Mission

Context

Over the last half century, the global geopolitical balance of scientific, economic, and production capabilities has shifted away from US dominance. Meanwhile, we face equal or greater challenges on the home front, where economic inequality has increased and social mobility has declined. Central to these issues are trade and technology. Yet, little is understood regarding pathways to simultaneously advance U.S. competitiveness in critical technologies and the well-being of all citizens.

The CHIPs and Science Act created an unprecedented mandate for the U.S. to have a National Technology Strategy and for NSF's Technology, Innovation and Partnerships (TIP) program to annually link emerging technologies to global and domestic challenges and thus needed U.S. investments, and yet, it leaves open the question of how to achieve this mandate. Our one-year $4M pilot for a National Network for Critical Technology Assessment—funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) TIP—brings together academics from across the country to to demonstrate how analytics could uniquely inform National Technology Strategy across government missions and to define a vision for critical technology assessment, including current capabilities, gaps, and the national investment and organizational form needed to realize that vision.

Our goal is to present a vision for critical technology assessment, including current capabilities, gaps, and the national investment and organizational form needed to fulfill that vision, including:

• Demonstrating the potential for data and analytics to inform the U.S. National Technology Strategy, including the value of different investments in science and technologies in advancing national security, economic, and social (e.g., health, environment, labor, and equity) goals
• Demonstrating mechanisms to leverage (for those intellectual foundations, data, and analytics) distributed talent nationally such that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts

Pilot year demonstrations and other activities are designed to meet these goals, culminating in the public release of a final report in October 2023.