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Sen. Claiborne Pell was a member of the U.S. delegation at the San Francisco Conference that helped create a rules-based international system after World War II.  

More than 80 years later, that system is under great strain. At the Pell Center, we’re focused on emerging issues that have great potential to shape the international environment for generations, stretching beyond traditional international relations to grapple with emerging political, technological and environmental concerns.

The Project on U.S.-China Technology Competition

At the height of the Cold War, the United States developed a generation of era-defining weapons technology because of a Soviet technological breakthrough. The Soviets were the first to understand the science behind low-observable technology - stealth - but the American defense industry turned that science into weapons systems.

Now, in a new era of great power competition, the race for technological breakthroughs and superiority isn’t limited to weapons labs and government programs. Massive, publicly traded companies and small startups all contribute to the technology competition between the United States and its rivals. Nowhere is this competition more fierce and more fraught than in the U.S.-China relationships, where cross-border investments, technology-sharing, espionage, educational institutions, scientific exchange and the simple reality of global trade make the transfer and adoption of sensitive technologies a common practice.

In this series of papers, respected scholars and policy practitioners explore the contours of the U.S.-China technology competition, its main features and the solutions the U.S. government - and American corporations - must adopt to protect American national security in the years ahead.