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(Cross-posted from my blog, No Idle Sitting)
There's nothing people love more than defeating our rivals.
Competition against a common enemy sharpens focus, motivates hard work, and binds disparate people together.
Races between nations have always driven technological progress and nation-building. Early industrialization was fueled by international rivalries and Great Humiliations. Wars led to radar and penicillin, and the cold war led to both nuclear bombs and nuclear energy.
We want the benefits of international competition without the horrors of war. So rather than channeling our competitive energies into arms buildups and combat, I propose that the US kick off a series of Great Power Races: Competitive, ambitious, positive-sum competitions with other countries.
What makes for a good Great Power Race?
1) An ambitious project, that will take years and require mobilization of a significant part of the economy to meet. The entire nation should be bought in.
2) It has to sound cool. Whether that's because there's obvious upside (e.g., curing a disease) or because the outcome itself is just awesome (going to Mars)[1].
3) Conceptually clear win conditions. First to achieve X, eliminate Y, or deploy Z technology. A country needs to be able to credibly claim victory at a certain point[2].
The heuristic here is: "If Trump can tweet about the race, and even people who don't like Trump would say 'yeah it would be cool if we did that', then it's a good race."
Some Potential Great Power Races
We've only had a handful of true Great Power Races in history. The Space Race worked. You could potentially count the development of COVID vaccines. The Human Genome Project vs. Celera was a race, though not between countries.
But there are tons of projects we could get fired up about and pursue as races. Some examples:
- Curing Alzheimers
- Racing to get a human on Mars
- Creating a nuclear fusion power plant
- Drilling down to Earth's mantle
- Carrying the first commercial passengers on supersonic flights by 2030
- Creating the first space elevator
The important thing would be framing these ambitious projects in the language of competition ("we're going to do this BEFORE China/Russia/Europe, because our country is the best!").
Case study: Curing Alzheimers
Imagine tomorrow, Trump makes a post announcing that the US will cure Alzheimer's before China does.
The NIH starts institutes more funding for Alzheimers research, and the FDA creates a framework for trials at scale and accelerated approval pathways. Prizes are offered for specific milestones, visas for top neuroscientists are fast-tracked. States update their science curriculum to emphasize how great the US is at curing Alzheimers, and the White House starts pumping out propaganda materials.
Chinese state media then responds: "While some countries talk loudly, China works diligently. Americans have forgotten the value of discipline and education. We have not. China will cure Alzheimer's first—for our people and for the world."
The CCP proceeds to make offensive videos of forgetful and overweight US scientists studying Alzheimers, and fills their public billboards with inspirational videos of young Chinese students studying brain scans of patients with dementia.
Over the course of 3 years, both countries announce big milestones in terms of funding, scientific breakthroughs, clinical results. China conclusively comes up with a treatment that halts the progression of dementia. The next year, the US creates a pill that prevents Alzheimers altogether. Both countries say that they won the race, Americans and Chinese are both proud of their superior systems, and the whole world benefits from new disease treatments.
But what are they good for?
Kicking off Great Power Races would benefit the US in a few different ways:
- National purpose: The language of competition would foster a sense of pride in country, and sense of contributing to something bigger than yourself (even if just through your tax dollars).
- Locking in commitment to important projects: By publicly committing to defeating other countries in an arbitrary contest, leaders of countries would be locked in to putting their money where their mouth is.
- Shared urgency: Fear of losing to a rival is a great excuse to cut through bureaucratic red tape related to, e.g., permitting, clinical trials, science funding.
- Positive-sum outlet for nationalism: Perhaps by allowing nations to compete on one dimension, they will be less likely to compete in violent ways.
The last point is quite speculative. But since it seems unlikely that international rivalries will ever totally go away, it feels well worth it to explore avenues like Great Power Races that will harness these rivalries for good, rather than ill.
- ^
Races need to benefit a country's own citizens. Curing Alzheimers would be a better Great Power Race than curing Malaria, because Malaria doesn't really affect Americans.
- ^
It's fine if nations dispute the framing of the race. For example, after the US landed on the moon, the USSR said "actually we got humans to space first, and created the first satellite. landing on the moon was just a propaganda stunt." To some extent, multiple countries need to be able to justifiably claim victory in order for Races to remain politically desirable. It may be interesting to experiment with an international arbitrating body - an equivalent of the International Olympics Committee - that creates specific well-scoped competitions. But the instinct is that this would be too political and isn't needed. Races can be unilaterally declared. The space race didn't have third-party arbiters.
