US government should consider China’s approach to national tech champions, says Senator Mark Warner
- Ranking Democrat Mark Warner suggests ‘dramatic, different approach’ to domestic industrial policy to counter China
- The US might need to work with ‘Five-Eyes’ allies to build a tech champion able to compete with Huawei
The US government may need to adopt Beijing’s policy of supporting corporate champions, and work with allies, in order to create alternatives to Chinese 5G wireless technology, a ranking senator said on Monday.
Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat representing Virginia and vice-chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said that the US should consider taking a “dramatic, different approach”, including an interventionist industrial policy, to create American companies able to compete with Huawei Technologies, the Chinese telecom equipment producer portrayed by the Trump administration as a national security threat.
“We in this country have avoided the notion of industrial policy where the government tries to pick winners and losers. But when we compete with a nation with the size and scope and the focus of China, [current policies] may need to be rethought,” Warner said at the Washington-based United States Institute of Peace, a bipartisan, government-funded think tank.
Warner is also a member of the Senate Finance Committee and a ranking member of the Senate’s National Security and International Trade and Finance Subcommittee.