Weekend Reading from SCSP
Hello, I’m Ylli Bajraktari, President of the Special Competitive Studies Project. This week, SCSP hosted the AI+ Expo which saw over 15,000 attendees, and yesterday I testified before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and I am pleased to share my remarks below.
“Chairwoman Mace, Ranking Member Lynch, and Members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify.
I’m here to make one clear point. While developing advanced AI is significant, the true measure of a nation's future advantage won't be who has the best models, but who builds the essential digital infrastructure and fosters the deepest adoption of AI across all of society.
To understand the stakes, imagine if at the beginning of the last century, our nation had failed to embrace electricity and yielded that transformative advantage to our competitors. The consequences would have been devastating.
Today, we face a similar moment. The strategic competition in AI with China is intensifying. Since 2017, Beijing has launched an ambitious campaign to achieve technological supremacy as the key to its global dominance.
China is executing this strategy by dedicating vast resources to integrate AI across its entire economy, society, and military. For example, their recent $47.5 billion semiconductor fund is designed to eliminate reliance on Western tech. They are on track to surpass the U.S. in raw R&D spending, having already tripled their investment since 2012 to $500 billion in 2024. This is all built on dominant infrastructure, including more than 60% of the world's 5G base stations.
This entire effort is backed by state-sponsored cyber espionage and intellectual property theft designed to acquire and weaponize advanced technology.
While the United States still leads in AI research, our primary disadvantage is the slow adoption of these breakthroughs. We are hampered by bureaucratic inertia, outdated IT infrastructure, and a lack of AI literacy in the workforce. Overcoming these barriers is the key to winning the global tech competition.
To secure our leadership, the United States must take decisive action:
First, establish a high-level Technology Competitiveness Council at the White House, modeled on the approach we took for the space race, to coordinate a unified national strategy and drive rapid AI adoption across the government.
Second, significantly increase our investment in AI infrastructure by doubling non-defense AI R&D funding to $32 billion over time and codifying the National AI Research Resource.
Third, launch a comprehensive national talent strategy to make the U.S. the global magnet for AI experts. This means eliminating green card caps for top STEM talent and promoting AI literacy throughout our education system.
Fourth, we must overhaul the federal procurement process to rapidly integrate cutting-edge AI from our most innovative companies.
Lastly, we must strengthen our global alliances in AI, 5G, and cybersecurity to ensure the resilience and security of us and our allies.
The bottom line is this: this is not just a competition of invention, but of adoption. It’s about who can set the rules for the future.
We have faced moments like this before. From the space race to the digital revolution, our nation’s greatest strength has always been our ability to unite our vision with decisive action. By embracing this challenge together—across government, industry, and academia—we will not only secure our leadership but build a more prosperous and secure future for all Americans.”