    [House Hearing, 118 Congress]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

                           THE UNITED STATES, CHINA,
                      AND THE FIGHT FOR GLOBAL LEADERSHIP:
                        BUILDING A U.S. NATIONAL SCIENCE
                            AND TECHNOLOGY STRATEGY

    =======================================================================

                                    HEARING

                                   BEFORE THE

                          COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE,
                                 AND TECHNOLOGY

                                     OF THE

                            HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                        ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS

                                 FIRST SESSION

                                   __________

                               FEBRUARY 28, 2023

                                   __________

                                Serial No. 118-1

                                   __________

     Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology

       [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

           Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov

                                 ______

                 U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
     51-282PDF              WASHINGTON : 2023

                  COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY

                      HON. FRANK LUCAS, Oklahoma, Chairman
    BILL POSEY, Florida                  ZOE LOFGREN, California, Ranking
    RANDY WEBER, Texas                       Member
    BRIAN BABIN, Texas                   SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon
    JIM BAIRD, Indiana                   HALEY STEVENS, Michigan
    DANIEL WEBSTER, Florida              JAMAAL BOWMAN, New York
    MIKE GARCIA, California              DEBORAH ROSS, North Carolina
    STEPHANIE BICE, Oklahoma             ERIC SORENSEN, Illinois
    JAY OBERNOLTE, California            ANDREA SALINAS, Oregon
    DARRELL ISSA, California             VALERIE FOUSHEE, North Carolina
    RICK CRAWFORD, Arkansas              KEVIN MULLIN, California
    CLAUDIA TENNEY, New York             JEFF JACKSON, North Carolina
    SCOTT FRANKLIN, Florida              EMILIA SYKES, Ohio
    DALE STRONG, Alabama                 MAXWELL FROST, Florida
    MAX MILLER, Ohio                     YADIRA CARAVEO, Colorado
    RICH McCORMICK, Georgia              SUMMER LEE, Pennsylvania
    MIKE COLLINS, Georgia                TED LIEU, California
    BRANDON WILLIAMS, New York           SEAN CASTEN, Illinois
    TOM KEAN, New Jersey                 VACANCY
    VACANCY                              VACANCY
    VACANCY
    VACANCY
                             C  O  N  T  E  N  T  S

                               February 28, 2023

                                                                       Page

    Hearing Charter..................................................     2

                               Opening Statements

    Statement by Representative Frank Lucas, Chairman, Committee on
      Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives..    11
        Written Statement............................................    12

    Written statement by Representative Zoe Lofgren, Ranking Member,
      Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of
      Representatives................................................    13

    Statement by Representative Suzanne Bonamici, Committee on
      Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives..    14
        Written Statement............................................    15

                                   Witnesses:

    Dr. Kelvin Droegemeier, Regents' Professor of Meteorology and
      Weathernews, Chair Emeritus Roger and Sherry Teigen
      Presidential Professor, University of Oklahoma and Former
      Director, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
        Oral Statement...............................................    17
        Written Statement............................................    20

    Ms. Deborah Wince-Smith, President and CEO, Council on
      Competitiveness
        Oral Statement...............................................    32
        Written Statement............................................    34

    Dr. Kim Budil, Director, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
        Oral Statement...............................................    47
        Written Statement............................................    49

    Mr. Klon Kitchen, Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
        Oral Statement...............................................    56
        Written Statement............................................    58

    Discussion.......................................................    75

                  Appendix: Answers to Post-Hearing Questions

    Dr. Kelvin Droegemeier, Regents' Professor of Meteorology and
      Weathernews, Chair Emeritus Roger and Sherry Teigen
      Presidential Professor, University of Oklahoma and Former
      Director, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy..   116

    Ms. Deborah Wince-Smith, President and CEO, Council on
      Competitiveness................................................   121

    Dr. Kim Budil, Director, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory..   124

    Mr. Klon Kitchen, Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute...   128

                           THE UNITED STATES, CHINA,

                      AND THE FIGHT FOR GLOBAL LEADERSHIP:

                        BUILDING A U.S. NATIONAL SCIENCE

                            AND TECHNOLOGY STRATEGY

                                  ----------

                           TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2023

                              House of Representatives,
                   Committee on Science, Space, and Technology,
                                                       Washington, D.C.

        The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in room
    2318, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Frank Lucas [Chairman
    of the Committee] presiding.
    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Chairman Lucas. Good morning, and welcome to the first
    Science Committee hearing of the 118th Congress. We're leading
    off with a discussion of how we can strategically improve U.S.
    scientific competitiveness and address the threats we face from
    the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). This is one of the most
    important challenges facing us at the moment, and I expect that
    global scientific leadership and competition with China will be
    a thread that runs through much of our upcoming work.
        There are two reasons for that. First, America's economic
    strength, national security, and our quality of life are all
    fundamentally dependent on our ongoing scientific progress. In
    fact, more than 60 percent of America's economic growth in the
    last century is due to advances in science and technology
    (S&T). U.S. public investment in R&D (research and development)
    adds nearly $200 billion in economic value. In basic research,
    in particular, increases long-term productivity across multiple
    industries.
        The second reason for our focus on this topic, beyond our
    own economic benefits, is the threat that we face from the
    Chinese Communist Party. The CCP is determined to overtake us
    as the global leader in science and technology. They're
    outspending us, out-publishing us, out-educating us when it
    comes to STEM (science, technology, engineering, and
    mathematics) Ph.D. graduates. What's even more concerning is
    that they're working to steal the results of our research and
    innovations whether that's through cyberattacks, forced
    intellectual property (IP) acquisition, or malicious
    recruitment initiatives like the Thousand Talents Program.
        I want to be very clear about the consequences of allowing
    the Chinese Communist Party to become the world leader in
    science and technology. It means fewer opportunities for
    American companies to compete in the global economy. It means
    increased risks to sensitive national security tools. And it
    means that critical technologies like artificial intelligence
    (AI), quantum information sciences, and cybersecurity tools
    will be shaped by and embedded with the CCP's values. If the
    CCC--if the CCP becomes the global leader in scientific
    discoveries and technology development, we should expect less
    privacy, less transparency, less access, and less fairness in
    how these systems operate, so we cannot afford to lose this
    competition.
        When I first became Ranking Member of the Committee in
    2019, finding a way to address this challenge became one of my
    first tasks. That led to the introduction of the Securing
    American Leadership in Science and Technology Act in 2020,
    comprehensive legislation to double down on our investment in
    basic research and develop a national strategy for scientific
    development. With SALSTA as a blueprint, our Committee began to
    develop bipartisan legislation to advance America's scientific
    and technological capacities.
        There were a number of bumps along the road, but 2 years
    later, many of those ideas we first laid out in 2020 were
    passed in the Science as a part of the CHIPS and Science Act.
    When I talk about that bill, I want to point out that while
    funding for chips production is going to build factories today,
    it's the science portion of the legislation that will be the
    engine of America's economic development for decades to come.
        Central to all of the investments and modernizations in the
    CHIPS and Science Act was the creation of a National Science
    and Technology Strategy. We directed the Office of Science and
    Technology Policy, OSTP, to develop a comprehensive strategy
    for America's science and technological development every 4
    years. That strategy ensures a comprehensive whole-of-
    government approach to research and development, improving
    coordination between Federal agencies and a more strategic
    approach to prioritizing our resources. The national strategy
    will ensure that our time, energy, and funding for Federal
    research and development will be focused on the most important
    challenges facing our country. And given the increased funding
    we're giving to Federal R&D, this strategy is necessary to
    maximize the return on our investments and make good use of
    taxpayer dollars.
        Today's hearing should serve a few purposes. First, to give
    us an overview of the current R&D enterprise; second, to
    examine the scope of the threat the CCP poses to our scientific
    leadership; and finally, to consider how best to develop a
    National Science and Technology Strategy. I expect the topics
    we discuss today to inform much of the work we'll do over the
    next year, from reauthorizing NASA (National Aeronautics and
    Space Administration) to expanding our domestic drone industry,
    to strengthening American clean energy technology. While there
    are significant challenges ahead of us, I'm very optimistic
    about our ability to face them and ensure that America
    continues to have a thriving scientific enterprise.
        In the past 4 years, we have worked together in a
    deliberate, transparent, and bipartisan manner to pass
    meaningful legislation supporting American science and
    technology. Our goal is to continue that tradition in this
    Congress, and I'm looking forward to getting to work starting
    now.
        [The prepared statement of Chairman Lucas follows:]

        Good morning, and welcome to the first Science Committee
    hearing of the 118th Congress.
        We're leading off with a discussion about how we can
    strategically improve U.S. scientific competitiveness and
    address the threat we face from the Chinese Communist Party.
        This is one of the most important challenges facing us at
    the moment, and I expect that global scientific leadership and
    competition with China will be a thread that runs through much
    of our upcoming work.
        There are two reasons for that:
        First--America's economic strength, national security, and
    our quality of life all fundamentally depend on our ongoing
    scientific progress.
        In fact, more than 60% of America's economic growth in the
    last century is due to advances in science and technology. U.S.
    public investment in R&D adds nearly $200 billion in economic
    value. And basic research in particular increases long-term
    productivity across multiple industries.
        The second reason for our focus on this topic, beyond our
    own economic benefits, is the threat we face from the Chinese
    Communist Party.
        The CCP is determined to overtake us as the global leader
    in science and technology. They're outspending us, out-
    publishing us, and out-educating us when it comes to STEM PhD
    graduates.
        What's even more concerning is that they're working to
    steal the results of our research and innovations--whether
    that's through cyberattacks, forced intellectual property
    acquisition, or malicious recruitment initiatives like the
    Thousand Talents Program.
        I want to be very clear about the consequences of allowing
    the Chinese Communist Party to become the world leader in
    science and technology.
        It means fewer opportunities for American companies to
    compete in the global economy. It means increased risks to
    sensitive national security tools. And it means that critical
    technologies like Artificial Intelligence, quantum information
    sciences, and cybersecurity tools will be shaped by and
    embedded with the CCP's values.
        If the CCP becomes the global leader in scientific
    discoveries and technology development, we should expect less
    privacy, less transparency, less access, and less fairness in
    how these systems operate.
        So we cannot afford to lose this competition.

        Chairman Lucas. And with that, I turn to my colleague for
    any opening comments that she would make.
        Ms. Bonamici. Thank you so much, Chairman Lucas, for
    holding today's hearing. Thank you to our distinguished panel
    of witnesses. Ranking Member Lofgren regrets that she is unable
    to be here today. She was very much looking forward to this
    hearing, and in particular, to discussing the critical
    importance of investing in fusion technology. And I ask
    unanimous consent to add her statement to the record.
        Chairman Lucas. Seeing no objection, so ordered.
        [The prepared statement of Ms. Lofgren follows:]

        Thank you, Chairman Lucas, for holding today's hearing. And
    I want to thank our distinguished panel of witnesses for
    joining us.
        In 1942, facing an existential threat, the United States
    mobilized its scientific enterprise to split the atom. In a
    mere three years, the Manhattan Project created the world's
    first nuclear weapons in a race to end the second World War.
    The climate crisis facing the world today is no less profound.
    The threats of climate change--sea level rise and forced human
    migration, extreme weather, mass extinction--are existential.
    We must face these threats strategically--the same way we faced
    the threat of Naziism in World War II. The greatest challenge
    we face today is maintaining our energy security while
    confronting the threat of climate change. One of the key
    technologies in this effort is fusion energy.
        So, I am particularly excited to hear from Dr. Kim Budil
    today. Last fall, Dr. Budil and her colleagues at Lawrence
    Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) announced a true
    breakthrough in fusion--the achievement of ignition at the
    National Ignition Facility (NIF). I think this is one of the
    most important scientific achievements of our time. However,
    there are still many technical challenges ahead to achieve
    commercial scale fusion energy. It is essential we maintain the
    funding commitment to see this vital technology's promise be
    fully realized. I think a Manhattan Project level of commitment
    is needed now to ensure that the incredible promise of fusion
    energy is achieved.
        But it takes more than funding to realize the success of
    game-changing technologies like fusion energy. We also need a
    strategic vision. The United States had this vision during
    World War II when we split the atom. We had this vision when we
    won the Space Race and put a man on the moon. And we need this
    strategic vision now as we face the climate crisis and threats
    to our economic competitiveness and national security.
        A critical piece of the Chips and Science Act we passed
    last year is the requirement for the White House to develop and
    regularly update a national science and technology strategy,
    and conduct a quadrennial science and technology review. This
    strategy, informed by the quadrennial review, will help provide
    us with a unifying vision of how to maintain American
    leadership in science and technology. While our science
    agencies excel at carrying out their individual missions, a
    unifying vision will help ensure the U.S. science and
    technology enterprise is greater than the sum of its parts.
        I look forward to hearing more from our witnesses today and
    to discussing how this science and technology strategy can best
    serve our nation. I also want to consider how this strategy
    will incorporate and address critical technologies like fusion
    energy. You know, it's not enough to just have the incredible
    scientific achievements like we had with ignition. We need to
    accompany those scientific achievements with technology
    development so we can fully realize the potential of these
    scientific breakthroughs.
        We also need to be thinking down the road to associated
    deployment issues like licensing and supply chain. We need
    whole-of-government and in fact whole-of-nation strategic
    planning, in partnership with the private sector, for these
    profoundly important technologies so that we don't repeat the
    mistakes we've made in the past in areas like semiconductors
    and that we are at risk of making in emerging technologies. Our
    commitment must be for the long term, so that we can lead in
    the responsible development and manufacturing of the world's
    advanced technologies here in the United States.
        As we race forward to develop solutions to the climate
    crisis and other challenges that face our nation, we need to
    ensure that the United States can reap the full rewards of our
    scientific achievements.
        Thank you, and I yield back my time.

        Ms. Bonamici. Thank you. For more than 70 years, the United
    States has been the unquestioned global leader in science,
    technology, and innovation, reaping the benefits of--to our
    economic and national security and overall quality of life.
    This leadership was built on the vision and political will of
    our leaders in the aftermath of World War II. They enacted the
    National Defense Education Act, created the National Science
    Foundation (NSF) and NASA, and made other unprecedented
    investments in our Nation's talent and technology.
        Over time, however, we became complacent, and our
    commitment to nondefense R&D waned. At the same time, much of
    our manufacturing capacity went offshore, making our supply
    chains vulnerable and risking our economic and national
    security. Our insufficient commitment to research and domestic
    manufacturing left an opening for other countries, and they
    seized it. China and Europe increased their investments in
    critical technologies and emulated our innovation systems in
    building theirs.
        Last year, the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
    took a significant step to reinvigorate the U.S. Science and
    Technology enterprise with the bipartisan CHIPS and Science
    Act. And thank you, Mr. Lucas, for emphasizing the ``and
    science'' part of that bill. This law is already starting to
    bring good-paying manufacturing jobs back to the United States,
    and it's accelerating the development of future industries
    across our country. In fact, today, the Commerce Department is
    announcing the first application for CHIPS funding,
    specifically for manufacturing facilities, so we can start to
    invest in domestic companies and their workers and incentivize
    innovation and production in America.
        Because of the CHIPS Act, Intel, which has its research
    facilities in the district I'm honored to represent an Oregon,
    has committed to investing $20 billion in two new leading-edge
    semiconductor fabrication facilities. A key provision of the
    CHIPS and Science Act requires the White House to conduct a
    quadrennial science and technology review and develop a
    National Science and Technology Strategy. This provides us with
    a tremendous opportunity, an opportunity to have a coherent
    all-of-government approach to our investments in science and
    technology that will grow U.S. leadership, bolster our
    competitiveness, and safeguard national security.
        As several of the witnesses noted in their testimony, to
    achieve these goals, we will--we must think broadly about who
    is at the table to inform the strategy. We must solicit and
    welcome the input of the private sector, communities that have
    historically been left out of setting research agendas, and
    everyone in between. Inclusion in setting the agenda is
    essential to the responsible development of technology that
    benefits all Americans and leaves no issue and no American
    behind.
        As the witness testimony makes clear, innovation is key. We
    need creative critical thinkers around the table, people who
    can come up with new ways to view challenges and inventive ways
    to solve problems. As a Member of the Education and Workforce
    Committee and co-Chair of the STEAM (science, technology,
    engineering, arts, and mathematics) Caucus, I advocate for the
    integration of arts and design into traditional STEM fields,
    which inspires creativity and increases the competitiveness and
    diversity of the workforce.
        The National Strategy is also an opportunity for us to
    reimagine how we can integrate the goal of a circular economy,
    a new model of manufacturing and consumption that focuses on
    long-term sustainable growth across our research agenda and
    lead in the responsible development of technology. Through our
    S&T strategy, we can leverage scientific investments to tackle
    our greatest challenges. With the climate crisis threatening
    the Nation and the globe, we can invest in sustainable
    solutions to mitigate and adapt. The circular economy does not
    just apply to the energy sector and transportation. It applies
    to chemicals, materials, food production, manufacturing, and
    more. I urge OSTP to keep up all of the issues discussed in
    this--to keep all of the issues discussed in this hearing is--
    in mind as they begin to develop a National Science and
    Technology Strategy. I look forward to hearing more from our
    witnesses today and to discussing how this important strategy
    can best serve our Nation.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back my time.
        [The prepared statement of Ms. Bonamici follows:]

        Thank you, Chairman Lucas, for holding today's hearing, and
    thank you to our distinguished panel of witnesses. Ranking
    Member Lofgren regrets that she is unable to be here today. She
    was very much looking forward to this hearing and, in
    particular, to discussing the critical importance of investing
    in fusion technology. I ask unanimous consent to add her
    statement to the record.
        For more than 70 years, the United States has been the
    unquestioned global leader in science, technology, and
    innovation, reaping the benefits to our economic and national
    security and overall quality of life. This leadership was built
    on the vision and political will of our leaders in the
    aftermath of World War II. They enacted the National Defense
    Education Act, created the National Science Foundation and
    NASA, and made other unprecedented investments in our nation's
    talent and technology. Over time, however, we became
    complacent, and our commitment to nondefense R&D waned. At the
    same time, much of our manufacturing capacity went offshore,
    making our supply chains vulnerable and risking our economic
    and national security.
        Our insufficient commitment to research and domestic
    manufacturing left an opening for other countries, and they
    seized it. China and Europe increased their investments in
    critical technologies and emulated our innovation systems in
    building theirs. Last year, the Committee on Science, Space,
    and Technology took a significant step to reinvigorate the U.S.
    science and technology enterprise with the bipartisan CHIPS and
    Science Act. This law is already starting to bring good-paying
    manufacturing jobs back to the United States, and it's
    accelerating the development of future industries across our
    country. In fact, today the Commerce Department is announcing
    the first application for CHIPS funding, specifically for
    manufacturing facilities, so we can start to invest in domestic
    companies and their workers and incentivize innovation and
    production in America. Because of the CHIPS Act, Intel, which
    has its research facilities in Oregon, has committed to
    investing $20 billion in two new leading edge semiconductor
    fabrication facilities.
        A key provision of the CHIPS and Science Act requires the
    White House to conduct a quadrennial science and technology
    review and develop a national science and technology strategy.
    This provides us with a tremendous opportunity to have a
    coherent, all-of-government approach to our investments in
    science and technology that will grow U.S. leadership, bolster
    our competitiveness, and safeguard national security.
        As several of the witnesses noted, to achieve these goals
    we must think broadly about who is at the table to inform the
    strategy. We must solicit and welcome the input of the private
    sector, communities that have historically been left out of
    setting research agendas, and everyone in between. Inclusion in
    setting the agenda is essential to the responsible development
    of technology that benefits all Americans and leaves no issue,
    and no American, behind.
        And as the witness testimony makes clear, innovation is
    key. We need creative, critical thinkers around the table;
    people who can come up with new ways to view challenges and
    inventive ways to solve problems. As a member of the Education
    and Workforce Committee and Co-Chair of the STEAM Caucus, I
    advocate for the integration of arts and design into the
    traditional STEM fields, which inspires creativity and
    increases the competitiveness and diversity of the workforce.
        The national strategy is also an opportunity for us to
    reimagine how we can integrate the goal of a circular economy--
    a new model of manufacturing and consumption that focuses on
    long-term, sustainable growth--across our research agenda and
    lead in the responsible development of technology. Through our
    S&T strategy, we can leverage scientific investments to tackle
    our greatest challenges. With the climate crisis threatening
    the nation and the globe, we can invest in sustainable
    solutions to mitigate and adapt. The circular economy does not
    just apply to the energy sector and transportation. It applies
    to chemicals, materials, food production, manufacturing, and
    more.
        I urge OSTP to keep all of the issues discussed in this
    hearing in mind as they begin to develop a national science and
    technology strategy.
        I look forward to hearing more from our witnesses today and
    to discussing how this important strategy can best serve our
    nation.
        Thank you, and I yield back my time.

