The War Economy: Is America falling behind China in science?

This is the third in a series of posts about how international competition could reshape the U.S. economy. As you might expect from the picture at the top of this post, I'm a little ambivalent when it comes to breathless reports that America is falling behind its rivals technologically. That picture is from the movie Dr. Strangelove, which (among other things) lampooned America's Cold War obsession with the "missile gap". On one hand, in a geopolitical contest such as the one we now find ourselves in with Russia and China, we need to prioritize which battles to concentrate resources on -- a point made very convincingly by Hal Brands and Michael Beckley's new book Danger Zone. But on the other hand, our obsession with the "missile gap" gave us the space race and the moon landings and all the technological spinoffs from those, plus a boost to our semiconductor industry.