[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:]
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    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:]
    
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    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:]
    
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    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:]
    
    
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    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

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                   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]