        Chairman Lucas. The gentlelady yields back her time.
        I would like to thank our witnesses for joining us this
    morning for this important discussion. Dr. Kelvin Droegemeier
    is the former Director of the White House Office of Science and
    Technology Policy and currently the Regents' Professor of
    Meteorology and Weathernews Chair Emeritus, and the Roger and
    Sherry Teigen Presidential Professor at the University of
    Oklahoma (OU). He co-founded and directed one of the National
    Science Foundation's first Science and Technology Centers and
    served as Vice Chairman of the National Science Board. Thank
    you for being here.
        Ms. Deborah Wince-Smith is the President and CEO of the
    Council on Competitiveness, a coalition of leaders from
    industry, academia, and our national laboratory directors
    committed to driving U.S. competitiveness. She has more than 20
    years of experience as a government official, which includes
    serving as the first Senate-confirmed Assistant Secretary for
    the Technology Policy at the Department of Commerce.
        And Dr. Kim Budil is the Director of the Lawrence Livermore
    National Laboratory, which is responsible for ensuring the
    safety, security, and reliability of the nuclear stockpile. The
    doctor has three decades of experience at LLNL, where she has
    used her background in applied science and engineering to
    advance science and improve our national security. Thank you,
    too, for joining us.
        And lastly, we have Dr. Klon--Mr. Klon Kitchen from the
    American Enterprise Institute. Mr. Kitchen analyzes the
    interaction of national security and defense technologies and
    innovation. He focuses on technologies of the future like
    cybersecurity, national intelligence, robotics, and quantum
    sciences.
        Thank you all as witnesses for being here today and sharing
    your expertise.
        And with that, Dr. Droegemeier, we'll turn to you first for
    your testimony.

                  TESTIMONY OF DR. KELVIN DROEGEMEIER,

                   REGENTS' PROFESSOR OF METEOROLOGY

                    AND WEATHERNEWS, CHAIR EMERITUS

                        ROGER AND SHERRY TEIGEN

             PRESIDENTIAL PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA

                AND FORMER DIRECTOR, WHITE HOUSE OFFICE

                    OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY POLICY

        Dr. Droegemeier. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. Good
    morning, and thank you so much for the privilege of testifying.
    We send our best wishes to Ranking Member Lofgren and
    Congresswoman Bonamici. It's great to see you. Thank you for
    your long service here on this important Committee.
        Thank you all for the support of science and technology
    that you render to our Nation. I just want to say the comments
    that I'm going to make this morning really reflect my own
    comments and not those of my home institution.
        As the Chairman said, our extraordinary leadership, our
    global leadership in science and technology is being challenged
    as never before. And numerous studies bear this out, and he
    cited many statistics. You know, we became a global leader for
    many reasons, but two of them stand out, and I really want to
    highlight them for you.
        First and foremost, we became a global leader because of
    our values and our freedoms, the freedom to discover and
    create, the freedom to debate, to challenge one another, the
    freedom to speak freely, freedom to share a free market system
    where we can take our ideas and develop new private companies
    and developed capabilities for the benefit of humanity, and
    most importantly, the freedom to pursue our own pathways and
    our own dreams. Now, interestingly, these very freedoms and
    values are congruent with the very values by which we actually
    conduct research, namely honesty, integrity, reciprocity,
    accountability, impartiality, objectivity, the ability to
    really rigorously debate and then do so with great civility and
    also merit-based competition.
        In a world where clearly values and freedoms like I just
    mentioned are not universally treasured and reinforced, and
    where authoritarian regimes seek to undermine longstanding
    norms and international order, we, as the United States, must
    maintain our global leadership position in science and
    technology, not only by virtue of our contributions, but also
    by leading with our values.
        We also became a global leader in U.S. science and
    technology, which includes government, academia, and for-profit
    and private companies, because of this wonderful ecosystem.
    It's very important that the National S&T Strategy be
    structured as what I call a whole-of-nation plan, involving, as
    Congresswoman Bonamici said, all sectors of our S&T enterprise
    in a very integrated manner so that everyone that looks at that
    plan, whatever sector they're in, they see themselves in that
    plan, all the way from the beginning, all the way through
    execution.
        Our National S&T Strategy should be like no other. It
    should be absolutely bold and transformative and disruptively
    creative in our work and guiding us into the future. It should
    unite us and inspire us by the bold ideas it puts forward. It
    should streamline administrative procedures and structures that
    tend to hamper our work and tie our own hands, empowering all
    of our scholars and researchers to unleash their full creative
    capabilities.
        Most importantly, in this strategy, we need to leave
    politics behind, and I think this Committee is a great example
    of that. We have to begin with a set of guiding principles in
    which all S&T sectors and political parties can agree. And I
    believe OSTP's current leadership is exceptionally qualified to
    lead in this effort.
        Now, a 4-year S&T strategy is fantastic, and I absolutely
    support that idea, but I think it needs to be constructed
    within a longer-term framework, what I call kind of a 25-year
    horizon or arc that does not identify specific technologies or
    research areas of investment, but rather it describes in very
    broad strokes a U.S. vision for its future in terms of research
    and education and technology, domestic and international
    partnerships, and also national and international norms of
    behavior. By taking such a long-haul view, which is exactly
    what the Chinese Government does, they don't think the next
    election cycle, the next 4 years. They think the next 20 years.
    By doing that, I think we will for the first time perhaps since
    World War II, as Congresswoman Bonamici said, we will have the
    chance to have a multidecadal national context within which
    will reside this important 4-year strategic plan.
        Now, obviously, we cannot underestimate the importance of
    human capital to the future of our S&T enterprise. I personally
    believe that we need a STEM--a national STEM workforce and
    talent initiative similar in many respects to the GI Bill,
    which would leverage and, in many cases, supplant a lot of the
    individual workforce initiatives that are out there. What I'm
    saying is we have a lot of flowers growing, we have thousands
    of flowers growing, but we need to plant some beautiful, lush
    gardens that we tend and that we really think of in a national
    context.
        This S&T strategy is also beautifully positioned--and I
    thank Congress for that--to provide a very bold vision for
    moving forward to a skills-based education and workforce
    environment where an assemblage of demonstrated skills and
    capabilities not just degrees is the coin of the realm.
        We also need to safeguard our science and technology, and I
    know we'll talk about today. We face new and ever-growing
    challenges and threats of foreign interference in our S&T
    enterprise. Now, numerous activities are underway to address
    these threats, including many things at academic institutions.
    Safeguarding our research is actually another wonderful
    opportunity for us in the U.S. to lead with our values, to
    welcome foreign collaborators who may not be familiar with the
    kinds of ethical conduct and research based on where they
    actually developed their skills and were educated. But we have
    that here in the United States, and we can help ensure that
    their behavior and the behavior of everyone in our enterprise,
    whether it's from Norman, Oklahoma, where I'm from, or Beijing,
    China, everyone plays by the rules, everyone adheres to the
    rules, and we uphold the highest professional standards of
    ethical conduct.
        And finally, and perhaps very importantly, being a global
    leader in science and technology means we don't play to not
    lose. We cannot depend upon a growing international S&T
    enterprise, which is a good thing and is lifting all boats. We
    can't rely on that to lift our boat, as well as everyone
    else's. With this National S&T Strategy that you, Congress,
    have challenged us to develop and I think we are ready to do
    this, it could have a very, very strong and powerfully unique
    game plan for the future--that is, we in America can--leading
    with our values, working with the international community, and
    investing wisely and boldly to ensure that we remain, our ship
    remains the highest ship on the seas.
        Mr. Chairman, thank you, and I look forward to questions.
        [The prepared statement of Dr. Droegemeier follows:]
      [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Chairman Lucas. Thank you, Doctor.
        And Ms. Wince-Smith, you're recognized for 5 minutes.

                 TESTIMONY OF MS. DEBORAH WINCE-SMITH,

             PRESIDENT AND CEO, COUNCIL ON COMPETITIVENESS

        Ms. Wince-Smith. Chairman Lucas, Congresswoman Bonamici,
    Members of the Committee, thank you for this opportunity to
    testify at this critical hearing on the U.S. science and
    technology enterprise, competition with China, and the need for
    a coordinated National Science and Technology Strategy.
        The Council on Competitiveness's National Commission on
    Innovation and Competitiveness Frontiers comprises some 70
    leaders across academia, industry, labor, and our national labs
    to really address these generational challenges facing our
    nature--Nation in order to drive our productivity, our standard
    of living, and our leadership in the world. To define the
    myriad competitiveness challenging our Nation and abroad, we've
    developed very actionable policy recommendations for the
    government and the private sector. And I want to share some of
    those with you today, as they clearly have informed the very
    seminal legislation that has been passed for our Nation and the
    future.
        We know that we have entered a new age of innovation. It's
    defined by the convergence of these exponential disruptive
    technologies that are not only reshaping industries but really
    will determine the geopolitical and national security strength
    of nations, everything from the emergence of quantum platforms
    and autonomy, biofabrication, clearly precision agriculture.
    The list goes on, and the critical underlying importance of
    next-generation semiconductors and beyond lithium batteries.
        While the U.S. is capitalizing on these unprecedented
    opportunities, we face so many major challenges in our
    enterprise from the decline in basic research investment, fewer
    Americans engaged in STEM and starting new businesses,
    longstanding barriers in the commercialization of the
    technologies that we invented here in America. China has stated
    its ambition to supplant the U.S. as the world's technological
    leader and become the dominant economic military geopolitical
    power to shape the foundation, the standards, and the rules of
    the new age of innovation.
        If the U.S. fails to make the sustained large-scale
    investments in all our people, infrastructure writ large, we
    will not only stall economic growth, continue low productivity,
    fail to create the high-value jobs of the future, solve
    societal and environmental problems, and, very importantly, we
    will erode our geopolitical leadership, seriously damage our
    national security capabilities and power.
        As noted, China's leaders openly state their long-term goal
    to supplant the U.S., including as the global leader of
    democracy and freedom. China's State-driven strategy is
    fundamentally different from that of the cold war era or the
    economic and industrial rise of Japan. And China is walking the
    talk, making massive investments in every strategic technology,
    as well as using, as we've heard from Chairman Lucas, the tools
    of intellectual property theft and aggressive cybersecurity
    attacks against our companies and our government.
        China has targeted the entire semiconductor supply chain,
    as well as the batteries. Let's not forget that in the current
    generation of lithium batteries, 90 percent of the graphite is
    controlled and comes from China. They are aggressively
    acquiring U.S. tech startups and companies outside the
    jurisdiction of CFIUS (Committee on Foreign Investment in the
    United States).
        So I have five recommendations I want to share quickly. One
    is that we do need new mechanisms for Federal coordination at
    the Cabinet level. And we have called for a White House
    National Competitiveness and Innovation Council, on the same
    par as the NSC (National Security Council) and the Economic
    Policy Council.
        We are calling for expanding and investing in place-based
    innovation to develop a fully utilized, untapped potential of
    talent in our country, and upscaling a workforce, and forging
    of public-private investments and partnerships throughout our
    country, not just in the metropolitan cities and coastlines. We
    must integrate economic development and workforce development
    in the innovation hubs that are really possible for our Nation.
        Three, we must embrace technology statecraft. That means
    working closely with our allies and partners in these critical
    technologies and doing so in a way that advances our shared
    interests, as well as expands trade, the global rules of trade,
    transparency, and ensuring more people in the world can
    participate in the benefits.
        And then of course, we must scale and deploy our
    technology. We still have the proverbial valley of death. We
    need new financing models. Traditional venture capital will not
    get us where we need to be in dealing with next-generation
    semiconductors, batteries, and I know we're going to hear about
    laser energy fusion.
        In closing, Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, we
    strongly support the full funding for the science components of
    the CHIPS Plus Act legislation. And I look forward to coming
    back soon as we have recommendations from the second phase of
    this national commission, which is being launched at the
    University of California (UC) in Davis. And I must say I'm very
    proud that Director Kim Budil is the Commissioner working with
    the council on developing the strategy for our Nation's future.
    Thank you very much.
        [The prepared statement of Ms. Wince-Smith follows:]

       [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Chairman Lucas. Thank you.
        And Dr. Budil, you are recognized for 5 minutes.

                      TESTIMONY OF DR. KIM BUDIL,

            DIRECTOR, LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY

        Dr. Budil. Thank you, Chairman Lucas, Congresswoman
    Bonamici. I'd like to extend my regards and thanks also to
    Congresswoman Lofgren for her long-term partnership and
    support, and Committee Members. I'd like to thank you for the
    opportunity to testify today and for the Committee's commitment
    to ensuring U.S. scientific and technical leadership.
        I'm the Director of the Lawrence Livermore National
    Laboratory, a Department of Energy (DOE) National Nuclear
    Security Administration (NNSA) lab, dedicated to applying
    leading-edge science and technology to address the most
    important security challenges facing the Nation and the world.
    I also chair the National Laboratory Directors Council, where I
    represent colleagues from across the DOE, which is home to 17
    national laboratories, again, three of which are overseen by
    the NNSA, Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, and Sandia National
    Laboratories.
        These labs are home to many unique scientific tools, and we
    work across the full spectrum from fundamental discovery
    science, often in partnership with academia, to applied science
    and technology for ultimate transfer to industry for
    deployment. Together, these world-class national labs are
    strong contributors to and enablers of U.S. leadership in
    science and technology.
        On December 5, researchers at the National Ignition
    Facility at LLNL achieved fusion ignition in the laboratory for
    the first time in history. This achievement was six decades in
    the making. As we consider U.S. innovation ecosystem today,
    it's reasonable to ask what made this work. Ignition is a
    remarkable scientific advance, but it's also a triumph of
    sustained and patient support for research from Congress. This
    enduring support has made the DOE national laboratory system
    the envy of the world due to its world-class workforce and
    formidable scientific capabilities. Fusion ignition also
    demonstrates to the world our Nation's capabilities and,
    importantly, ensures that the U.S. has the best people and
    ideas to bring to bear on the important challenges that we face
    as a Nation.
        The ignition story also highlights the important role that
    the national labs play in the U.S. S&T ecosystem. Chartered as
    Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDC), the
    national labs have enduring missions and are well-positioned to
    foster collaborations with academia, industry, and
    international partners to tackle the biggest, most important
    challenges. The national labs are skilled at bringing together
    multidisciplinary teams and expert in designing and building
    state-of-the-art large-scale scientific facilities, often
    unique in the world.
        The National Ignition Facility was built as a centerpiece
    facility for the Stockpile Stewardship Program for which it has
    made highly impactful contributions in ensuring the safety,
    security, and reliability of our Nation's nuclear deterrent.
    NIF has enabled fundamental discoveries as well, ranging from
    novel material properties to astrophysical phenomena, and
    decades of research on lasers and optics have led to remarkable
    advances. For example, national lab R&D led to extreme
    ultraviolet lithography that has enabled production of
    microchips that power the newest iPhones, and adaptive optics
    technologies that dramatically enhance the capabilities of
    ground-based telescopes. The national lab environment creates
    opportunities for innovations not always foreseen that serve
    the U.S. extremely well.
        So what does the future hold? I have high confidence that
    the Lawrence Livermore team and collaborators can continue to
    increase fusion yields, which are needed for our national
    security mission, as well as potential energy applications. To
    advance inertial confinement fusion for energy, we need to
    create new kinds of partnerships, and several of my fellow
    witnesses have commented on the importance of creating a
    vibrant partnership ecosystem. Without significant public
    support for fusion energy research, the labs will not be able
    to build partnerships to support a rapidly growing private
    sector fusion energy enterprise with vitally needed unique
    facilities, capabilities, and expertise. And, as of last tally,
    there was about $5 billion in private capital being put into
    fusion energy companies across the many approaches. Without
    robust public sector investment, that capital will not realize
    the potential that it represents.
        I'm often asked what the timeline is for fusion energy on
    the grid, but perhaps a better question is what will it take to
    make that timeline short enough to meet the urgent need for
    this technology?
        With that, I look forward to your questions, and thank you
    again for the opportunity to testify.
        [The prepared statement of Dr. Budil follows:]

     [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Chairman Lucas. Absolutely, Doctor.
        And we now turn to Mr. Kitchen for 5 minutes.

