Chase the Moon: Eric Schmidt’s Think Tank Pushes US to Stay Ahead!
In order to maintain its national security and outpace competitors like China, the United States needs to actively seek out strategic technological advancements, including the development of a functional quantum computer by 2028.
According to a report published on Tuesday, the Special Competitive Studies Project (SCSP) has been funded by former Alphabet Inc. chairman Eric Schmidt. The document also calls for improving computational energy efficiency by a factor of 1000 or more and developing commercial superconductor electronics.
The United States and China are competing for technological supremacy, and both have invested billions of dollars to expand domestic semiconductor manufacturing capacity and self-sufficiency. With the rise of artificial intelligence promising to transform entire industries and accelerate innovation in microelectronics and computers, Schmidt’s brainstorming effort is trying to create a national action plan for the United States.
From the Manhattan Project in World War II to the moon landings that followed the Soviet launch of Sputnik, the country has amassed resources and advanced technology under pressure from a foreign enemy.
The SCSP report warned that the United States must guard against the dangers of China’s technological rise, aided by a vast domestic industry, a large pool of motivated engineers and a “global industrial espionage strategy.” Schmidt, now 68, has used his $27 billion fortune to build a powerful lobby in Washington and has warned of security risks associated with China’s advances in artificial intelligence and computing.
The report highlighted China’s plans to massively build manufacturing capacity for older technology chips, a problem that has also been flagged by other US industry leaders and think tanks.
“There are currently few restrictions on preventing or screening these chips, which may contain vulnerabilities and backdoors, from deploying critical infrastructure sectors,” the report states. Its proposed remedy is to increase transparency about the components of US systems and their origins through congressional or executive action.
One possible measure is to require the U.S. government and critical infrastructure vendors to disclose the country of origin and other information on all hardware components, it said.
“Our action plan focuses on addressing the US interest from a national security perspective,” Schmidt and SCSP CEO Ylli Bajraktari wrote in the report. “This action plan combines bold technological ‘months’ with organizational and policy changes that will give the United States a lasting advantage.”
The moonshot goals are important to ensure US leadership at a time when advanced chips are exponentially more expensive and harder to manufacture because the transistors inside them are small enough to be measured in atomic numbers.
The SCSP called for the creation of a million-qubit, fault-tolerant quantum computer by 2028. Quantum computers promise to be millions of times faster than today’s fastest supercomputers and capable of breaking current state-of-the-art encryption. systems, but also promise to produce much more advanced protection methods. While many large companies, such as Alphabet’s Google and International Business Machines Corp., have developed working prototypes, these systems are still too small to implement work that will have a real impact. China is also seeking breakthroughs in this area, especially as the United States increases trade restrictions and cuts off access to traditional computing technology and semiconductor excellence.
