'A Chilling Signal That the Days of Free Wheeling Are Going to Be Reined In': Arthur Herman on China

n this special episode, we sat down with Arthur Herman, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and director of the Quantum Alliance Initiative. He sheds light on the innovation race between the United States and China, the ongoing microchip wars, and where our data is actually going.

One area in the spotlight is the microchip wars. Herman expands on his Forbes column The Chip War With China Is Just Getting Started, saying: "We're just getting started. First, in terms of getting our own semiconductor house in order by realizing how important it is to keep research and development to build a strong, homegrown semiconductor industry again, like what we had in the 1970s and in the 1980s, not depending upon foreign supply chains for those microchips. But also, secondly, ... realizing that we have leverage in dealing with China and being able to deny them access to our expertise, to our designs, or to our innovations in semiconductor and microchip technology. But that's just the start of what we really need to do if we're going to have a strong and secure semiconductor industry in the United States."

But that's not the only area of strategic innovation. Citing his Forbes column Can the U.S. Halt China’s Quantum Quest?, Herman said: "We also again have to realize that the ways in which China has been able to help itself to many of our key technologies and scientific breakthroughs has to come to an end, that we can't share information and knowledge with them by any means at the rate at which we have of having large numbers of, for example, Chinese doctoral and postdoctoral students studying in American universities, that this is a strategic advantage that China is able to seize upon and has used in the past—we have to limit their access to that kind of advantage again. But you know what, both in the case of AI and in the case of quantum, we've also got supply chain issues, too. You know, quantum technology is going to depend on a whole range of different hardwares that go into the making of quantum computers, of making of quantum random number generators, of the components that go into quantum communications."