                     TESTIMONY OF MR. KLON KITCHEN,

              SENIOR FELLOW, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE

        Mr. Kitchen. Chairman Lucas, Congresswoman Bonamici, thank
    you for the opportunity to testify before the Committee.
        The United States Science and Technology enterprise is
    strong and continues to be the envy of the world. American
    companies are pioneering and deploying innovations and
    technology that can expand human thriving, broaden economic
    prosperity, and ensure the national security for generations to
    come. But to do these things, we must deliberately address
    three key challenges to the American Science and Technology
    Enterprise.
        First, we must confront Chinese technological theft and
    aggression. Beijing, like Washington, understands that emerging
    technologies like artificial intelligence, advanced robotics,
    and quantum science will decisively shape tomorrow's societies,
    economies, and battlefields, and that these innovations are
    overwhelmingly being developed in the private sector. But
    unlike the United States, the People's Republic of China is not
    committed to free and fair competition in global innovation.
    Instead, the Chinese Communist Party is co-opting its
    innovation industry and using it as an extension of the State
    for traditional and economic espionage that FBI (Federal Bureau
    of Investigation) Director Christopher Wray has said surpasses
    every other nation combined and represents one of the largest
    transfers of wealth in human history. Whether through social
    media companies like TikTok, drone companies like DJI and
    Autel, or smart device companies like Tuya, the U.S. science
    and innovation enterprise, which spans the public and private
    sectors, is hemorrhaging data and intellectual property and
    will be left emaciated if these losses are not stopped.
        Second, we must help our allies understand that a strategy
    of regulate first and ask questions later will hurt, not help,
    all of us and risk ceding the advantage to Beijing. Other
    governments, particularly those in the European Union, are
    enacting laws that deliberately target American innovation
    companies that preference their domestic champions. And that's
    threatened to splinter the internet itself into a series of
    mini-nets, each running on incompatible infrastructure and
    governed by contradictory rules. Even more, the economic
    scarcity that would inevitably flow from such a splintering
    would leave these partners more susceptible to the siren song
    of cheap cloud services and other offerings from China, which
    are heavily subsidized by the CCP, as previously discussed, for
    the express purpose of stealing a country's data and wealth. If
    this happens, many of our friends will have lost their
    sovereignty and security in their bids to keep them.
        Finally, domestic debates about technology and innovation
    must be constrained by facts and geopolitical realities. Every
    institution and industry must be held accountable to U.S. law,
    and national security concerns cannot be wantonly employed as a
    get-out-of-jail-free card. Neither, however, should perceived
    but unsubstantiated political grievances be used to justify
    counterproductive or even unconstitutional actions against the
    very science and technology enterprise at the heart of our
    individual and national prosperity.
        Pushing the frontiers of science and pioneering game-
    changing technologies is expensive. The resources and talent to
    do these things are highly valuable and desperately scarce. It
    is no coincidence that the companies that have found ways to
    attract billions of customers and the profits that come with
    them are the same companies at the center of our science and
    technology enterprise. They innovate at scale because they
    operate at scale. Instead of rallying against these companies
    because of their size, we instead should be thankful that our
    free market economy has produced an alignment of interests,
    where private sector actors can generate wealth and jobs, while
    also developing the capabilities that will provide for the
    common defense. This uniquely American advantage may well be
    decisive in an era of escalating geopolitical competition. It
    would be reckless to give it away.
        There is much more that I could say on these matters, but
    I'll end my remarks there. Thank you again for this
    opportunity, and I look forward to your questions.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Kitchen follows:]

