to winning the technology competition. Tasks like diversifying value chains, screening risky investments, and protecting sensitive data and critical infrastructure demand coordinated action. Beyond playing defense, we must also work together to outmatch the arsenals of autocracy by coordinating not only on technology priorities, but also on action plans[12] that translate these priorities into realities in the market and on the battlefield. This requires assessing our competitive advantages, taking a divide-and-conquer approach to lists of critical technologies, and aligning public-private investments to ensure democratic leadership. Equally crucial is reinvigorating the appeal of our democratic market values globally. We must make the case to nations who are sitting on the fence: innovation thrives where freedom abounds, and transparent, accountable government is the most proven path to prosperity and resilience.
[1] Audrey Kurth Cronin, How Private Tech Companies Are Reshaping Great Power Competition, Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs, Johns Hopkins University (2023).
[2] 75th Innovation Command, U.S. Army Reserve (last accessed 2024); Marine Innovation Unit, U.S. Marines (last accessed 2024); Education with Industry Program, Air Force Institute of Technology (last accessed 2024).
[3] Cortney Weinbaum, et al., Options for Strengthening All-Source Intelligence, RAND Corporation (2022).
[4] Anthony Vinci, Competitive Climate: America Must Counter China by Investing in Economic Intelligence, The National Interest (2020).
[5] Intelligence in An Age of Data-Driven Competition, Special Competitive Studies Project (2022). The new Center would build upon, and perhaps replace, the DNI’s Office of Economic Security & Emerging Technology and the analytic components of CIA’s Transnational and Technology Mission Center.
[6] John Costello, et al., From Plan to Action: Operationalizing A U.S. Technology Strategy, Center for a New American Security (2021).
[7] Ali Swenson & Kelvin Chan, Election Disinformation Takes a Big Leap with AI Being Used to Deceive Worldwide, AP News (2024).
[8] 50 U.S.C. §3059.
[9] Alexander Aguilastratt, et al., The Information Domain and Social Media: Part I, NCO Journal (2022).
[10] ICD 191, Duty to Warn, U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence (2015).
[11] Intelligence Innovation: Repositioning for Future Technology Competition, Special Competitive Studies Project (2024).
[12] SCSP has developed a series of such plans. See, for example, National Action Plan for U.S. Leadership in Advanced Networks, Special Competitive Studies Project (2023); National Action Plan for U.S. Leadership in Advanced Compute & Microelectronics, Special Competitive Studies Project (2023).