For all the internal conflict that’s wracked conservative politics — not to mention, you know, America — over the past decade, one topic has managed to both unite the whole political spectrum and drive some of Washington’s most forward-looking tech moves. The deeping geopolitical and technological arms race with China has pushed aside the dovish John Kerry wing of the Democratic Party, in favor of “Scranton Joe” Biden’s pro-domestic industrial tech policy. That’s been unexpected music to the ears of many on the right, who have clamored for such an approach for years. Conservatives have similarly found themselves working, if not together, at least against a common foe in Beijing — and perhaps most surprisingly, making some authentic progress on Trump-era policy goals like boosting American industry and “decoupling” parts of the global economy. The idea that China poses a threat that must be countered with our technological and industrial supremacy isn’t, at this point, a red issue or a blue issue, or a Trump or never-Trump issue — it’s just how things work in Washington. (And, increasingly, Silicon Valley is a major player on the Hill when it comes to countering Chinese influence.) This morning I called Marshall Kosloff, a media fellow at the Hudson Institute and co-host of the Realignment podcast — and recently-minted resident of Austin, an emerging center of the techno-libertarian universe — to chat about this state of affairs, and ask him how he sees things shaking out politically among those circles heading into a GOP primary. According to Kosloff there’s a certain subset of national-security-minded venture capitalists who he describes as “hardcore DeSantis people,” referring to Florida’s governor who is widely expected to throw his hat in the presidential ring. But overall for this particular subset of policy thinkers, the ‘24 election is a win-win situation. American politics’ lockstep turn against China means a rare opportunity to actually get things done — a “realignment,” if you will, around a rare unifying policy issue. “D.C. people in general aren't as explicit in choosing sides… just thinking strategically on this issue, why choose?” Kosloff said. “This is basically the only ‘realignment’ I actually believe in at this point… American politics has realigned around the China issue, and it just happens to be that there's a lot of [policy] space for people to play around with.” The major frontier here is, of course, semiconductor manufacturing. The U.S. has levied a flotilla of trade controls on China meant to prevent the latter from gaining access to advanced chips that could power weapons and surveillance systems, among other things. That, combined with the boost to the U.S. semiconductor industry in last year’s CHIPS and Science Act, has moved tech policy into the realm of geopolitics far more deeply than it otherwise might have been. The two parties might quibble around the edges — a childcare requirement here, a (theoretical) ESG ban there — but their ultimate goals are aligned around bolstering American tech manufacturing and cutting-edge research. And unlike, for example, the Ukraine conflict, there’s internal harmony among the conservative movement, too. “There's a serious institutional fight over Ukraine with Heritage, versus AEI, versus Hudson,” Kosloff said. “That's an institutional fight, a donor-level fight, so your opinion on it actually does matter separate from the question of what a voter in Iowa or New Hampshire is thinking. “The same is not true on China. All these institutions are completely in lockstep, all the donors are in lockstep, and therefore there's no one to persuade. There’s no debate.” As Kosloff pointed out, despite the deadly-serious urgency and rhetoric it inspires in Washington, China and tech aren’t exactly the first things on voters’ minds right now. (All bets are off if TikTok suddenly disappears, but that’s another can of worms entirely). And the innovations around AI that are dazzling the public at the moment are almost entirely driven by private industry, with hard regulations around them still notional at best. But there is one future scenario in which tech policy could become a major political issue, and quickly. What happens in the worst-case scenario, where China launches a full invasion of Taiwan and whoever the president is has to make a major decision about whether, and to what extent, the U.S. intervenes? “This is an under-studied topic, because you don’t really have an incentive to say this out loud, but I suspect a huge percentage of the online, pro-Trump right thinks that the China issue is quite close to the Iraq war issue,” Kosloff said. “Blake Masters started to do this, and J.D. Vance does it occasionally, where you're going to start to see as Taiwan gets more to the center of things that the ‘New Right’ position will be ‘We don't care about Taiwan and democracy,’ our involvement is only American-interests focused,” he continued. “My joke, and it's actually not a joke, it’s true, is that the New Right-slash-online-left position is going to be ‘No wars for semiconductors.’” It hasn’t come to that, meaning the endless frontier around future-tech policy and global competition is still wide open. But if it does, the wonky concerns driving this corner of the policy world might find themselves shoved into the harshest political spotlight imaginable.
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