     [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Chairman Lucas. Thank you. And thank you to the entire
    panel for some very insightful thoughts and observations.
        We'll now turn to the question session of the hearing. And
    I'll begin by recognizing myself for 5 minutes.
        Dr. Droegemeier, in your testimony, you speak to how our
    democratic values and freedoms, freedom to discover and create,
    freedom to debate, challenge, speak freely, are the bedrock of
    the American research enterprise. Can you please elaborate on
    what makes the U.S. S&T network of government, academia, and
    industry unique and how these values contribute to our
    competitive advantage?
        Dr. Droegemeier. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I think
    Mr. Kitchen just beautifully laid out the important part of
    that argument. I think the thing about the interlocking nature
    of the four-sector enterprise--academia, industry, nonprofits,
    and the Federal Government--is the fact that there's a
    symbiosis. In fact, if you look at FFRDCs, which Dr. Budil
    leads one, these Federally Funded Research and Development
    Centers, the Federal Government does not run Lawrence Livermore
    Laboratory. A contractor runs it. The Federal Government does
    not run any FFRDC that I'm aware of. Basically, it--it has
    contractors operate it, so it keeps it arm's length.
        That is just the opposite of what China does. As we just
    heard Mr. Kitchen talk about, China is deeply enmeshed in the
    business of innovation and development, and they basically make
    the choices of what is going to be done. They direct the work
    to be done. That's not the case here.
        I think it's also certainly true that we have government
    labs and centers that do their own intramural research as well.
    But one of the most important things I think, ultimately--and I
    think everyone can speak to this--is the fact that there's a
    lot of open and freedom--openness and freedom to create new
    ideas and things like that. In fact, what happens in China,
    China tells the industries what they're going to do. Here,
    Congress listens, holds hearings, and we hear the Federal
    agencies responding to what the community says we need to do.
    The National Ignition Facility was not something that Congress
    said, hey, we need an NIF. We need to do it. It was the
    researchers, the scientists in the community. So the fact that
    we have this four-sector enterprise, it's not perfect. It's
    kind of clunky at times, but it works exceptionally well
    because the government does its role but they leave to the
    scientific and the research community the rest of the, you
    know, decisionmaking and what the priorities ought to be and
    where the innovation actually happens. That freedom is
    something that is super attractive, and it's one of the most
    important attributes that we have as a nation to wield against
    China in what it seeks to do in terms of global dominance.
        Chairman Lucas. Thank you. Ms. Wince-Smith, what are the
    benefits of having a National Science and Technology Strategy?
    And while you're thinking about that what are the key
    characteristics of such a strategy that will ensure that it's
    adopted and utilized by the entire U.S. S&T enterprise?
        Ms. Wince-Smith. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Well, first of
    all, I think it gives us the opportunity to have a unified
    vision. We're hearing, you know, very important parts of that
    in this hearing and articulated by the Members. But right now,
    we have a splintered system. We have a lot of the economic
    issues that profoundly impact our science and technology
    enterprise being addressed in the Economic Policy Council, huge
    issues such as product liability, regulation, antitrust policy
    being addressed in another forum, issues around national
    security, and technologies that are totally dual use do not
    often get addressed in other parts. So we really need new
    mechanisms at a very coordinated level, first, for the
    government to get a policy in place that addresses things from
    the perspective of how does this impact our economic growth,
    our productivity, and our national security? Those are the
    three outcomes really.
        And then what's very important about the United States and
    having a national strategy is we do have the mechanisms to
    bring our private sector in to help shape that through advisory
    committees, whether they're FACAs (Federal Advisory Committee
    Act) or, you know, temporary. I mean, the National Science
    Board is a wonderful example, at NSF and the Defense Science
    Board, but they're working on those sets of issues, not the
    overall strategy.
        So I strongly believe, as did the people working in our
    National Innovation Commission, that we need an entity that
    works on this policy that has the same stature and power, quite
    frankly, as the National Security Agency in the White House, I
    mean, the national security policy and the other vehicles that
    address these domestic issues. But we need to integrate and cut
    across the sectors, and we're not doing that now, quite
    frankly.
        Chairman Lucas. Mr. Kitchen, in the time I have remaining,
    ideally, the quadrangle review process and development of the
    National S&T Strategy would be an opportunity to reevaluate
    partnerships between government, academia, and industry. Expand
    on why this is so critically needed and what outcomes we should
    seek for--from these partnerships--for these partnerships.
        Mr. Kitchen. Thank you, sir, for the question. I begin with
    the idea that there is no scenario under which the United
    States is able to secure its interests or its people absent a
    deep partnership with the private sector. The United States
    Government is now a national security stakeholder, not the
    national security stakeholder. Beyond dependency, private-
    public partnerships are our unique advantage. Government can
    focus and invest in core science that holds promise but that is
    not mature enough for the marketplace, while industry, using
    the dynamics of the free market system, can rapidly and
    efficiently create the innovations that people want and that
    will drive our economy forward.
        The academy supports both of these efforts by advancing
    core knowledge and by producing essential talent. It is my view
    that this cooperation needs to be encouraged and to be made as
    frictionless and mutually reinforcing as possible.
        Chairman Lucas. Thank you. My time has expired.
        The Chair now turns to the gentlelady from Oregon for 5
    minutes.
        Ms. Bonamici. Thank you, Chair Lucas, and thank you to the
    witnesses.
        One place where there's a tremendous opportunity to show
    leadership is in confronting climate change, one of the most
    important challenges of our time. And as we transition to a
    carbon-free economy, we need groundbreaking research and
    advanced technologies to effectively reduce emissions.
        So Ms. Wince-Smith, in your testimony you noted that China
    has recently overtaken the U.S. in patents filed for nuclear
    fusion technologies. Do you have any sense of the relative
    strength and quality of China's fusion research enterprise
    overall in comparison to the United States?
        Ms. Wince-Smith. Thank you, Congresswoman. I do not have
    expertise on the Chinese capabilities in laser energy fusion. I
    believe, Director Budil does. But what I do know is they're
    following the playbook of actually what Japan did some years
    ago, which is called patent flooding. They're filing a lot of
    patents around these areas hoping that they will then be able
    to fill them in with an innovation, and some of that will come
    from intellectual property theft and cyber attacks. So
    increasingly, China is using the patent system in order to
    steal and use technology from other countries and inventors. So
    that's one issue.
        Ms. Bonamici. Interesting. Thank you so much. And I'm going
    to follow up with Dr. Budil. In--of course to follow up on
    fusion first, we've heard a lot of talk from the Administration
    lately, and congratulations of course on the fusion integration
    just a couple of months ago. What a remarkable accomplishment.
    And I wonder, have we seen the willingness to aggressively
    pursue and support the development and commercialization? And
    what should future investments look like to continue U.S.
    leadership and advance research and technology at the pace
    needed to achieve our goals, including climate goals?
        Dr. Budil. Thank you very much for the question. I think
    there are some very encouraging signs that there is very strong
    support for building on the momentum that's been achieved
    through science and technology advances across the fusion
    community in the last year, so that's both in inertial
    confinement fusion, which is the approach we take, and magnetic
    fusion energy, which is using tokamaks, for example. And there
    has been a lot of engagement between the Department of Energy,
    the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and the private
    sector to try to understand what the key questions are that
    remain.
        Of course, investment lags. This, our fusion ignition
    breakthrough, was in December. So we're beginning now to
    formulate plans for what an investment strategy would look like
    to solve these critical problems. But across both approaches,
    materials challenges, understanding how to operate in radiation
    environments, understanding how to manage the fuel for fusion
    reactors, tritium, supply and then recycling and management,
    understanding balance of plant issues, how to get the energy
    out of the system and into the grid, and for inertial fusion
    energy (IFE), significant challenges going from a facility that
    was built to do national security research, one shot--high-
    yield shot per week to a 10-times-per-second energy salient
    ignition facility will be a very significant amount of research
    for which we don't currently have a substantial program in
    place.
        Ms. Bonamici. Thank you. Do you have sufficient workforce
    to do that?
        Dr. Budil. We do have workforce, and I will say that
    recruiting is up in the wake of our announcement. Many people
    joined our lab to pursue this science because it's--they're
    very passionate about it. It's incredibly difficult and
    challenging science, but it's also--the potential benefits are
    incredibly galvanizing to students.
        Ms. Bonamici. To follow up on the workforce, you know, the
    strategy include--the law includes provisions to promote
    diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the workforce. Why
    are these provisions important in developing a national
    strategy broader than fusion, and how will including people of
    all backgrounds and experiences help us be competitive and
    support our efforts to maintain U.S. leadership?
        Dr. Budil. Fundamentally, excellence depends on diversity,
    diversity of perspectives, diversity of ideas, diversity of
    backgrounds, disciplines, in every dimension. So if we want to
    be the best in any given field, it's important that we tap into
    the potential of all the people who have the inclination and
    the aptitude to pursue these fields. I really believe that
    fundamentally is critically important.
        For science and technology fields like fusion energy, it's
    even more important because the number of disciplines we need
    to draw on is vast. The workforce that we need to generate to
    support this R&D agenda is very large. And so leaving people
    behind, making assumptions about which institutions or which
    people should participate is a fundamental barrier to progress
    in these fields.
        At the national laboratories, we work very hard to ensure
    that we have broad and deep outreach programs to a wide variety
    of academic institutions, spanning 2-year institutions where
    we're generating technologists and technicians that support
    this research through to Ph.D.-granting institutions, including
    partnerships with HBCUs (historically Black colleges and
    universities) and minority-serving institutions, again, to
    bring along communities that have historically not been
    represented in the numbers that they should be in these
    disciplines.
        Ms. Bonamici. Thank you. And I see my time has expired.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
        Mr. Weber [presiding]. I thank the gentlelady.
        And the gentleman from Florida, Mr. Posey, is recognized
    for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Posey. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
        Ms. Wince-Smith, in your written testimony you stated by
    increasing China's profile on international standards bodies,
    it aims to implement the Nation's China standards 2035
    blueprint and Belt and Road Initiative for the next-generation
    technology. What can Congress do, particularly the House
    Science Committee, to ensure the U.S. maintains our leadership
    in the international standards bodies?
        Ms. Wince-Smith. Thank you, Congressman. Well, standards
    have for many years been a nontariff barrier. Even our
    colleagues in the EU have used standards as a way to protect a
    different technology or innovation path from the U.S. in
    adopting standards. We have, as you know, a private-sector
    standards-driven process with various committees. NIST, our
    National Institute for Standards and Technology, plays a role.
    But at the end of the day, it's the private sector committees
    that develop our standards. They do not have, quite frankly,
    the reach, the resources to participate in many of these
    critical standards bodies. So it's very important for us, in my
    opinion, to beef up the capacity of NIST and our private sector
    bodies to participate fully at scale because sometimes we only
    send one or two people to a standards body. And you look at the
    international organizations. I mean, China now is--is poised--
    and they may be the head of the IPO, the Intellectual Property
    Organization. So we need to invest and populate these
    international groups because the U.S. alone cannot do that.
        And then also it goes back to what I said about technology
    statecraft. We need to work with our allies and partners, UK,
    Australia, Japan, India increasingly, and the EU on these
    standards that are so critical in the technologies that
    determine national security because all of these are dual-use
    technologies, quite frankly.
        Mr. Posey. Yeah, they like to play everybody's game, by
    their rules.
        Now, Mr. Droegemeier, in your written testimony you had
    recommendations regarding National S&T Strategy and quadrennial
    S&T review. One recommendation is the need for skilled
    technical workforce. You know, I represent the Kennedy Space
    Center, and I've heard from companies that the need for these
    highly skilled technicians is is really great. What policy
    changes do you believe are needed to help us maintain a
    pipeline of this kind of personnel?
        Dr. Droegemeier. Well, thank you so much for asking that
    question because it oftentimes goes unnoticed that the skilled
    technical workforce is really the underpinning of a lot of the
    science and technology development that we do. You look at
    large facilities like the Large Hadron Collider, you look at
    the LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory)
    facility that had the--you know, the first gravitational wave.
    There are people--technicians who developed, you know,
    capabilities to have very incredible vacuums and things like
    that to keep these facilities going. They're skilled machinists
    that use 3D printing and other kinds of things. So they're
    very, very important. I think what we need to do--and we heard
    an example from Dr. Budil--that Lawrence Livermore on their own
    initiative, they reach out to 2-year and technical schools to
    incentivize the folks to do this. And I think we need to make
    sure not only are we resourcing them, but we're making clear
    the value that they have, that this is not just sort of a
    second-class citizen job. If you don't have a Ph.D., well, it
    doesn't really matter. No, these folks in many respects are the
    underpinnings of our S&T enterprise, so we need to have
    programs--the National Science Foundation has one in particular
    for the skilled technical workforce. It's--I forget exactly the
    name. It's something like something career tech education or
    whatever. But but those investments are very, very important
    across all disciplines to incentivize these folks coming in and
    showing the value that that they actually have.
        Mr. Posey. Ms. Wince-Smith, would you repeat your statistic
    that you mentioned earlier about graphite?
        Ms. Wince-Smith. Ninety percent of the world's sourcing of
    graphite comes from China.
        Mr. Posey. Thank you very much.
        Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
        Chairman Weber. The gentleman yields back.
        And at this time the Chair recognizes Representative Lee.
        Ms. Lee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        The passage of bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act with the
    largest investment in American industrial policy in the past 50
    years and includes vast new resources to support
    entrepreneurship and technology and manufacturing, with an
    ambition of leaving no American behind. But this is because
    many Americans have been left behind in science and technology.
    Per U.S. Census Bureau, 90 percent of manufacturing firms are
    White-owned, 4.6 percent are Hispanic-owned, 4.5 percent are
    Asian-owned, and less than 1 percent are Black-owned. Within
    that small fraction, those Black-owned manufacturing firms are
    more likely to be less than 3 years old. CHIPS and Science Act
    looks to supersize scientific investment, and also promises new
    resources and policies to allow historically Black colleges and
    universities and other minority-serving institutions to
    participate equitably and genuinely in this research funding
    and in the entrepreneurship of wealth creation.
        Understanding that innovation can often come from small
    companies that large companies then later buy, how can we
    ensure that equitable access to entrepreneurship in science and
    technology includes those small Black businesses and other
    small businesses from marginalized communities, Ms. Wince-
    Smith?
        Ms. Wince-Smith. Thank you for that question,
    Congresswoman. I think you've raised, you know, an incredibly
    important issue for our country because, actually, one of our
    members at the council Michael Crow, President of Arizona
    State, said this, so I always give him credit. If you think of
    our Nation as a baseball team, we're only fielding less than 10
    percent of the players whenever we participate in the game. And
    so we have to, as a nation, do everything we can to bring our
    entire population into the innovation economy of the future.
        In terms of underrepresented ethnic groups, populations,
    one of the things I think that's very critical and it's
    underway is to integrate, for instance, our historically Black
    colleges and universities into large-scale research activities.
    We have a number of the presidents of these institutions in the
    council. They have capability to come in and participate in
    advanced project and quantum at another institution. That
    expands and builds up the capability.
        In terms of the small businesses, we obviously have, you
    know, the Small Business Administration financing, but I think
    that one of the gaps, again, is on this place-based innovation.
    I am very excited about what's going on in some of our
    universities. For instance, I'll mention one, South Dakota
    State University. I just recently learned from the president
    that by the time you graduate, you will have, from South Dakota
    State University, all the capabilities for the top clearances
    to work in cybersecurity. So we need to look at all these
    universities and ensure that we have a path for all our
    citizens.
        And I want to just mention on the issue of the labor
    unions, and I was whispering this to Dr. Budil. The pipe
    fitters and plumbers union is still at NIF. They built NIF.
    They operate NIF. These are highly skilled workers. And having
    this collaboration between our unions and our companies is
    very, very critical to this strategy of building out a very
    diverse, inclusive economy.
        Ms. Lee. Thank you. In my home district, Pittsburgh, we've
    been turning the corner from more manufacturing industries,
    steel, to a tech hub and innovation hub. One such business that
    we have in Pittsburgh is a company called Astrobotic. It's an
    employee-owned company, with a goal of making unmanned space
    missions feasible and more affordable for science. Dr. Budil,
    Astrobotic is--it's actively competing with Lockheed, Elon
    Musk, and Jeff Bezos. Space exploration and advancement of
    technology and science should not be limited to billionaires.
    So what steps do you believe we can take to ensure that
    organizations like Astrobotics are not outliers in science and
    technology?
        Dr. Budil. Thank you very much for the question. It's a
    very important one. When we think about partnering with
    industry, we think about it in different tiers. So we
    commercialize technologies, meaning we spin out technologies,
    so we work with startup companies. We work with small- and
    medium-sized companies. We bring them to the laboratory so that
    they can have access, in partnership with our researchers, to
    our facilities and capabilities to help increase their capacity
    to compete. And then we work with large business as that may be
    appropriate to the technology that we're talking about. So we
    have active programs in ensuring that our capabilities are
    well-understood in the broader community and that we have
    mechanisms in place where we can bring small- and medium-sized
    companies to bear.
        I'll cite two examples. One, we have a program for the
    application of high-performance computing in manufacturing and
    other areas where companies can apply to work with our
    researchers to have access to our machines and our simulation
    tools. And a second, we have an advanced manufacturing
    laboratory where we have laboratory space specifically designed
    to bring academic and business partners into the facility to
    work with our researchers again to advance their technologies
    and enhance their competitive prospects.
        Ms. Lee. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
        Mr. Weber. The gentlelady yields back.
        The Chair now recognizes Dr. Babin from behind the Iron
    Curtain.
        Mr. Babin. That's east Texas. Thank you very much, Mr.
    Chairman.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Bonamici, for
    organizing this incredibly important conversation that we're
    having today. I want to thank all of you witnesses for being
    here and taking part with your expertise.
        When we talk about investment in our research and
    technology, it's equally important to talk about how we protect
    it as well. It's no secret that, for years, the Chinese
    Communist Party has stolen American intelligence, technology,
    and intellectual property in their relentless pursuit to
    supersede us as the No. 1 superpower in the world. So how do we
    make sure that our S&T is better protected, and what should our
    approach be? And that is what I want to focus on today.
        And, Mr. Kitchen, in your written testimony, you describe
    the U.S. approach to the geopolitical race for technological
    advancement as engage and invest, whereas you refer to the
    CCP's tactics as fuse and use. And the U.S. approach of engage
    and invest the best option for our long-term--excuse me, is the
    U.S. approach of engage and invest the best option for our
    long-term completeness? And are there any lessons that we
    should take away from the CCP's fuse-and-use tactics?
        Mr. Kitchen. Thank you, sir, for the question. I think the
    only lesson that I would recommend from the Chinese model is
    that it spreads the national security burden across its public
    and private sector. But the CCP does this through coercion and
    for economic reasons as well, and we do not want to do that.
    What the U.S. should do, however, is forge voluntary, public-
    private partnerships that are based on a love of country,
    common interests, and our shared fate. American technology
    companies have worked very hard to gain their geopolitical
    influence, and it's now time that we help them wield that
    influence responsibly.
        Mr. Babin. Thank you very much. And one more. While China's
    R&D expenditures have grown exponentially, I understand that 84
    percent of that nearly $500 billion R&D expenditure is on
    development, and only 5 percent is on basic research. How does
    the United States' emphasis on basic research give us an
    advantage in the long term to compete, to collaborate, and to
    thrive?
        Mr. Kitchen. Sir, I think the key point here is that China
    essentially crowdsources their R&D by stealing the IP and data
    of other nations and then spends the bulk of their time and
    resources on turning the stolen treasure into capabilities.
    Basic research is exactly that. It is the foundation on which
    everything else rests, and if we do not continue to replenish
    that basic research, our innovation will grind to a halt, a
    little bit like expecting your car to run forever because you
    filled the gas tank last week.
        Mr. Babin. Absolutely. Thank you.
        Mr.--Dr. Droegemeier, I was pleased to have worked with
    this Committee on getting one of my bills, H.R. 3747, included
    in the CHIPS Plus bill that passed last year. My bill will
    establish a pilot program to ensure the security of federally
    supported research data and to assist regional institutions of
    higher education and their researchers in safeguarding our
    sensitive information. You mentioned in your testimony how the
    CHIPS Plus bill provides the opportunity to compete against
    China. Can you please elaborate on that and how we can
    simultaneously protect our S&T research?
        Dr. Droegemeier. Well, thank you so much for the question.
    And, Mr. Chairman, I'd like the record to show that an Okie is
    having a good conversation with a Texan here. OK?
        Mr. Babin. Yes, sir. We appreciate that, too.
        Dr. Droegemeier. It's very, very important----
        Mr. Weber. It's noted in the record.
        Dr. Droegemeier. Thank you, sir. It's a very, very
    important question. It's the balance between protect and
    promote. And I think the key thing in terms of the protect side
    is to make sure that we have the capability for our
    institutions, whether large or small, to have the resources
    they need to vet the individuals and companies and others that
    they're working with. You want to make sure--if you're a bank
