China is edging out the US military’s advantage on tech 

Excerpt

The future of warfare and military capability is taking center stage as the war in Ukraine rages, Moscow looks to reload its high-tech missile inventory and, in a possible portent of future conflict, the U.S. and China escalate geopolitical maneuvering against one another. As a result, American policymakers should be constantly assessing how to maintain the country’s technological advantages over adversaries.   

One plank of that strategy should center on the advanced technology that powers our military. Beijing, for one, has committed to establishing a fully modern military by 2027 even as Washington takes steps to limit Beijing’s access to the U.S. technology that would help make that possible. To truly make a difference, however, America needs to grapple with the role of open-source design development in the semiconductor industry. 

One concerning example is the development by U.S. adversaries of RISC-V, an open-source chip design architecture that can serve a variety of end-use applications. RISC-V technology has dual-use applications, powering tools like artificial intelligence (AI), autonomous systems and surveillance technology.  

Adm. Mark Montgomery (Ret.) is senior director of the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, non-partisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.