Owned by the US government 9.9 percent of Inteltransferred from the US CHIP Act grants, along with A Golden share in US Steel, $400 million in rare earth mining company MP Materials, and stakes in about 30 companies worth $26.7 billion. In 2025, Nvidia and AMD He gave up 15 percent From the proceeds from the sale of chips in China in exchange for export licenses. A country that spent four decades advising its allies not to pick winners now runs a financial portfolio.
The United States has not fully converted to State capitalismBut she accepted something she had resisted for 80 years. Technological leadership is a security goal in itself, pursued with security policy tools and not an economic advantage that yields security benefits.
The National Security Science and Technology Strategy, unveiled on August 18, the first such document with that name since Bill Clinton’s in 1995, is where this proposal appears in writing. Most of them read as these documents often do. Then comes a revealing sentence: The United States should avoid competitions where its moves can easily be countered by competent opponents, and it should not spend money on replicating what a competitor does. It has already built better.
Countries do not redraw the picture while they are winning. Washington has adopted the tactics of the ranged fighter who refuses to exchange blows when clinched: hold it long, get inside, and win where your arms are. This is rational enough, as is what fighters do once they feel their opponent’s strength.
The rest of the document follows this concession. However, foreign investment, companies and individuals dealing with US research face more stringent scrutiny Presidential memorandum It has already turned the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States against Chinese funds in strategic sectors in February 2025. Research security has transformed from a compliance routine into a branch of statecraft. Three areas ring-fenced for battlefield advantage – undersea, space, artificial intelligence and autonomy – top the list of enabling technologies powered by hypersonics, directed energy, semiconductors and nuclear power.
The strategy document reaches farther into American life through alignment. Agencies are directed toward important contracts with competing vendors, asked to place federal funds where they complement rather than crowd out private capital, and to speed up approvals so that expertise moves between laboratory, company, and management at commercial speed. Universities enter the same structure through auditing.