    and you're giving a loan to somebody, you want to know what
    their background is. You want to know their capability to
    repay. We don't do, I think, a good enough job to do that. We
    need to make sure we know who we're working with. The fact that
    they arrive on our campuses doesn't mean that they don't have,
    you know, undue influence on our system. So we need to educate,
    we need to provide resources. In the CHIPS Act, the National
    Science Foundation was charged with standing up a research,
    security, information-sharing and analysis organization. NSF is
    in the process of doing that now because universities and
    colleges aren't equipped to, you know, answer the kinds of
    questions that that type of facility will be able to answer.
        So I think we need to educate, we need to train, we need to
    create vigilance, but we also need to promote our values. And
    folks that come here from other countries, we need to model
    those values and talk about the consequences for not adhering
    to those values. And when we all play by the rules and they see
    the importance of that, because I think most people long to
    play by the rules, there are some bad actors out there, you
    know, but I think those are the kinds of things we need to do
    to balance the protection of our research assets with promoting
    them.
        And the last thing we want to do is have China say boo, and
    we jump and tie our own hands.
        Mr. Babin. Right.
        Dr. Droegemeier. That's exactly the wrong approach.
        Mr. Babin. Absolutely. Thank you. I have one more question,
    but I'm out of time, so I will yield back. Thank you.
        Mr. Weber. The gentleman yields back. I appreciate it.
        We now recognize Representative Ross for 5 minutes.
        Ms. Ross. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for holding
    this hearing and to the Ranking Member. And thank you to all
    the panelists for joining us.
        I'm delighted to be holding this important hearing today
    because last Congress, I worked with my colleague, Congressman
    Waltz, who previously sat on this Committee, to pass the
    National Science and Technology Strategy Act, and it was signed
    into law, as you know, as part of the CHIPS and Science Act.
    This legislation created the whole-of-government planning
    process for research and development, ensuring better
    coordination between Federal agencies and a more strategic
    approach to U.S. research and development goals. It also
    requires the President to submit a report to Congress on
    national research priorities and activities, as well as global
    trends in science and technology, including potential threats
    to the U.S. scientific research and leadership.
        I represent part of the Research Triangle in North
    Carolina, which is a hub of innovation, and it's home to some
    of the world's top research universities and institutions.
    Collaboration between public and private entities to advance
    American research and innovation is a top priority for me, and
    I look forward to hearing from all of you about that.
        I do want to pick up on one of the comments that was made
    earlier, though, about technical workers and the work that we
    need to advance all of the great STEM innovation that we're
    having. And I'm pleased to say that the head of the National
    Science Foundation came to North Carolina right before
    Thanksgiving and spent more time at our technical community
    college than he did at our greatest NSF receiving grant
    institution. Now, of course, I represent them both, so I was
    happy for him to be at both places. But, as we know, these
    workers don't need to just have 4-year degrees. And in North
    Carolina, particularly in Wake County, we have a pretty
    sophisticated community college that has gotten three NSF
    grants. But not every community college has the ability to do
    that. And we do know that there is more technical assistance to
    our community colleges.
        But if you could elaborate on how we should really reach
    out and embrace our community colleges that will be preparing
    these workers, perhaps by targeting locations where we know
    we're going to need those workers for strategic purposes,
    perhaps partnering with our 4-year institutions. And I'll just
    open it up to all of our esteemed panelists for any suggestions
    that you might have and how we can help advance that in this
    next Congress. Yes, please.
        Ms. Wince-Smith. I'll start. The community colleges are
    absolutely an essential part of our educational infrastructure
    in the country. And what's increasingly happening with some of
    these colleges that's very strategic, they're also working with
    the skilled labor unions, so they have partnerships now that
    are integrating that. But also, I think, on the community
    college front, the Department of Labor--you know, this is an
    example of not having this overall system of coordination. They
    have, you know, millions of dollars that go into workforce
    development boards in each State and aligning those with the
    needs of business, the future jobs, how the unions participate,
    and how the community colleges have to do that additional
    advanced training is very, very significant. And the community
    colleges have an incredible track record of their graduates
    getting jobs right away, so they are essential.
        And we have in the council a group of university president
    leaders, and Jere Morehead, the President of the University of
    Georgia, said we need to work at the college level more with
    the workforce in our regions. And I think that's another
    example of this recognition of how these all things--these
    things all come together in a system.
        Ms. Ross. Could anybody else elaborate on getting this NSF
    money into the community colleges as well? Because, like I
    said, Wake Tech has been very good at that. But we would love,
    love to have that spread around more.
        Dr. Droegemeier. Yeah, in fact, your point is right that a
    lot of 2-year colleges don't really know much about working
    with NSF and so on. And this gets to a point that was made
    earlier about diversity. We'd like to think about giving money
    out to all these different organizations, but a lot of times
    they don't have the fundamental capabilities to manage a grant
    award. And we sort of set them up for failure. If they're an
    audit risk, and all of a sudden, something goes south, they're
    caught in a really bad place. So one of the programs NSF has
    started recently is a program to basically create a community
    of research administrative personnel who can work across all
    kinds of different institutions to bring those to the table who
    aren't now currently participating. So if you're a 2-year
    college, you don't have to develop all that stuff yourself. You
    can partner with somebody who can help you do that. That really
    empowers and resources you to do it without you having to make
    all kinds of investments that you really can't afford.
        Ms. Ross. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back.
        Mr. Babin [presiding]. And I would like to recognize the
    gentleman from California, Mr. Obernolte.
        Mr. Obernolte. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to
    our witnesses.
        Mr. Kitchen, I'd like to start with you. I find your
    testimony on Chinese intellectual property theft incredibly
    compelling. You characterize it as one of the largest thefts of
    wealth in human history, which is a way that I hadn't put it--I
    hadn't heard it put before. You also mentioned the importance
    of confronting Chinese intellectual property theft. That's
    obviously more easily said than done. What exactly do you think
    we could do to confront that, and what specifically can
    Congress do in that mission?
        Mr. Kitchen. Thank you, sir. The statistic about the
    largest transfer of wealth in history is a quote from FBI
    Director Wray. And he's been very forthcoming about his
    assessment of the situation. I would align myself with that
    assessment.
        In terms of confronting Chinese theft, there's a host of
    things that we can do. One, we can begin enforcing our
    intellectual property rights and laws internationally, using
    that as a point of negotiation, international engagement with
    the Chinese Government and international standards-setting--
    standard setting, settings--as well. But frankly, there's a lot
    lower-hanging fruit that is--can be difficult domestically, and
    I briefly alluded to them. And that is we are being willingly
    robbed blind daily by the presence of Chinese technology
    companies in the U.S. marketplace.
        And I want to be clear when I talk about this. I am not
    accusing every Chinese-origin technology company as being
    malevolent. They don't need to be malevolent. They simply need
    to be compliant with Chinese law because Chinese law is
    explicit and very clear. The Chinese Government has been very
    kind in publishing their law, their national security law,
    their cybersecurity laws in English because they expect U.S.
    companies to comply with those laws. And those laws are very
    clear in the fact that they require that every bit and byte of
    data that is collected by, transferred, stored on, or in any
    other way touches a Chinese network or the network of a company
    that is owned by a Chinese company to be made available to the
    Chinese Communist Party. That is not ambiguous. That is not
    unclear. That is a fundamental requirement of operating in
    the--in China.
        And so we need to recognize that and confront it. Now, not
    all industries are the same. So I'm not arguing for a reckless
    decoupling. But to answer your question directly, sir, if we
    want to begin to protect not only our intellectual property and
    our individual data, there's some pretty obvious doors that we
    need to close. And I'm happy to see that conversation advancing
    in the public sphere.
        Mr. Obernolte. OK. Thank you. Your thinking aligns with
    mine in a number of different degrees. This is an area that I
    also think needs a lot of attention. I've got a bill to enable
    extraterritorial prosecution of Chinese companies and
    individuals that engage in theft of intellectual property from
    U.S. companies.
        I'm also very concerned about Chinese components in the
    Internet of Things (IoT). I think that that's something that we
    haven't paid enough attention to, you know, the fact that we've
    got doorbells and refrigerators and toaster ovens and garage
    door openers, all collecting information about us that could be
    shared with malign actors who could put that data to malicious
    use. Do you share that concern?
        Mr. Kitchen. I absolutely do. In fact, there is a Chinese
    IoT platform as a service company called Tuya, which dominates
    globally and the United States approximately 70 percent of the
    marketplace. So what that means is, is that if you are a--you
    know, a light bulb company, and you want to begin making smart
    light bulbs but you don't know how to do that, you will
    approach Tuya and they say we got it, we can turn your light
    bulb into a smart light bulb and give you a platform for
    managing that capability.
        The problem with that is that it, as a Chinese company,
    is--needs to be responsive to the laws that I just previously
    outlined. So what that means is, is that this Nation might have
    done a great work by removing Huawei, for example, from its 5G
    networks, only to then allow Chinese-owned IoT devices to
    continue collecting the same information we were trying to
    protect.
        Mr. Obernolte. Right. Thank you.
        Dr. Budil, good to see you again. Congratulations, again,
    on your success at NIST. It's an amazing leap forward, and I
    think that, you know, really, this is going to be--we're on the
    cusp of like an inflection point in fusion research as a result
    of the work that you're doing. But just briefly, I can see I'm
    almost out of time, you've highlighted the need to--for
    continued investment to create--to increase the yields on the
    fusion ignitions that you're achieving at NIST through the
    inertial confinement technology that you're working on.
    Commercialization though, I think, is going to center more
    around magnetic confinement than inertial confinement. So can
    you just take a minute and explain why continued investment in
    inertial confinement is a good use of taxpayer dollars?
        Dr. Budil. Yes, thank you very much for the question. It's
    early days for the inertial confinement fusion energy
    application, mostly because we just achieved fusion ignition,
    which is the foundational building block for that technology. I
    think you'll see a rapid growth in the IFE community, and there
    are several companies with significant capacity that have
    already entered the marketplace on our technology, so we'll see
    how the next few years play out.
        Inertial fusion energy has a couple of advantages as an
    application. One is that the energy-generating source is
    separate from the driver so we can develop both of those in
    parallel. But to your point, the magnetic fusion community has
    had a much more significant footprint in the private sector and
    has some significant runway there. I think the promise of
    inertial fusion energy is very significant. The facilities that
    we have are built for national security applications, so if we
    really want to understand what's possible in the next few
    years, it's very important that we--that we begin to invest in
    the energy applications and understand what the possibilities
    are there.
        Mr. Obernolte. Well, we look forward to your continued
    success.
        Thank you, Mr. Chair. I yield back.
        Mr. Babin. Thank you.
        Now, I'd like to recognize the gentleman from New York, Mr.
    Bowman.
        Mr. Bowman. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman.
        Dr. Budil, thank you so much for being here, and thank you
    for the briefing you provided to us a few weeks ago.
        Fusion ignition, like, wow, like, the first time in human
    history this has been done. Like, can we all just take a moment
    and recognize this? Everyone's up here talking fast and trying
    to get through questions. I just want to acknowledge how
    extraordinary this is and just recognize you for your
    incredible leadership throughout your entire life focusing on
    this issue. Thank you so much. And when I read about this, I
    thought I was reading something from a science fiction novel or
    watching a Marvel movie or something. Can you talk about and
    summarize for us what this accomplishment can mean specifically
    for our clean energy future?
        Dr. Budil. Yes, thank you very much. And yes, it never gets
    tired, never gets old to hear people say ignition. So basically
    what happened in the experiment that we did in December is we
    used 2 megajoules, 2 million joules of laser energy, to create
    over 3 million joules of fusion energy out of the target. And
    that's the first time in history that more fusion energy has
    been produced than the energy required to drive the experiment
    across any approach to fusion, so that's incredibly important.
    We built this facility and we have been on this research path
    for our national security applications, so that process of
    developing and igniting target and increasing the yield is
    critically important to the Stockpile Stewardship Program.
        In order to begin to think about energy applications, we
    need to think about some additional challenges. The targets
    that we use to do these experiments are beautiful, exquisite
    works of art. In order for this to be viable as an energy
    source, we need to be able to make these targets very robust,
    higher yield, and much simpler to manufacture and produce. We
    need to move from a system that produces one fusion ignition
    shot a week to having the capacity to do that repeatedly,
    ultimately, 10 times a second. And we have many of the
    component technologies that would enable that, but until we had
    this fundamental building block, we couldn't really begin to
    move on some of the key questions that stand between what we've
    done to date and a potential energy application.
        If we are successful, it is feasible to develop a fusion
    energy--fusion energy power plant based on the inertial fusion
    energy approach that could be commercially viable. Again, we're
    making extrapolations based on what we know today. There's a
    lot of work to be done. And I will say it's not just
    engineering at this point. There is still physics to be
    explored and to learn from, but that includes, you know,
    advanced laser technologies, tritium management and recycling,
    balance of plant issues, materials for radiation environments,
    et cetera.
        If we're successful, fusion holds the promise of providing
    baseload-scale energy, clean, without many of the long-term
    waste concerns that have been raised around fission
    technologies. So it has an abundant fuel source and can work at
    scale, independent of location. So most of the renewable energy
    is very regional in character. Fusion really is a clean
    baseload source of energy.
        Mr. Bowman. That's incredible. It feels like this is a
    moonshot moment for us. And we need a moonshot-style national
    effort to make fusion energy a reality. Do you agree with that?
    Let's move heaven and earth, all-of-government approach,
    private sector. This is our moonshot moment.
        Dr. Budil. I agree with that. We have spent 60 years
    creating this fundamental building block. We will continue to
    pursue this R&D for our important national security
    applications. But the prospects for energy are real, and they
    will require a whole-of-nation, private-sector, public-sector,
    community-based approach to advancing the science and
    technology here. And we have demonstrated in the past with
    efforts like this what we're capable of as a nation when we
    bring together the best minds, the best technology, the best
    elements of the private sector and the public sector. And this
    is an incredibly exciting challenge. So, as I mentioned
    earlier, students are really energized about the prospects for
    fusion, maybe pun intended. And so there's--there is a willing
    body of intellectual capital that's ready to move on this
    problem if the resources are available to make it move forward.
        Mr. Bowman. Dr. Droegemeier, can you add anything to what
    was just stated?
        Dr. Droegemeier. I'd just like to clap. I just think this
    is----
        Mr. Bowman. Are we allowed to clap in the hearing room? I
    think we should clap. Yes, we can do that.
        [Applause.]
        Dr. Droegemeier. I have to underscore the point that that
    she just made, though, 60 years. That's taking the long-haul
    view, right? That's being patient, investing, investing in
    something, and now all of a sudden, we have this extraordinary
    thing, not only for our national defense capabilities, but also
    for the future of our energy. And that's just I think a
    beautiful, beautiful thing. Thank you.
        Mr. Bowman. I yield back.
        Mr. Babin. Thank you very much. And absolutely,
    congratulations. That information certainly needs to be
    protected as well as we go forward into that research.
        I'd like to recognize the gentlewoman from Oklahoma, Mrs.
    Bice.
        Mrs. Bice. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I thank the
    witnesses for being here this afternoon. And a special shout-
    out to Dr. Droegemeier, who is my fellow Oklahoman.
        I want to direct this first question to Ms. Wince-Smith,
    and that is in your opening statement you talked a little bit
    about the valley of death. And I had a opportunity to sit at a
    roundtable yesterday with Chairman Lucas, with technology
    innovation owners that are trying to really, you know, ensure
    that we have superior capabilities over our adversaries,
    including China. But that was also brought up. What do you
    think we as Congress can be doing to try to bridge that gap,
    whether it's existing programs that need to be modified or
    other ways that we can continue to promote that type of needed
    innovation?
        Ms. Wince-Smith. Thank you for that very important
    question. And I have to say, I've been working on this issue
    for most of my career, so I hope someday I'll never hear valley
    of death.
        One of the issues is that we do not have a financing system
    in the United States that moves beyond the initial kind of
    startup phase into manufacturing. And I'll just share an
    example. Back in the nineties and even earlier, this country
    invented every single flat panel display technology, the first
    being liquid crystals out of Kent State, plasma, field
    emitters, the list went on. And there was lots of venture
    capital coming into that. But then it was time to make the
    manufacturing plant and scale it up. Not a penny. All of that
    went to Asia. We have the example of A123 battery. More,
    hundreds of millions went into that, including from the
    Department of Energy, the State of Michigan. Again, it was the
    manufacturing scaleup that takes lots of money.
        So we have to figure out in our country a way to bridge
    that. It's not going to be from traditional venture capital.
    Our banks are not engaged in this. There are no incentives for
    that. We have called at the council for many, many years for a
    national infrastructure bank. Many countries have that where
    they could make these large-scale investments on the
    manufacturing side. And this is very relevant to
    commercializing the fusion. It is an all-nation hymn. We're not
    going to get to where we could if we don't have massive
    investment from the government and private sector.
        But on the valley of death we really need to have some
    expanded programs, including SBIRs (Small Business Innovation
    Researches). There are companies that just spend their time
    getting SBIR grants. It's kind of an industry. And I can tell
    you when I was Assistant Secretary of Commerce, there were
    groups outside the United States who would look at those SBI
    awardees. They knew they couldn't go after stage B, and they'd
    come in and acquire them. And that's happening now in Silicon
    Valley and elsewhere. So having SBIR stage C that takes it
    farther on is one mechanism. And the States could actually
    contribute that as well. It doesn't need to be just Federal.
        So it really requires new models and really moving out of
    our traditional mode of thinking, oh, we have the great--we do
    have a great venture capital industry, but they don't invest in
    the kinds of things we're talking about here.
        Mrs. Bice. Happy to open the question up for any of the
    other witnesses if you'd like to comment. If not, I'll follow
    up on another question.
        OK. The second question is that, you know, America's
    economic future is dependent on successfully driving innovation
    and productivity growth in all parts of the country. What role
    will regional innovation initiatives have in securing U.S.
    leadership in research and technology? And this is open to any
    of the panelists.
        Dr. Droegemeier. I think regional innovation is key. And
    again, back to the diversity question, we need to bring the
    technological capabilities and development opportunities to
    those regions because we want to transform the regions. We
    don't want to take the people out of the regions. Maybe their
    families have been there for 50, 60 years. We want to lift
    those regions up. And so I think that the regional and and sort
    of, I think, as we heard, the place-based innovation is really
    critical.
        NSF is doing this now with the EPSCoR (Established Program
    to Stimulate Competitive Research) program. I think a lot of
    you are familiar with this. Whereas before it was, hey, how can
    we help, you know, increase the research competitiveness? Now,
    the focus is on what they're calling jurisdictional
    transformation, getting the universities, getting the small
    business community, getting the Federal--getting the State
    governments rather, getting the chambers of commerce together
    and saying, how can we transform our entire State using science
    and technology? Oklahoma's a very rural State. North Carolina
    is a rural State. There are a lot of great opportunities to do
    innovation, to get these folks involved. But we have to really
    think about, you know how to resource that and do that and
    build these partnerships at the State level in particular or in
    the regional level as well. And I think that's really a key to
    our future is not just doing it at the well-resourced places
    but having every zip code of the country become involved.
        Mrs. Bice. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
        Mr. Babin. Thank you.
        Now, I'd like to recognize Ms. Salinas.
        Ms. Salinas. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you to the
    panel.
        Climate change is a uniquely unifying threat across
    scientific disciplines and across nations. And I'm proud to
    represent the Oregon's Sixth Congressional District, a State
    that has long taken climate concerns seriously. And while each
    State and nation is dealing with its own climate consequences
    based on its infrastructure, geography, and economy, it's not
    really a problem that can be dressed--addressed in
    jurisdictional isolation. And so when it comes to climate,
    remaining competitive on the global stage necessarily involves
    fostering international collaboration with disadvantaged
    nations on the frontlines of sea levels rising, as well as with
    scientifically sophisticated competitors who may have a more
    mature climate strategy.
        And so my questions for the panel, first, when it comes to
    competing with China and the need to address climate change,
    what does that global leadership in science and technology
    development look like? And then I'll give you my second
    question. And then how can the U.S. best build upon the
    progress of other nations, including competitor nations? And
    it's generally to the panel, to whoever would like to answer.
        Dr. Droegemeier. I guess I'm the climate guy. So with
    regard to science and technology development, I think it's--
    there's no question--and we haven't really talked about this
    yet. But in terms of the research in our Nation, I think the
    importance of Chinese nationals coming to study here is very,
    very important to our future, again, an opportunity to lead
    with our values, to be constructively vigilant, to model for
    these folks, you know, what playing by the rules actually looks
    like. And when I was at OSTP I asked the question, suppose we
    just shut off all the immigration instantaneously? How long
    would it take us to get to where we would be otherwise? And
    we're talking generations. So we really have to collaborate.
        The climate challenge is a very important one for which I
    think they're--certainly, as you say, it's an international
