Tag Archives: technologypolicy

Assessing the Candidates on Technology

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From Innovations, a website published by Ziff-Davis Enterprise from mid-2006 to mid-2009. Reprinted by permission.

Tomorrow, Americans will choose between two presidential candidates who have very different ideologies. Although John McCain and Barack Obama both agree in principle on the need to improve the U.S.’s technology competitiveness, they disagree on some issues that are important to technology professionals. Here is an overview of their similarities and differences on some critical technology policy issues.

Technology education

Both candidates agree on the need to hire and train more teachers with technology skills as well as to improve the competitiveness of American students in science and technology.

McCain proposes to fully fund the Bush administration’s America Competes Act, which provides a variety of educational investments.

Obama supports doubling federal funding for basic research over ten years and promoting the National STEM Scholarship Database Act, which would create a database to coordinate information on financial aid opportunities available in science and technology

Tax policy

Here, McCain is more specific than Obama.  His initiatives include:

  • Make the R&D tax credit permanent
  • Keep capital gains taxes low
  • Allow first-year expensing of new equipment
  • Oppose Internet taxation
  • Oppose higher taxes on wireless service
  • Lower the corporate tax rate to 25%

Obama also supports making the R&D tax credit permanent, but his tax plan is more oriented around individuals and families. He does support tax credits for small businesses and corporations that invest in jobs in the United States.

Government’s role

both candidates believe government should be a standard-bearer for effective use of information technology and each is quite specific in how they will get there.

McCain promises to create a nationwide public safety network by the end of his first term that would support first responders in emergencies. He wants to set up more Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs), in which industry and government enter into public/private projects. He believes more government services should be available online and that the government should use videoconferencing and collaborative networks more effectively. Finally, he proposes to “ensure that Administration appointees across the government have adequate experience and understanding of science, technology and innovation.”

Obama focuses on accountability, which he says has been lacking in the Bush administration. He pledges to use “cutting-edge technologies” to create a new level of transparency and accountability for government and to appoint the nation’s first Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to coordinate infrastructure, policies and services across federal agencies. He also pledges to reinvigorate antitrust prosecution.

Obama also proposes specifically to invest $10 billion per year over the next five years to create standards-based electronic health information systems, including electronic health records. He also seeks to invest $150 billion over the next ten years to enable American engineers, scientists and entrepreneurs to advance alternative energy.

Internet

The Obama campaign has probably made better use of the Internet as a campaign tool than any previous candidate.  Not surprisingly, Obama supports broad expansion of Internet access to every American. However, McCain’s objectives are similar in many ways.

McCain proposes to “encourage private investment to facilitate the build-out of infrastructure to provide high-speed Internet connectivity all over America…and allow local governments to offer such services, particularly when private industry fails to do so.” He also wants to establish a “People Connect Program” that rewards companies that offer high-speed Internet access services to low-income customers. He opposes “net neutrality” in favor of “an open marketplace with a variety of consumer choices.”

Obama proposes to provide “true broadband to every community in America through a combination of reform of the Universal Service Fund, better use of the nation’s wireless spectrum, promotion of next-generation facilities, technologies and applications, and new tax and loan incentives.” He also wants to give parents more control over information their children see on-line while vigorously enforcing laws against people who try to exploit children. He supports net neutrality.

Global trade

Both candidates want to see America become more competitive in overseas technology markets. Both support cracking down on intellectual property theft abroad.

McCain sees to expand the number of H-1B visas to enable US companies to employ more foreign workers.

Reinventing U.S. Innovation

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From Innovations, a website published by Ziff-Davis Enterprise from mid-2006 to mid-2009. Reprinted by permission.

John KaoJohn Kao (right) believes the United States has an innovation crisis, and he’s calling on today’s corps of young technology professionals to sound the alarm.

Citing technology pioneer Vannevar Bush’s assertion more than 60 years ago that “A nation that loses its science and technology will lose control of its destiny,” Kao said the U.S. is in peril of becoming a technology laggard.

“The US public education system is veering further away from preparing kids for the world,” the author of Innovation Nation: How America Is Losing Its Innovation Edge, Why It Matters, and What We Can Do to Get It Back told the MIT Enterprise Forum early this month. “We spend more on education than any country in world, yet we’re between 24th and 29th in math performance.”

By contrast, Finland, a country that suffered a near economic collapse after the Soviet Union fell apart, today produces twice as many Ph.D.s per capita than the U.S. The Finns turned around their economy, in part, by creating a national design focused on science and technology education. As a result, “Two years ago, Finland was the number one competitive economy in the world, according to the World Economic Forum,” Kao said. “Its education system is rated the best in the world. People want to be teachers in Finland.”

We’ve heard this before, of course.  In the late 1980s, Japan famously challenged the US for leadership in technology innovation with initiatives like the Fifth Generation Computer Project and a nationwide commitment to developing artificial intelligence.  Those ambitious plans foundered, but Kao argues that this time is different.

Today, countries like Singapore and China are making technology innovation the centerpiece of a national strategy that’s backed by incentives, equipment and money. Singapore, for example, has set up the Biopolis, a $300 million biomedical research lab spread across a 10-acre campus. Singapore is allocating money to train expatriate scientists in other countries on the condition that they repay the government with six years of service. The country is also promising to remove the layers of bureaucracy and legal approvals that frustrate scientists in the U.S.

Singapore has convinced top researchers from MIT and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control to pull up stakes and move to the tiny nation-state with financial incentives and promises of academic freedom.

This last point is a key difference between the national technology policies of today and the failed models of two decades ago.  Thanks to the Internet and business globalization, countries now have the capacity to build very large local industries serving overseas customers. Kao told of a friend who’s building a global travel business for 1/10th of what it would have cost a decade ago. He farms out much of the development work overseas. “Countries want to ally with American intellectual capital,” he said.

Therein lies a challenge for US competitiveness. The United States has long been able to rely upon the global brain drain from other countries to fuel its innovation economy. Over half of the engineering Ph.D.s awarded in the U.S. now go to foreign-born students. Many of those people have traditionally settled in Silicon Valley or other technology-rich environments. But the lifestyle trade-offs aren’t as dramatic as they used to be. “Now there’s an Apple store and a Starbucks in Bangalore [India],“ Kao said.

With overseas economies offering tax havens, comfortable salaries, research grants and other perks to technology achievers, some countries that used to lose talent to the US have actually reversed the migration.

What can US technology professionals do?  Well, on a purely selfish level there may be some attractive opportunities to pull up stakes and move overseas. Singapore, for example, has earmarked a half billion dollars to fund digital imagine research. But if you’re more interested in improving the domestic situation, then start by voting for candidates that have a vision and a plan for US technology competitiveness.

You can also out into the classroom and share your own experiences with tomorrow’s innovators.  Many teachers would be glad for the help. In John Kao’s words, “Many people who teach math and science in U.S. public schools are forced to do it.” In contrast, “In China, people with masters degrees in math willingly come in to teach in the schools.”