Students from China Are Essential for America
An appropriately curated student visa policy in vital research fields like AI and quantum can combine careful risk management with common sense. The benefits to the U.S. will last for generations.
A recent poll showed that 88 percent of American voters worry that the rapid pace of Beijing’s technological advancements will give China military superiority over the U.S. One way to make sure that this dire prediction comes true is to ban Chinese and other foreign students and researchers from studying here.
Try to imagine the Manhattan Project without German refugee scientists like Hans Bethe, or another refugee from an Axis power, Enrico Fermi. Or try to imagine America’s ballistic missile program, including the moonshot, without German scientists like Wernher von Braun. There are times when scientists and researchers from other countries, even nominally hostile ones, can be crucial to the development and maintenance of America’s technological edge.
There are plenty of reasons for America to be concerned about China, including its command-and-control government, its technology theft and its inequitable trading practices. The arrest in June of two Chinese student researchers from the University of Michigan, for allegedly smuggling biological pathogens into the U.S., underlines the importance of making sure that Chinese students and scientists aren’t getting into our country in order to do us harm.
Economic Dynamism
The Price of Stagnation: Britain’s Retreat from Dynamism
We face a basic issue: we do not let cities or communities grow or die.
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London and the Architecture of Creative Growth
Preserving London's creative dynamism will require humility from policymakers and a commitment to keeping the city liveable.
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The Great AI Jobs Transition
It's time to develop a posture that treats AI labs and other private actors as the first movers in discovering policy interventions that Congress can then scale, with a particular eye toward younger Americans.
Edmund Phelps and the Culture of Dynamism
His research led him to a new theory of what he called “indigenous innovation,” whereby economic progress and growth are fueled not by inventions in labs, but by widespread grassroots tinkering and experimentation in the day-to-day economy.