    problem. Part of the problem, though, is that China is a huge
    global emitter, and it's building coal-fired power plants in
    other countries for reasons we've heard about previously, but
    that does not get counted against China's contributions to
    greenhouse gas emissions. So I think we need to, again, have
    China be honest about what it's doing, and say, OK, if we're
    going to really solve this challenge, technology and research
    are part of it, but also, mitigation is another very important
    part of it. And getting China to own up to the fact that, yes,
    it might be emitting, you know, twice as much as us with regard
    to CO2 or whatever, they're actually emitting a
    whole lot more than that because they're putting these plants
    in other countries and getting a foothold there in their energy
    systems and also their data systems, so it's a very kind of
    nefarious thing.
        So I don't know if that answers your question, but, as an
    S&T enterprise, we really do need--we need a global approach
    here, and we need researchers from China working with us on the
    climate challenge.
        Dr. Budil. So I'd like to add, we have really formidable
    capacity in the U.S. to understand how the climate is evolving
    and what the impacts will be to nations in the developing world
    in particular. And we have an opportunity to build
    partnerships, science and technology cooperation partnerships,
    with many of those nations to help them understand what the
    impacts are that are coming, what the technology solutions are
    that are available today that could be deployed, and there are
    many, and to help them identify strategies to sustainably
    transition their energy supply.
        I think this idea of thinking about S&T as a bridge-
    builder, you know, that's--S&T cooperation with allies and
    partners at scale, that's what the developing world, Europe,
    our traditional partners in the UK, in Asia, in Japan, in Korea
    and Australia, India, but also working with these smaller
    nations to help them build capacity and to really use the
    fruits of our research enterprise to help them develop more
    sustainable paths forward and to use that as a way to increase
    U.S. influence in how these countries think about their future.
        In climate modeling, we have the capacity today to really
    understand at a very local level what the impacts are likely to
    be over time. And so I think this is an underappreciated form
    of international diplomacy and U.S. leadership that we should
    be exercising.
        Ms. Wince-Smith. I would just add--and it's a wonderful
    opportunity for our agency, for international development, and
    sister agencies around the world to collaborate on this and to
    leverage what they're doing in different parts, particularly in
    the developing world, as opposed to a lot of those programs
    kind of operating in silos.
        Dr. Droegemeier. If I can just add quickly, the Weather Act
    that this Committee will reauthorize, I believe, has a lot of
    provision in there for work at the weather-climate interface.
    So we're talking about these developing nations, these other
    nations, their economies may be very agrarian. The very local
    effects are what are important, so it sort of is not just the
    2-week weather timeline but the timeline out to several months.
    And, you know, a couple of planting seasons is very, very
    important. So this kind of research is really the key point.
    And if you think about reauthorizing the Weather Act, you might
    want to think about really highlighting that point.
        Ms. Salinas. Thank you. I yield back.
        Mr. Babin. Thank you.
        I'd like to recognize the gentleman from Georgia, Mr.
    Collins.
        Mr. Collins. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        As a freshman, newly elected, been here about 2 months, and
    spent 30 years in private business as a small business person.
        Ms. Wince-Smith, I heard when you were speaking earlier,
    you talked about a unified vision and economic issues and
    public liability and regulations and antitrust. And I look at
    it as a point of we can compete with anybody in the world in
    small business. And I took that personally as the same things
    that I saw in small business as an overreach from our Federal
    Government, regulations and bureaucracies out there that really
    regulate most businesses to the point where they can't compete
    or they have to look for outside sources.
        And I guess my question in a nutshell is do you think that
    the government overreach and excess regulations are hindering
    our ability to compete with China?
        Ms. Wince-Smith. Thank you for that very important
    question. And, you know, regulation is always a balance issue.
    It's sort of like the golden mean. We do need regulation, but
    we don't need too much regulation, and so how we get to the
    right point is the challenge. And certainly, we in the United
    States have overregulated in many, many areas vis-a-vis our
    competitor, certainly China. I mean, they're on the side where
    they don't regulate. I've been told if you go to a facility
    where they're actually processing rare earth materials, you
    think you're in a different age, a different place. I mean,
    there's absolutely no regulation whatsoever on safety, health,
    environmental, so it is a balance issue.
        But I think on some of the regulation in the United States,
    we're--it's almost like we're Gulliver, and the Lilliputians
    are tying our hands because product liability reform has gotten
    to the point--and we've tried over the years to reform this as
    a bipartisan issue. But if you produce a chemical, as a small
    business, and one of your customer buys it and something
    happens through what they did with it, the liability goes all
    the way back to you. So we know that many, many corporations in
    the United States actually stopped production and moved
    overseas because of the punitive nature of our product
    liability. And again, it's a balance issue. So I do think that
    this is a matter that we can have, you know, the best science
    and technology, we can have lots of startups, but it takes
    regulation, it takes capital, it takes trade to get these into
    the marketplace. And these are issues that we need to work on.
    And in many, many ways we have overregulated. We need to bring
    that back but still protect safety, environmental health, and
    the transparency of a business for its consumers.
        Mr. Collins. Hold that thought. Mr. Kitchen, did you want
    to--could you add to some of that? I knew you gave several
    examples like the doorbells and stuff.
        Mr. Kitchen. Thank you, sir. I think the thing that most
    concerns--so I would align myself with everything that was just
    previously said. I think, obviously, some type of regulatory
    regime is essential. It's what sets us apart so that, you know,
    our airplanes typically don't crash, right? And that's in large
    part because of the regulatory infrastructures that we have. At
    the same time, we are playing a balancing game as we try to
    allow our innovation industry to run free and to be aggressive
    and agile. That's a critical capability. So these are the
    balancing acts.
        I think when it comes to regulation, one of my most
    fundamental concerns, as I mentioned in my testimony, is where
    many of our allies and partners are going. To be frank, many of
    these allies and partners seem to think that the goal is to
    produce as robust and aggressive a regulatory scheme as
    possible. Instead, I would argue that the goal should be to
    produce as robust and as aggressive innovation capability as
    possible. And so when our friends in the European Union and
    even to our north in Canada are considering explicit policies
    that deliberately seek to decouple U.S. technology companies
    and that will have the net benefit of preferencing Chinese
    alternatives, all under the guise of digital sovereignty, I
    want to express a type of empathy with their underlying
    motivations but warn them as a friend, you're doing it all
    wrong. And that if that's not arrested and brought into a
    better sense of things, it will result not only in hurting the
    United States, which is bad enough, but it will preference and
    allow China to move in and assume a position that it will
    almost assuredly abuse.
        Mr. Collins. Thank you, Ms. Wince-Smith, one quick
    question. Ninety percent of the graphite is found in China,
    produced in China, or just refined in China?
        Ms. Wince-Smith. It's coming out of China both refined--I
    don't know if it's all produced. But I just heard this from a
    very exciting startup battery company. And----
        Mr. Collins. So they don't have 90 percent of the
    graphite----
        Ms. Wince-Smith. Not in the world, no, but it's coming from
    them. And they have the processing----
        Mr. Collins. And I would say that's probably----
        Ms. Wince-Smith [continuing]. Capability----
        Mr. Collins [continuing]. Due to permitting regulations and
    mining restrictions----
        Ms. Wince-Smith. Big, big part of it.
        Mr. Collins [continuing]. Right here. Thank you. I yield
    back.
        Mr. Babin. Thank you very much.
        I'd like to recognize the gentleman from Florida, Mr.
    Frost.
        Mr. Frost. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for convening this
    important hearing, and thank you to our witnesses.
        Look, I believe that the greatest challenge facing our
    country and the world is the climate crisis. My generation
    fears that we will lose drinkable water, breathable air in our
    lifetimes, and worry that our childhood homes will be flooded
    out by the sea level rise and food will become scarce. And this
    is especially important in my State of Florida. We're a
    frontline community. As you know, last year, we had two storms
    that completely decimated and wiped out many of our coastline
    cities. It was a great issue in my district.
        One thing that the United States can do right now is lead
    the world in science and technology advancements to help
    prevent the climate collapse. And I believe we have to enact
    near-term solutions and develop long-term strategy to make sure
    that the U.S. science and tech fields can meet this challenge.
        So Dr. Droegemeier, I wanted to ask, how could this
    National Science and Technology Strategy address near-term
    resilience goals and also long-term prevention goals to address
    the climate crisis?
        Dr. Droegemeier. Oh, it's an excellent question, and I
    think that's exactly the purpose of the strategy. And frankly,
    that's why I think the 4-year timeline is great because it's
    kind of the same as the National Climate Assessment, but also
    putting in the context of a 25-year horizon where it goes
    beyond elections and beyond, you know, beyond the normal thing,
    and people say, well, we've never done that before. That's the
    whole point, you know? A meteorologist telling you to do a 25-
    year forecast, that's not what I'm saying. I'm basically saying
    let's think long term about the overarching, broad S&T issues
    and the kinds of things that we want to do as a Nation, not the
    specifics, you know.
        So with regard to the S&T, you know, very simple climate
    models tell us that you increase greenhouse gases, the planet
    will warm. We don't need all the sophistication. We do need the
    sophistication, though, to know what the localized impacts are.
    We don't do a great job with that to be honest. The error bars
    on the actual projections are pretty large, but we are doing a
    lot of work, I think, to improve those. So the models are
    basically all that we have. And the thoughtful approaches as to
    how the population will grow, what the technology mix will be,
    and things like that, all these different scenarios that are
    played out.
        So I think from the the short term we need to think about,
    you know, measures that are mitigation-adaptive. You look at a
    lot of the--a lot of commercials on TV now, everybody's doing
    EVs, right, because we're starting to have infrastructure that
    will allow that to happen with our power grid. The longer-term
    things, if you look at the models, the greatest uncertainty in
    the short term is the actual atmospheric uncertainty in the
    model itself, the actual natural variability. You get beyond 20
    years or so, the great uncertainty is in the energy mix and the
    population and all that sort of thing. So I think we need to
    continue to study those things, take even more thoughtful
    approaches, and look at improving the physics of the models,
    building--you know, I would love to see us in this country
    build a--what the Japanese did 20 years ago, an Earth
    simulator, a computer designed specifically----
        Mr. Frost. Yeah.
        Dr. Droegemeier [continuing]. And Livermore could be the
    perfect place to house this.
        Mr. Frost. Yeah.
        Dr. Droegemeier. Really--you know, we write our codes in a
    way that has to adapt to transaction processing computers just
    because that's what is out there. You know, suppose we as a
    nation said we're going to put $2 billion into building a
    computer designed just to simulate the Earth system and do what
    no other Nation can do in terms of climate projection, that
    would be an enormously valuable investment because we have the
    capability, but we don't have the computational capability to
    run these models at the resolutions needed to capture clouds
    and hurricanes and things like that. We're just waiting for
    computing to get there.
        Mr. Frost. Yes.
        Dr. Droegemeier. Let's fast-forward computing technology
    and build something as a nation that would get us there.
        Mr. Frost. Thank you. No, I really--and that leads to my
    next question, you know, the other benefits of this work.
        Dr. Budil, I wanted to ask, so Orlando where I'm from,
    we're quickly becoming the simulation hub of the country, which
    is really exciting. We actually--I was just at the Orlando
    Economic Partnership, which is an organization, and we have the
    first city digital twin, a complete digital twin of Orlando,
    which is going to be great. I wanted to ask what--do you
    believe advancements in computer simulation technology to model
    the impact of climate change could give us a competitive edge?
        Dr. Budil. Yes, thank you for the question. It's an
    excellent line of questioning, and I agree completely. And I
    agree with my colleague's comments entirely. The Department of
    Energy has been on the frontline of advancing the state-of-the-
    art in climate modeling for some time and is currently
    developing the ESM--3 (Earth System Model) code, which is the
    Earth system simulation model, a next generation that's
    anticipated to run on our new largest computers.
        So Oak Ridge has just sited Frontier, which is a large
    exascale computer. Livermore will be home to the first exascale
    computer, slated for national security applications. It will
    also do open science applications like climate, and it'll
    produce at over 2 exaflops. So we're beginning to have the
    computing capacity and the modeling and simulation tools to do
    this work. It's going to be incredibly enabling.
        And with the introduction of tools like artificial
    intelligence and machine learning, we're able to advance the
    capabilities of our models very quickly relative to what we
    were able to do in the past. By taking onboard large amounts of
    data, we're getting much more data at higher fidelity about
    different aspects of the climate system. Using those tools to
    really smartly advance the state-of-the-art I think will help
    with the error bar problem, which is a significant challenge
    going forward. But we should be able to give communities a real
    edge in understanding what's likely to be visiting them not
    just today but----
        Mr. Frost. Yes.
        Dr. Budil [continuing]. Several years down the road.
        Mr. Frost. Thank you so much. I have more questions, but
    I've run out of time. I really appreciate your time today and
    excited to work with this Committee on advancing our economy
    and national security by investing in the green energy economy.
    I really appreciate it.
        Mr. Babin. I'd like to recognize the gentleman from Ohio,
    Mr. Miller.
        Mr. Miller. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just want to say
    thank you to Chairman Lucas and Ranking Member Lofgren for
    holding this important hearing. And thank you to our witnesses
    for your insight today.
        I don't think there's more of an appropriate topic for this
    Committee to address through its first hearing of Congress. The
    Chinese Communist Party is the United States' greatest threat
    on the world stage. It is critical that we remain a global
    leader in cutting-edge science and advanced technologies to
    address this threat and to ensure our economic and national
    security for generations to come.
        One issue I'd like to focus on today is the need for a
    skilled workforce as a key component of our strategic
    competition with China. Roughly 36 million jobs in the United
    States today are part of the STEM workforce. That is nearly 1/4
    of all jobs nationally. In these 36 million jobs, 17 million of
    them are filled by skilled technical workers who have a wealth
    of science, engineering, and technical knowledge but do not
    hold 4-year degrees. Clearly, there is a need for career and
    technical education programs that equip workers with much-
    needed skills without saddling them with unmanageable debt. A
    more robust approach to career and technical education will
    ensure that we are able to train workers properly and remain
    competitive with China, which has made efforts to recruit top
    foreign talent, including from American universities, industry,
    and government.
        Dr. Droegemeier, you put it simply in your testimony. It
    boils down to people. As part of this, you propose an
    initiative similar to the GI Bill to coordinate workforce
    development on a national scale with broad national goals that
    involve all sectors of the Science and Technology Enterprise.
    Can you elaborate on the need for Federal involvement in a
    coordinated approach to STEM workforce development programs
    that we have here?
        Dr. Droegemeier. Congressman, thank you so much. I loved
    your comments there, and you're spot on. We have a lot of great
    programs that are going on. I think at last count there were
    well over 150 STEM education programs, some large, some small.
    There are a lot of nonprofits doing great things. And like I
    said earlier, there's like a thousand flowers blooming, but
    where are the big gardens?
        If you look at the GI Bill, it really had two pieces to it.
    One was to thank the servicemen and women who were responsible
    for the Allied victory in World War II coming back from World
    War II. And the other thing was, they're an important part of
    our future, so let's make sure we invest in them. So my thought
    about something--a GI Bill-type activity here would be to say
    we need to coordinate much more effectively vis-a-vis the
    National S&T Strategy, which gives us the chance to do
    something we've never done before, really, I think, to look at
    this from a holistic national point of view, to create really
    what I would call not a U.S. talent program but a U.S.--sort of
    a capabilities investment program to bring people to the fore
    whether they're in--looking at a skilled technical workforce or
    whatever, to create a framework that has basically a system
    that has them, you know, being educated and trained, but then
    also giving service back to our Nation, which is--in fact, the
    GI Bill, the service came on the front end. This would come on
    the back end actually. I don't think it ought to be a handout.
    It ought to not not be a freebie, but it ought to be structured
    like the GI Bill to where part of that was loans to start
    companies, part of it was tuition, and so on.
        I think getting folks into the game from all over America
    is so critically important. And, as I think Deborah said, you
    know, we're fielding a baseball team with one player. This gets
    a chance for all these folks who--I've seen capabilities all
    over this country in the places you would least expect to find
    them. We need to get those missing millions. We need to go find
    them. We need to bring them in. And we need to incentivize and
    provide them resources to be successful, but then say, you know
    what, you owe a debt of gratitude to our Nation. Here's the
    service component of that. And we build on American
    exceptionalism, I think, in doing so.
        Mr. Miller. Yes, I could not agree more with your
    assessment.
        Ms. Wince-Smith, you also raise the issue of regional
    diversity within the innovation economy as part of the National
    Science and Technology Strategy. In your testimony, you
    highlighted the fact that the innovation workforce is
    concentrated largely in metropolitan areas such as Boston, San
    Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, and San Diego. You also wrote
    one-size-fits-all approaches to supporting regional innovation
    ignore these crucial and geographic distinctions and fail to
    capitalize on different regions, core competencies, and
    advantages.
        As someone who represents a middle America district in
    northeast Ohio, I sympathize with this view. I want to see jobs
    pop up in Cleveland, Parma, Medina, Wooster, Strongsville, and
    other communities in our area, not just in big coastal cities.
    So do you think that regional centers dedicated to completing--
    excuse me--complementing the existing capabilities and
    resources of a specific area would result in organic pipeline
    for workforce development?
        Ms. Wince-Smith. Thank you for that wonderful question. And
    I have to say I'm from Akron.
        Mr. Miller. Oh, nice.
        Ms. Wince-Smith. So I know the region very well.
        Mr. Miller. You're right there.
        Ms. Wince-Smith. And I know, of course, that Toledo was, as
    I said, the inventor of one of the flat panel displays, and,
    you know, for solar, et cetera.
        I think that this is really a regional leadership issue. I
    think that what happens often in States and regions that all
    these dots are not connected. The workforce development boards
    do not collaborate with the economic development boards. You
    have to bring in sort of the leaders of the community. And you
    can see the power of a leader in a community. I'll just cite
    San Diego. You know, San Diego still is a great center of our
    U.S. Navy, but it's become a leader in wireless communications
    and biotech because of how they brought all that together and
    one startup Linkabit that became Qualcomm. So leadership is
    very, very critical for this.
        And also the educational establishment from K through 12
    all the way up, including, you know, leaders who are doing our
    sports activity. We put so much time and effort in developing
    talent for people going into sports but we don't do the same
    for them going into STEM. I mean, it would be great to have a
    cybersecurity corps. But on the regional economic development
    I'm seeing across the country, and the U.S. Council on
    Competitiveness is so focused on this, just tremendous
    capability that's not even known. And so the National Science
    Foundation, you know, the other departments are really making
    an effort to go out and identify through these hubs and
    investments how they can create an anchor and then build for
    this.
        And then of course the issue is on capital. Venture
    capital, you know, for certain types of things is great, but
    it's concentrated. But still in all these regions there are
    some high-net-worth individuals who are doing things. Nebraska
    is a fabulous example of that. So we have all the ingredients--
    --
        Mr. Issa [presiding]. Would the gentlelady wrap up, please?
        Ms. Wince-Smith. We have all the ingredients.
        Mr. Miller. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I yield back my time.
        Mr. Issa. Thank you. Even though you're from Akron and I'm
    from Cleveland, the gentleman is from Cleveland, we're--we have
    to call it quits on that.
        We now recognize the gentleman from California, Mr. Mullin.
        Mr. Mullin. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you to our
    witnesses for your testimony.
        I come from San Mateo County in the San Francisco Bay Area,
    home to some innovative partnerships. I really appreciate the
    community college references as well, retraining with community
    colleges and our local workforce development boards and our
    life sciences sector, which is a very robust one.
        So my question is a bit of a follow up, Dr. Droegemeier.
    You were talking about the national STEM strategy and GI Bill
    approach, but you did reference supplanting some existing
    programs. And I just want to get a sort of sense, you know, the
    existing Workforce Investment Act funding streams and there's
    money in CHIPS now, investments in IRA (Inflation Reduction
    Act) on clean energy. How do you pull all of these things
    together into a coordinated funding approach where there's some
    coherence but you're also integrating--I say this as a former
    local workforce investment board member who always appreciated
    dealing with some of those Federal funding streams coming down
    to the local level, how we integrate all of that in a
    coordinated way.
        Dr. Droegemeier. You said it so beautifully, and it's that
    whole-of-nation approach. I think that those local boards play
    an extremely important role, and their voice needs to be at the
    table. So I think it's a question of scaling up, and in no way
    do I suggest that a lot of these programs aren't doing good
    things or whatever. But I think the--what you created with the
    National S&T Strategy is an opportunity to step way back from
    all the wonderful individual things and say what do we do as a
    nation and how do we coordinate it? How do we not--it's not
    about control, but it's about coordination and scaling and
    having a symbiosis among all of these different programs to
    where we're looking to achieve national goals, not, hey, my
    little program is doing this, and it's doing great things, but
    how is it feeding the national goal of workforce development,
    of economic development, of diversity enhancement? That's the
    thing that I think you have wonderfully handed to OSTP and the
    community and said you guys go figure this out. And that's what
    I am looking forward to doing. And I really appreciate you
    doing that because it's never really happened before.
        Mr. Mullin. Thank you for that. Just a quick follow up on
    scale, well aware of large companies being able to operate at
    scale and innovate and develop STEM partnerships, but a lot of
    the innovation is happening in smaller companies. You know,
    we're talking, you know, five people in the R&D space doing
