For nearly a century, America’s commitment to exploring the unknown, solving the impossible, and building the unimaginable has established the United States as a global leader, adapting to emerging challenges and seizing new opportunities to secure our prosperity and safety.

America’s success in science and technology has fueled extraordinary achievements. It has been driven by forward-focused investments in fundamental discovery research and the uniquely American cooperation among government, private industry and entrepreneurs, academia, philanthropy, and capital markets, with intellectual property protections that inspire continued innovation.

Most importantly, this enterprise has, for many Americans, been central to delivering the promise of our nation: for each successive generation to live better lives, with well-paying jobs, quality education, healthy environments, and strong national defense.

WE ARE AT A CROSSROADS

But we are at a crossroads. The pace of change is accelerating so rapidly that the tools and strategies that brought us here are insufficient to ensure our future. Transformational technologies are reshaping our way of life at an unprecedented scale, and offer the opportunity of a golden age of productivity and raising standards of living. At the same time, America faces existential threats to our health; food supply and water security; environmental resilience; energy production, utilization, and storage; and our overall wellbeing. And perhaps more than ever before, other nations that rival us in talent, infrastructure, and capital investment threaten the foundation of our leadership and put our economic prosperity and national security at risk.

At this critical moment, American science and technology are not meeting their full potential and promise.

Strategies built for the time when international competition was far behind and the pace of discovery was slower will not work in this new era. Correcting this trajectory requires an honest look at the obstacles holding us back:

  • Innovative approaches dispersed across the nation are often overlooked or dismissed by decision-making concentrated in Washington.

  • Bureaucratic barriers hinder alignment of public, private, and nonprofit resources.

  • Structural obstacles and obsolete policies and regulations stifle our enterprise’s ability to be as forward-looking, agile, and effective as it needs to be.

  • Our educational system – from K-12 through higher education and beyond – is falling far short of its potential and must be adapted to serve people throughout their lives.

  • Our national commitment to investing in fundamental discovery research – long the cornerstone of our global leadership – has stalled.

  • Transformational advances in science and technology bring promise to addressing existential societal threats, but we have not prioritized focus on them.

Moreover, current competitive realities – with China in particular – dictate that we prioritize key areas of research and development that are essential to our national security and economic and social prosperity.

Success in these domains will shape our world for generations to come and enable progress in all the areas of science and technology that improve our existence.

Artificial intelligence, materials science, quantum computing, biotechnology, and energy production, utilization, and storage will have pivotal roles in defining the future.

Finally, we must recognize and respond to profound changes unfolding within our science and technology enterprise:

Business and industry

Business and industry now finance the majority of American R&D, while game-changing philanthropic investments act as a critical complement to catalyze progress.


GREATER Diversity

We have a much greater diversity of strong research institutions in all 50 states.


THE TECHNOLOGY GAP

Technology is connecting world-class talent and students with extraordinary potential from across the country and all backgrounds – although too many remain left out.

competition for talent

We continue to attract incredible talent from all over the world, but also face increasing competition for this talent.

At the crossroads before us, we must act – swiftly and with purpose. To secure our future, we need an all-of-America science and technology enterprise with creativity, adaptability, and integrity – one that is rooted in and responsive to the American people, imbued with the national spirit to deliver a better way of life. The stakes are enormous, the necessary actions are clear, and the time is now.