    incredible work. How do we--as we think going forward, how do
    we develop an S&T strategy that really integrates some of those
    smaller companies? Just any thoughts in that regard I'd
    welcome.
        Dr. Budil. So I'll chime in since I brought this up
    earlier. I think this is an excellent question. I think part of
    it is creating mechanisms to give people access to the tools
    and capabilities they need to continue their progress. So, for
    example, if you're a small company developing hard technology,
    the barriers to entry in the market are enormous. Just the cost
    of building capacity to do the R&D you need to advance your
    technology. And this national look can say, OK, what could a
    regional center do to develop central capabilities that many
    companies could have access to for advanced machining
    capabilities or different types of laboratory facilities or
    access to high-performance computing, and then using existing
    institutions, academic institutions or national laboratories or
    others, to help bring expertise to these companies to help them
    advance their capabilities quickly? I think it's really a new
    kind of partnership ecosystem where we really try to think
    about all the national assets and how we can bring them
    together in new ways.
        Dr. Droegemeier. Could I just follow up on that last point?
    A lot of small businesses, as you say, can't afford wet labs,
    clean rooms, things like that. But universities have these
    things. And believe me, they're not busy all the time. And so
    now you can--private companies can go in and legally use these
    facilities by paying for them. The university is not competing
    unfairly with the private sector by undercutting them because
    they're nonprofit. These partnerships are so important. And
    this is where you can also build wonderful linkages for R&D
    with universities. But it might just start with sharing a
    facility that you need to have to fabricate the device or
    something as a small startup. But they're incredibly agile and
    they're wonderful and they're the bedrock of our economy.
        Mr. Mullin. Thank you for that. I yield back.
        Mr. Issa. Thank the gentleman. And I'll yield myself for a
    round of questioning.
        One of the nice things about going last is that everyone
    else has asked questions, probably asked every question, they
    just haven't been asked by me. So I'm going to stick to pretty
    much two questions. One is a recap. Ms. Smith and others can
    weigh in on this. But, you know, when talking about the centers
    of excellence and talking about trying to reach out all over
    the country--and by the way, as a Clevelander, I'm very proud
    of Case Western as a university of excellence. But I'm a San
    Diegan, so I'm even more proud of the University of California,
    San Diego, and very aware of what Stanford represented to the
    building of Silicon Valley.
        At the end of the day, aren't our universities in many,
    many cases the reason--not the size of a city because San Jose
    was a pretty hick town when they got going. But aren't--isn't
    it not about the size but in fact the excellence of the
    universities, and that those are naturally places that, within
    the technology UC Davis, you know, for agriculture and a lot of
    their areas of expertise? Isn't that what we need to look for
    and recognize? You can't make every university a center of
    excellence, but every great university eventually creates a
    field of interest and excellence.
        Ms. Wince-Smith. Thank you. Thank you, Congressman. You
    said it very, very well. The universities and our whole network
    across the country, our crown jewel, no country in the world
    has the scale of universities, the--from community colleges all
    the way up to the most advanced research institutes in the
    world. And if you look throughout the country, yes,
    universities are anchoring, and they have the great potential
    to do more.
        Mr. Issa. So as we as a Committee--and we don't--we're not
    the Committee that funds every university, but as we look at
    plans and we look at supporting a national plan--I was in
    Bozeman, Montana, for example. Now, they know more about wheat
    and barley and, by the way, the beer it makes, and they have
    just an amazing amount of technology there that I wouldn't have
    known if I hadn't gone there on a congressional trip. But
    shouldn't we, as a Congress, look to the Administration to have
    a plan that maps the world mostly as it is from the standpoint
    of university expertise, not grant writing, as we would hope it
    would become, which often works to the detriment of do you
    really go to Bozeman, Montana, to do nuclear fusion? Any--is
    that consistent with all of your thoughts?
        Ms. Wince-Smith. I think we need to do both. And I think we
    have the capacity to do both. We want to continue----
        Mr. Issa. We're out of money, ma'am, so in fairness----
        Ms. Wince-Smith. Well----
        Mr. Issa [continuing]. Let's be a little careful about
    that. We have massive debts. We're at a deficit that's
    unbelievable, so the idea that there's enough money to do
    everything we want to do versus using our money wisely is going
    to be an area that I know the Chairman is very concerned about
    is how to get the best return for the taxpayer on those dollars
    that are already being spent? Because it's unlikely that we're
    going to dramatically increase dollars spent in this
    environment.
        Ms. Wince-Smith. And that wasn't what I was suggesting.
    What I was suggesting is, whatever the area we want to work in,
    let's link together these universities with partnerships
    because there are other places of the country doing the advance
    work in agriculture. And just because they don't happen to be
    in Montana, they should be working together. So knitting these
    things together is absolutely the key to building up this
    infrastructure for the country in the future.
        Mr. Issa. Excellent. I agree.
        Last one is one that's near and dear to my heart, even
    though I'm a native Clevelander and a Californian now. China
    does not respect intellectual property, and yet China is one of
    the greatest recipients of patents both directly and
    indirectly, directly in the sense that they have tremendous
    amount of applications that basically go back to the CCP,
    indirectly because they are making acquisitions and inquiries
    and they have investment funds that essentially rake
    intellectual property out of the United States and take it back
    to China. Well, in fact, as a recipient of a Chinese patent, I
    know it's as worthless as the paper it was printed on. Should
    this Committee look to the question and other Committees,
    including Judiciary, look to the question of reciprocal
    activity, meaning should we continue to have China dealt with
    like a trusted partner? Should universities be free to share
    with mainland China, as they do, massive amounts of the work
    that the taxpayer pays for? Or should we have a plan to
    recognize that they are not an evenhanded competitor? Your
    comments?
        Ms. Wince-Smith. Well, I'll just jump in on that. I do
    think we need reciprocity, and I think we need new models and
    mechanisms. For instance, one of the things we could do is if
    we identify stolen intellectual property that comes into any
    product that's entered into this country, we refuse its entry.
    We do this--we have a wonderful system for protecting the
    integrity of our food supply and agricultural products coming
    in but we don't on intellectual property. And, you know, I
    serve on the Commission for the Theft of American Intellectual
    Property, and they have some fabulous recommendations. But by
    the time we get through the process of identifying the impact
    of what's been stolen, often the company's out of business. So
    it is an absolutely critical crisis for the country.
        And just one metric, back in 2012 there was the data if
    China implemented their existing intellectual property laws,
    however weak they are, we would have had $1.2 trillion more in
    GDP (gross domestic product). And that was in the first report
    of the Commission on the Theft of Intellectual Property.
        Mr. Issa. Thank you. My time has expired.
        The gentleman from--the gentlewoman from Michigan, Ms.
    Stevens.
        Ms. Stevens. Thank you. It's quite interesting thinking
    about competition from the standpoint of American debt. I just
    can't imagine that the CCP is doing that. And while some are
    debating the integrity, the fiscal integrity of this Nation by
    threatening to default America on its debt, I can't imagine a
    bigger vote in this chamber being one for our competitor
    countries than our own country.
        But with that, look, we were very pleased in a bipartisan
    way to pass the CHIPS and Science Act, much legislation that
    came through this Committee, legislation I was happy to author,
    and certainly recognizing that some of our colleagues who were
    more reticent to join onto legislation bolstering and investing
    in scientific research for the first time ever because they
    woke up to the threat and the competition with the CCP.
        And so as we think about the CHIPS and Science Act and some
    of our great catching up that we have been doing with that
    legislation, the first Federal funding opportunity coming out
    just yesterday, I'm interested in honing in on other
    technologies or R&D areas that we need to be investing in that
    we might not be thinking of. Dr. Budil, you had talked about
    supercomputing. We remember that race. Ms. Wince-Smith, we
    certainly have been collaborating for years on supercomputer
    technology and its benefits. But what other research
    applications should we be looking at?
        Dr. Budil. So I can begin? That's an excellent question. I
    think the whole computing ecosystem is incredibly important.
    It's another great area where public-private partnerships have
    really spurred the development of high-performance computing at
    scale, which has enabled new kinds of science we didn't
    envision when we started down that path. So again, ensuring
    that we stay closely coupled to industry trends. Industry isn't
    going to build computers just for science because that's a very
    small market relative to what they typically are focused on. So
    ensuring that the scientific community and the industry that
    builds machines are very closely coupled together and can
    advance and can take advantage of the new tools that are coming
    along in AI and machine learning and then looking at advanced
    technologies like quantum, neuromorphic computing, and other
    approaches that will really change the game for how we think
    about R&D.
        Another area that's critically important is--that we've
    talked about a great deal here today is energy technologies.
    That includes new technologies, for example, for long-term
    storage or batteries, other clean energy technologies in the
    future, could be fusion energy technology, but taking U.S.
    leadership in some of these areas and really capitalizing on
    it. I think advanced materials and manufacturing is another
    area where investment is really critical. That industry is
    changing very, very fast, and the nexus of high-performance
    computing and manufacturing capabilities is going to change the
    game again. So in the next 10 years, you'll see something very
    different.
        And then the final one is biotechnology and biosciences.
    Barriers to entry in these fields are very low. They're moving
    very fast. And we have an opportunity with our capabilities,
    experimental and computational, to really foundationally change
    the speed and capacity of how we think about development of
    drugs and therapeutics, how we think about disease, and how we
    think about the technologies that will enable us to better
    understand biological systems.
        Ms. Stevens. Ms. Wince-Smith, did you want to chime in? Are
    policymakers listening and acting accordingly?
        Ms. Wince-Smith. It's hard to add to what Dr. Budil has
    said, but I would just mention biofabrication also as part of
    the biotechnology revolution.
        Ms. Stevens. And certainly to the point about how we
    effectively utilize the taxpayer dollar for outcomes, for
    proven outcomes, public-private partnerships, which you've
    mentioned several times in this hearing, tend to work. Are
    there any specific examples you'd like to point to that have
    been successful that we could build off of as a nation?
        Dr. Budil. I'll point to my favorite recent example. There
    was a partnership formed called ATOM, Accelerating Therapeutic
    Opportunities in Medicine. It was a partnership that started
    between a discussion between the National Cancer Institute and
    the Department of Energy. It included GlaxoSmithKline, Lawrence
    Livermore National Lab, and University of California, San
    Francisco, so very unique public-private partnership, bringing
    together biosciences, clinical research, Big Pharma, and the
    Federal stakeholders that were key there. And the goal was to
    develop tools to use computational methods to very rapidly
    screen molecules for drug applications. So if you could take
    the drug development timeline from 10 years down to less than 1
    year, it would make it much more economically feasible for
    companies to develop new molecules.
        For GSK it wasn't about, ``what can I do. It was about can
    I create a toolkit that allows my whole industry to move
    ahead?'' So from that perspective, they wanted to bring other
    companies into that partnership. I think that sort of
    precompetitive landscape is a really novel feature and was
    uniquely enabling of what we were able to do there.
        Ms. Stevens. Thank you. With that I'm out of time. I yield
    back, Mr. Chair.
        Mr. Issa. Thank you.
        We now recognize the gentleman from California, Mr.
    McCormick.
        Mr. McCormick. Good morning. Money is power, especially
    when it comes to technology, developing technology, is one of
    the most expensive things we do in the world. In 2019, I
    believe we had about $2.4 trillion of investment in R&D and
    technologies. The United States roughly had about $722 billion
    of that. But over the course of time, from the sixties up to
    2020, we've gone from about 69 percent of the research done in
    the world to about 31 percent, so less than half of what we
    used to do percentagewise. This goes back to monetary policy.
    I'm concerned when it comes to technological advances between
    us and China, in a nation that has anywhere from roughly $20
    trillion more debt than we do and a smaller GDP, that they're
    basically held unaccountable while they buy our debt. And they
    don't have the same central banking system accountability. I'm
    concerned that we're being outpaced. We have no way to keep up
    in a fair market. Nobody's holding them accountable. Meanwhile,
    you discussed how important it is to have people in foreign
    status come to our schools and work in our universities.
        I worked at--I taught at Georgia Tech and Morehouse for
    about 4 years. Georgia Tech is a leading school in the Nation
    in technologies. And yet, we can have a Chinese student come
    over here and actually take their technology back there while
    they're spending trillions of dollars more on research and
    development. I just don't see how we win that battle because
    it's not a fair fight. How do we combat that?
        Dr. Droegemeier. Well, it's a key question I think
    ultimately here in terms of--one extreme is you lock everything
    down and you protect everything. That's not the answer. The
    other thing is you let it all be open. That's not the answer
    either. When you're looking at fundamental research, curiosity-
    driven research, a lot of people say, well, it gets published
    anyway, so what does it matter? Well, it matters because the
    pathway of doing that work and getting to the publication
    involves a lot of creativity, a lot of knowhow that is very
    valuable. And it doesn't make its way into the publication.
    Publication is just the end result. So what we're trying to
    protect is the capability, the knowhow, the sort of secret
    sauce that we have in our research laboratories like at Georgia
    Tech that results in the publications. I think, again, it's
    really a question of educating people, having policies in place
    at universities in particular, having resources that
    universities can turn to to understand and vet individual----
        Mr. McCormick. I'm going to interrupt you real quick
    because we're almost at two and a half minutes.
        Dr. Droegemeier. Yes, yes, sure.
        Mr. McCormick. Specifically what I'm worried about----
        Dr. Droegemeier. Yes.
        Mr. McCormick [continuing]. Is give me a specific example
    of those controls. I know we have that policy, but I don't know
    of them--and I'll tell you, when I was at Georgia Tech, we had
    people go to jail, because of espionage, because of Chinese
    foreigners coming and stealing our secrets. And we spend about
    half of the R&D budget that goes to universities comes from our
    government, which in 2019 was about $40 billion of investment
    and then everybody else investing another $50 billion. So my
    question is, what are we specifically doing to safeguard those
    technologies?
        Dr. Droegemeier. Well, again, I think we're educating
    people to look for certain behaviors, right? We're asking
    people to disclose relationships, which is a self-disclosure.
    And then--but here's the key. We can use open-source analytics
    to determine if they're being honest because it's all just
    based on, OK, if they say what they're--they're telling us who
    they really work with or who they're affiliated with, great. If
    they don't, well, we have no way of knowing.
        Mr. McCormick. OK. So if they're coming here from China,
    they're affiliated with China. They're getting an education and
    going back to China with what--their education they're getting
    here that we put trillions of dollars into.
        Dr. Droegemeier. Right. But they're also benefiting our
    universities. We're learning from--and 90 percent of those
    people are staying here. They're not going back. And so they're
    yearning for freedom. They don't have the freedom to discover
    and create in China. The talent programs in China, frankly, are
    not working. They're failing. Because all this repatriation of
    talent, they're not getting the folks coming back. Where--we
    still lead in that area, but it's a precarious lead, so you're
    right.
        Mr. McCormick. I'd make the point, too, that of the 90
    percent, the people who stay here in the United States, we
    should probably be keeping a pretty close eye on them because
    there's significant links back to the place where they come
    from, including the family that remains in place.
        Dr. Droegemeier. Yes, exactly. And a lot of pressure is put
    on them by the Chinese Government to report behaviors, to
    report people who are their colleagues, students, are you
    saying bad things about China? Are you supporting Taiwan? There
    are considerable pressures being brought to bear on those
    individuals. So in some sense, we want to help them deal with
    that. But ultimately, it's the Chinese Communist Party that is
    the villain here, not the Federal Government trying to protect
    our capabilities, as you say, to make sure that we become and
    remain a global leader.
        Mr. McCormick. Right. And with that, I have about 24
    seconds. I'm supposing that nobody has the monetary policy
    acumen to answer what we're doing to address the
    inconsistencies of the Chinese central banking system and its
    advantages over us.
        Ms. Wince-Smith. I'll just add another topic for a future
    time is how they're doing debt financing of infrastructure all
    over the world and what that means, too.
        Mr. McCormick. Exactly related. Thank you.
        Mr. Issa. I thank the gentleman. We now recognize the
    gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Sorensen.
        Mr. Sorensen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and good afternoon.
    My name is Eric Sorensen. I was born and raised in Rockford,
    Illinois, and attended Northern Illinois University, where I
    studied communications and meteorology. I served my communities
    as a meteorologist from 1999 to 2021. My job was to help my
    community by sharing the best information about upcoming severe
    weather and our changing climate. When people have access to
    accurate weather forecasts and climate data, we know that they
    make good decisions about their personal safety and about their
    own future. So I want to extend a special welcome to my fellow
    meteorologist on the panel, Dr. Droegemeier, for being here.
    And I do want to very quickly thank my colleagues in Oklahoma
    for safely keeping people ahead of the storms in the past 24 to
    36 hours. They saved lives, and that's the power of
    meteorology.
        I'm thrilled to join not only this Committee, but become
    the first meteorologist in Congress in nearly half a century.
    Today, I would like to focus on the structure of the U.S.
    approach to science and technology, how our approach really
    differs from that of other countries, including China, and how
    we can use these differences to our advantage.
        So I'll start with our meteorologist, esteemed Dr.
    Droegemeier. Research institutions at our Nation's universities
    like in my district, Monmouth College and Augustana College,
    provide critical S&T research, much does OU. This type of
    research is often built upon the private industry developing
    these new advanced technologies and investments. The private
    industries building on the advanced technology often develop in
    geographical proximity to the university that developed the
    basic technology. This relationship benefits the community and
    the economy around the university.
        So my question, how do we ensure that private companies
    that utilize the freeform nature of S&T R&D located around the
    producing university, thus giving back to the community that
    produced the technology?
        Dr. Droegemeier. Well, thank you so much for your good
    question and for your kind remarks there. We do a lot of this
    at OU. In fact, we have companies locating on our campus. And
    how do you incentivize them to stay there? And a lot of times
    they'll develop--I started a private company and it got
    purchased, but it's still, you know, in Norman. I think the key
    thing is to make sure you lower the barrier to entry to
    interact with the university in terms of if they're on the
    campus, you provide space for them at rates that do not
    undercut what they could get in the community but in fact are
    commensurate. But the value of being there is perhaps sort of
    comarketing of being able to go to seminars, getting access to
    students, having students work in your company, and so on. As
    you're developing the technology, the university kind of
    becomes your R&D arm.
        So if you're a small business, you don't have an R&D
    component, your company will, hey, the university could do
    that. And it doesn't necessarily require you to have a funded
    research relationship with the university. It might be that
    you're serving on a graduate student's committee and you
    deconflict yourself, you don't have a conflict of interest, but
    you're providing a private-sector perspective on the work that
    they're doing. And you might involve them doing an internship
    in your company for maybe not a lot of money, but all of a
    sudden, then you're able to hire them, because you've vetted
    them. You know exactly their capabilities. You've developed
    their capabilities. Now, all of a sudden, they're your
    employee, and so you've not made a huge investment in them.
    You've reaped the benefits of being at the university.
        That's, I think, the power of the local economic
    development. I think the key thing is to have the university
    not see itself in competition with the local economic
    development authorities. You want to have a partnership to
    where we say the university plays an important role. The
    Chamber of Commerce plays an important role. A lot of times
    there's economic development organizations that play a role. We
    at--in Oklahoma in Norman, we have a triumvirate of those
    things, and they all work together. If somebody comes to the
    campus, great. If they don't come to campus, great. If they're
    in Norman or they're nearby, we call that a win. So it's about,
    I think, being a good partner in this and not wanting to have
    everything for yourself but growing with the community in mind,
    as you say.
        Mr. Sorensen. My district consists of rural parts of
    western Illinois, smaller suburban areas. We know that smaller
    universities tend to attract much less funding. We have to make
    sure that more funding gets to smaller schools. What policies
    can Congress install to ensure that a diverse set of
    universities get their funding, their piece of that funding
    pie? I'll give this to anyone.
        Dr. Droegemeier. Well, I'll just tell you one thing that
    NSF is doing, it's got a new program called GRANTED, it stands
    for, if I get this right, Growing Research Access for
    Nationally Transformative Equity and Diversity. And the idea
    basically is to say that small universities, small colleges,
    they they have the capability to compete in terms of personnel,
    but they don't have the administrative structures to manage
    grants, to do proposal submissions, to meet all the compliance
    rules and regulations. So the idea is that if we as a Federal
    Government could invest in that capability through helping
    build partnerships with other institutions, then we empower
    them to unleash the capabilities of their faculty without
    putting them in jeopardy of getting an audit report on a grant
    that they somehow mismanaged without any ill intent. But they
    simply didn't have the people who knew what they were doing,
    and they weren't used to doing it. They didn't have a history.
    So that kind of program, which is not super expensive, it's
    leveraging the existing capabilities at R1 and R2 schools to
    build an ecosystem of partnerships of administering grant
    proposals and grant awards once they're funded. That will
    really empower a lot of institutions.
        Mr. Sorensen. Thank you. I'm out of time. I yield back.
        Mr. Issa. We now recognize the gentlelady from New York,
    Ms. Tenney.
        Ms. Tenney. Thank you, Chairman Issa and the Ranking
    Member, for holding this important meeting on U.S.-China
    competitiveness, and thank you to the witnesses for your time
    and insight, looking forward to hearing from you.
        New York's new 24th congressional District has a history as
    the home to the Erie Canal, which is one of the first regions
    in our country to enter and successfully prosper during the
    Industrial Revolution. However, unfortunately, in upstate New
    York, and it's particular in my region along the canal, we've
    suffered tremendously as we've allowed China to flood our
    markets with cheap, subsidized products. We've lost jobs, we've
    lost companies. So many have been displaced, so many iconic
    names that people would recognize such as Oneida, such as IBM
    and other big contributors.
        But over the last few decades, the rise of the malign
    influence of the Chinese Communist Party harmed Americans as it
    was--it stated--its State-sponsored espionage efforts have
    stolen American intellectual property. I believe it's over $600
    billion now on an annual basis. And its unfair trade tactics
    have driven American industries out of business. Additionally,
    China continues to spread its greater economic position to
    spread its techno-authoritarian model abroad, all across the
    world actually.
        While the Federal Government invests heavily in research
    and development, private businesses must roughly invest three
    times as much annually into research and development. To stay
    at the forefront of new emerging industries, the Federal
    Government must ensure its effort complements those in the
    private sector and not hurts them. This can be achieved through
    rewarding organizations with a good track record of
    successfully commercializing technologies, and through proven
    policies, including the R&D tax credit.
        I want to first direct my first question to Ms. Wince-
    Smith. So in your testimony that was was given, you discussed
    the troubling concentration of science and technology
    investments in coastal hubs like Silicon Valley. This leaves
    large swaths of our country and important industries such as
    manufacturing without access to the capital they need to
    innovate and thrive, particularly where I am from. So my first
    question for you is, from your perspective, how can we leverage
    the national science and technology plan to geographically
    diversify investments in science and technology and bring them
    to our rural regions, particularly upstate New York, which gets
    often forgotten between Buffalo and New York City.
        Ms. Wince-Smith. Thank you, Congresswoman. Well, we've had
    some discussion on that. And I know your region very well. And
    one thing I would say is the extent to which in our large-scale
    partnerships that we have funded by NSF, Department of Energy,
    we might think of having some kind of a provision where we're
    talking about diversity, equity, and inclusion of people and
    talent, but we ought to think of that also geographically so
    that every big project would also reach out and include an
    institution from a different part of the country that would
    have some compatible resources.
        I'll give you another example. And Dr. Budil could really
    talk to this better than I. But I know when Kodak had its
    difficulties----
        Ms. Tenney. Um-hum.
        Ms. Wince-Smith [continuing]. In Rochester, the whole
    optics workforce they had, the best in the world, many of those
    people came to Livermore to build NIF. So the mobility we have
    of people is one thing, but at the end of the day, it's really
    creating the environment for companies that want to come and
    invest there and also grow. I mean, I know Micron just has a
    new facility in New York that they've come in. And maybe also,
    you know, the old idea of incentives, tax breaks and things is
    a little outdated, but there are other types of incentives that
    states and regions can can give for locating in their
    facilities and the trained talent used for that.
        Ms. Tenney. But wouldn't you agree that incentives would be
    better than having sort of mandates and set-asides and----
        Ms. Wince-Smith. Oh, yes. Yes.
        Ms. Tenney. Because you got me concerned when you mentioned
    DEI and the fact that we have a State that's very hostile to
    businesses and incentivizing. That's why we don't have Kodak,
    Bausch and Lomb, Xerox, all those--all from the Rochester
    region, you know, have left for better tax treatment, better
    opportunities, and access to capital actually.
        So let me ask you, so you--in your ``Competing in the Next
    Economy'' report, you talk about the importance of breathing
    life in declining U.S. regional economies by stemming the brain
    drain, injecting high skills, and raising innovation potential.
    Can you tell me specifically not including a DEI-type scenario
    that you would--how do you address those in our rural
    communities? We have wonderful people who work--farmers, people
    who've been displaced because of the growing difficulty in, you
    know, for example, farming in upstate New York, even though my
    district is the No. 1 dairy and egg district in the entire
    Northeast, but we need help. How would you do that in----
        Ms. Wince-Smith. Well, I first want to clarify, when I was
    talking about diversity, equity, inclusion, I was specifically
    meaning geographical and regional, that we have all regions of
    the country included, and there are ways, you know, to do that.
        In terms of the work of the Council on Competitiveness,
    what we're going to be doing is anchoring a lot of this with
    universities in the regions, community colleges, 4-year college
    and on, and have them be kind of the anchor and helping to
    develop this with workforce boards and economic development
    agencies and also identify the leadership networks in these
    regions. You know, there's a lot of wealth still in that part
    of New York. Are they investing? Are they supporting startups
    and things? So we're going to look at these--I mean, there's a
    lot of knowledge to learn because we--nobody has the recipe for
    this yet. If we did, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
    But it's an imperative.
        Ms. Tenney. If I may, for 1 minute, Mr. Chairman, we have--
    --
        Mr. Issa. Very, very quickly.
        Ms. Tenney. We do have the highest taxes in the Nation, not
    California anymore, so that's a big problem, which is why I do
    support the tax incentives, especially in places like New York
    where there really is no place to get relief other than the
    Federal side. But we appreciate your comments. I acknowledge my
    time's run out. Thank you.
        Mr. Issa. Thank you. We now recognize the gentlelady from
    North Carolina, Mrs. Foushee.
        Mrs. Foushee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank all of you
    for being here today. This topic is particularly relevant to
    North Carolina's 4th Congressional District, which is home to
    several federally funded research centers and projects,
    including the Triangle University's Nuclear Laboratory, the
    North Carolina Biotechnology Center, North Carolina Central
    University's Biomanufacturing Research Institute and Technology
    Enterprise known as BRITE, and the UNC (University of North
    Carolina) Collaborative Sciences Center for Road Safety, just
    to name a few, and additionally, our world-class research
    universities and the Research Triangle Park, a premier global
    innovation center and the Nation's largest research park, home
    to nearly 400 companies and over 60,000 employees. So I am
    particularly encouraged by the promise that our region holds
    for innovation and in enhancing our Nation's global
    competitiveness in science and technology.
        Today, I would like to talk with you about how we can
    leverage our Nation's regional strengths, given our success so
    far throughout North Carolina, as an example of what can be
    achieved when we bring together local and State governments
    with corporate, nonprofit, and university partners.
        So my first question is for Dr. Droegemeier and Ms. Wince-
    Smith. In your provided testimonies, you mentioned the
    importance of regional innovation and partnerships, a key
    component included in the CHIPS and Science Act. And I'm
    wondering if you can briefly highlight the opportunities and
    some possible challenges facing regional innovation.
        Dr. Droegemeier. You've said it so beautifully in terms of
    the importance of regional partnerships and with Research
    Triangle Park and Research Triangle Institute and the
    extraordinary resources you have there, still, North Carolina
    is a rural State, right, and there's a lot of folks in North
    Carolina that need to be brought brought to the table.
        Partnerships take a lot of different forms, and the reason
    you do partnerships is really because you need help in doing
    something that you can't do on your own, frankly. And there's
    probably another reason where you say you want to lift up
    others who basically have been disadvantaged for a variety of
    reasons or whatever.
        When I was at the White House, I realized through a variety
    of meetings we had that, although a lot of Federal agencies
    have partnership offices, we don't really do partnerships very
    well, and people were realizing, oh, we could do much better. I
    think that's true for universities, it's true for basically all
    the sort of key players in a state, that they have their own
    swim lanes, as Deborah said earlier, but the economic
    development folks don't talk to the workforce development
    folks. And it seems so surprising and so simple. But getting
    them together and looking at the broad plan is really the key
    thing.
        And I think what the National S&T Strategy provides an
    opportunity to do is to have that conversation and confront the
    difficult challenge that we have of not knowing what all we
    have and not knowing who's not talking to who. And it's not
    really the government's job to do the work. It's the
    government's job to bring the people together. And frankly, I
    think the private sector is better positioned than the
    government to structure those--I'm not saying in terms of OSTP,
    but I'm saying in terms of having software and capabilities to
    bring people together, to find these creative differences, to
    find the folks that aren't in the game, to how do we get them
    to the table. That really is the key in my view of building
    these partnerships and creating the broader community that will
    uplift the rural communities that have so much to offer but
    they're just not in the game now because they don't have the
    resources. And that's what this plan, if we do it right, I
    think will give us the roadmap for how to do it. And I know
    Deborah, I'm sure, has some thoughts.
        Ms. Wince-Smith. I would just add, Congresswoman, that
    North Carolina is a poster child of success. And many parts of
    the country look at North Carolina how--you know, that whole
    Research Triangle Park, the great universities, the economy
    developed.
        And one thing also on the leadership issue, were very
    inspired active Governors. I remember some years ago working
    with Governor Hunt, and that was kind of his focus. And another
    example going on right now is in Tennessee where the Governor
    is working very, very closely with Oak Ridge National Lab, with
    both--all the universities, including the smaller ones and
    community colleges, and the new companies that are beginning to
    look at that area as a center place for battery manufacturing
    in the EV (electric vehicle) revolution.
        Mr. Issa. Yield back?
        Mrs. Foushee. I do.
        Mr. Issa. Thank you. We now go to the gentleman from New
    York, Mr. Williams.
        Mr. Williams. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        I just have hopefully very short questions. Dr. Budil in
    particular, I look forward to supporting you in your fusion
    work, near and dear to my heart. Just one question, though. Is
    there any public investment that you believe would yield fusion
    on the grid by 2032 in the time--in a 10-year timeframe?
        Dr. Budil. Thank you for your support, and thank you for
    the question. It really is true that the sort of X axis, how
    long till fusion energy on the grid is a function of
    investment, that's public investment as well as private
    investment, and which technology path you pursue. So there are
    significant efforts on magnetic fusion and growing efforts in
    inertial confinement fusion energy approaches today. It's a
    little bit early days for us to say whether there's a plan that
    will get you there in 10 years, but it's certainly true that
    the level of investment would need to be significantly larger
    to galvanize that kind of effort. There's a lot of intellectual
    capital that's interested in pursuing this. Students are really
    energized by fusion prospects. There's a lot of private capital
    on the table. And unfortunately, the investment in fusion
    energy demonstration is still early days.
        Mr. Williams. Should we be making policy decisions about
    our energy mix, anticipating, expecting, planning, and
    depending on fusion on the grid by 2032?
        Dr. Budil. I think you always have to plan for the future
    energy mix with what we would characterize as an uncertainty
    band because there are a whole host of technologies that could
    contribute that are varying degrees of maturity. And so I
    would--certainly wouldn't put all my eggs in any one basket.
    There are technologies that are mature today that can
    contribute to a sustainable energy mix in 10 years, and there
    are nascent technologies like fusion that have the potential,
    although the next few years will be critical to determine what
    that timeline really looks like. So I'm a fan of all of the
    above, really trying to think about all the tools we have in
    our toolkit to ensure the U.S. has a sustainable, economically
    viable energy sector.
        Mr. Williams. Thank you. Ms. Wince-Smith, you mentioned
    dual-use technologies. Do you mind clarifying, if you were to
    provide a definition of dual use, what comes to your mind?
        Ms. Wince-Smith. From the very inception, they have both
    commercial and military applications. And increasingly, all the
    technologies we've been talking about in this hearing that are
    reshaping the world have that. You know, Putin said some years
    ago, whoever controls and leads in AI will control the world.
    She has given the list of these. And, you know, you see--I
    mean, I should mention this example. You know, we've talked
    about university research and the Chinese. One of the major
    universities in Australia, one of the centers of quantum work
    had four Chinese researchers who all turned out to be from the
    PLA (People's Liberation Army)----
        Mr. Williams. If I may, I just----
        Ms. Wince-Smith [continuing]. Who has a serious issue on
    dual use.
        Mr. Williams. I'll be advancing a letter to other Members
    to prioritize DOE spending in research in particular for dual-
    use technologies. We have to meet our civilian commitments, but
    there's things like uranium enrichment, tritium production upon
    which fusion relies that also have military use, and so that--
    we should prioritize those. Thank you.
        Dr. Kelvin, just because that's easier to pronounce, I
    apologize. So my mother went to OU for a year, and my uncle
    was--got his Ph.D. there in civil engineering and was a
    professor there in Norman, you know, years ago. There's a few
    things in your comments--in your opening comments. Do you think
    we need a 20-year plan similar to China's for our national
    technology policy?
        Dr. Droegemeier. Well, I think that the 4-year timeline for
    the S&T Strategy is good. Four, 5 years seems right. I don't
    know that I'd call it a 25-year plan or 20-year plan, but I'd
    say we need a 25-year lookahead or a 20-year lookahead within--
    to set the context for that 5-year plan.
        Mr. Williams. Thank you. Should government direct industry
    involvement like China--sorry, industry investment like China?
    Should our government be having the same kind of heavy hand
    that China has in directing investment?
        Dr. Droegemeier. No, I don't believe so.
        Mr. Williams. Would you say that our American system is
    inherently uncompetitive relative to the Chinese model?
        Dr. Droegemeier. For me?
        Mr. Williams. Yes.
        Dr. Droegemeier. No, I would say it's highly competitive
    because of our freedoms to create and so on. As we heard
    earlier, China does most of its work in applied R&D, and
    they're basically reaping the benefits of our investments in
    fundamental research. They're improving their fundamental
    research, but that's really the seed corn of everything that
    follows. So I think we're very innovative. I think we're very
    competitive, but we have to maintain our competitive position.
        Mr. Williams. Thank you. I yield back.
        Mr. Issa. Thank you. We now recognize the gentlelady from
    Colorado, Ms. Caraveo.
        Ms. Caraveo. Thank you, Chairman Lucas and Ranking Member
    Bonamici, for today's hearing, my first Science Committee
    hearing ever, and it looks like I might be closing it out. To
    our panel of witnesses, thank you so much for joining us.
        You know, our science agencies do a wonderful job of
    partnering with academic scientists to generate scientific
    discoveries and, importantly, to help train the next generation
    of STEM students. In my district, for example, the National
    Institute of Standards and Technology has a partnership with
    the University of Colorado at Boulder that places
    undergraduates, graduate students, and postdoctoral researchers
    in Federal labs to gain important hands-on experience alongside
    NIST scientists. I know that the CHIPS and Science Act help
    broaden opportunities such as these at many of our science
    agencies, but I think that there's still more that we can do.
        So Dr. Budil, can you talk about your experiences with
    university partnerships at Lawrence Livermore National Lab and
    the importance of partnerships between national labs and
    universities to expand STEM opportunities?
        Dr. Budil. Yes, thank you very much for the question. Our
    partnerships with academic institutions are essential. They
    really are the lifeblood of our laboratory. And they bring new
    ideas, new people, new energy, new enthusiasm into our
    environment every day. And I would say I think about
    partnerships with universities across the full spectrum. So we
    work with community college partners, we work with 4-year
    universities, we work with large R1 universities, we work
    locally, and we work across the U.S. with a wide variety of
    institutions, institutions that have specific skills and focus
    disciplinary research in areas that are really important to us.
        So we try to do several things in those partnerships. We
    try to build enduring relationships with faculty members who
    have important expertise or research lines. We teach them about
    our work. We give them access to our facilities. We work in
    close partnership with them, so it's not a one-and-done
    transactional, send me your student, and--those research
    partnerships really keep that connective tissue alive between
    us and these many institutions.
        And then we work to bring a wide variety of students across
    many disciplines into our environment, both on an enduring
    basis--we have many students who do, for example, their Ph.D.
    research at the laboratory. But large-scale summer programs are
    particularly important where students get to come and spend
    several months, as you said, working in a real laboratory or
    with real computational specialists and understanding what it
    means to be a scientist.
        We also do outreach at earlier ages to really introduce
    younger students, high school age and younger, to what science
    looks like and how much fun science is. And I really do love
    seeing my early career staff in particular go out into these
    institutions and the joy they bring, the commitment they have
    to our important missions and the research that we do, but the
    gift it is to be able to work in these disciplines really
    advancing the state-of-the-art. So university partnerships are
    foundational to everything we do.
        Ms. Caraveo. Yes, coming from medicine, I know how
    important it is for workforce development to have hands-on
    experience, so thank you very much for those programs that you
    run.
        Dr. Droegemeier, in your testimony, you discuss the need to
    coordinate workforce development on a national scale. What
    opportunities do you think exist to leverage Federal labs and
    university partnerships to get more STEM-capable students into
    the workforce? And how can the National Science and Technology
    Strategy leverage these partnerships?
        Dr. Droegemeier. Well, thank you so much for the question.
    I think it's absolutely vital because those are existing like
    the 17 DOE national labs, which are absolutely our crown jewel,
    and all the NOAA laboratories and NIST laboratories that you
    have in Boulder, they are exceptionally capable. They have
    wonderful people, researchers, so on. We need to leverage what
    we already have. And when we do that, we're actually getting a
    one-plus-one-equals-five kind of proposition versus building a
    lot of new stuff. By linking existing, quote, stuff together,
    we can get a--really a multiplicative factor.
        And if I can come back to the point that Dr. Budil made--
    and you're a health person--in Boulder and also in Oklahoma,
    what we did was we took a page out of the playbook of medicine.
    We said if you bring together operational people, you bring
    together research and education like the teaching hospital
    concept, you've got all three together to leverage one another.
    You've got Federal operations folks, you've got Federal
    researchers, you got academic researchers, you got the
    education piece. It works well in the teaching hospital, and
    Boulder did that and we did it and it works well. Now, it's--
    you know, it's not replicable everywhere because there aren't
    necessarily Federal operations, but there is a lot of them out
    there. And if you think of that model as being another model
    for partnerships, it's something we could really leverage in
    the S&T strategy.
        Ms. Caraveo. Thank you both so much. I yield back my time.
        Mr. Williams [presiding]. Thank you.
        The Chair recognizes the gentleman from New Jersey, Mr.
    Kean for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Kean. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you to the
    panel for being here today and helping educate us on the issues
    facing this country and this Committee.
        I come from the 7th Congressional District in New Jersey. I
    would argue it's the most innovative district in the country
    between life sciences, information technology, manufacturing,
    many other thought leaders. Many other countries, Ms. Wince-
    Smith, have introduced more tax and other incentive policies,
    including modeling their technology transfer policies after
    those in the United States. How important is it that we
    continue to foster continued public-private partnerships? And
    what are some of the areas where the United States leads the
    world and that we cannot afford to lose?
        Ms. Wince-Smith. Thank you, Congressman, for that question.
    I think our public-private partnerships are absolutely
    essential. And I think it also goes to the character of our
    Nation that we have always been a people that sees
    opportunities by working outside of our comfort zone, as it
    were. We've seen that since we were pioneers in coming to this
    country, so it's essential. And, quite frankly, our technology
    transfer legislation that goes back to the 1980s and the Bayh-
    Dole, and all--those acts, and they're regulatory acts that
    were implemented by Congress, have played a huge role in
    helping us to commercialize technology with the private sector.
    And I will say in my work, countries around the world are
    always coming and wanting to study, how do you do these
    partnerships? They know about them, but they really don't know
    the secret sauce of what goes into it. And I think we've all
    been talking about that during the day.
        So I think it's very exciting, yes, with limited resources
    but huge opportunities, that we leverage them because we're not
    going to get ahead and advance semiconductors beyond Moore's
    law or the battery futures, the biotech, the frontiers, you
    know, in your State without these public-private partnerships
    that involve business, academia, our national labs, and our
    workforce, including labor. So they are absolutely essential.
        Mr. Kean. And I agree with you in that regard in the State,
    and then there's Federal policy in both areas to create--so
    really the creative ecosystem for that. But what should we be
    doing to improve those relationships?
        Ms. Wince-Smith. Well, I think one of the ways to improve
    those relationships is always to understand the transparency
    that's involved in them and also that the partners have
    sometimes different priorities and different time horizons. You
    know, an academic researcher has a much longer timeframe work
    than someone working at a national lab that has a development
    component and a mission. And then of course, business, they
    really are operating under, you know, quarterly earnings,
    investors who say if you don't have your product out there,
    we're finished with you. So how you meld all those together to
    advance is not trivial, and that's a challenge, I think, to
    continue to work on.
        Mr. Kean. Thank you. Thank you to you and to the panel. I
    yield back my time.
        Mr. Williams.  You know, a change in the geopolitical
    picture in just the last 30 days has really transformed the
    importance and significance of your expertise and testimony.
    And the--not only the questioning but the answers that you
    provided could in fact have historical importance in the years
    and decades to come. So I really want to thank each one of you
    for your exceptional expertise and contribution. It's
    personally near and dear to me. I've spent much of the last 18
    years in innovation working with tech transfer offices in my
    career in the nuclear Navy, which was very short. But it's--I
    really do value and appreciate all your different perspectives.
        So I thank you for your time. I thank also my colleagues
    and Members for their questions. The record will remain open
    for 10 days for additional written comments and written
    questions from Members. And this hearing is adjourned.
        [Whereupon, at 12:39 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]

                                    Appendix

                                  ----------

                       Answers to Post-Hearing Questions

                       Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
    Responses by Dr. Kelvin Droegemeier
    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

    Responses by Ms. Deborah Wince-Smith
    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

    Responses by Dr. Kim Budil
    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    Responses by Mr. Klon Kitchen
    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]