The race for tech supremacy: The U.S. vs. China

**Terry Gross** (0:00)
This is Fresh Air, I'm Terry Gross. When it comes to the production of drones, electric vehicles, lithium ion batteries, solar cells and clinical trials of pharmaceuticals, China is ahead of the US. Beijing might also be benefiting from the war in Iran and from President Donald Trump's tariffs. So does this mean the era of America's global leadership is over? My guest, Evan Osnos, addresses these and other issues in his latest article in The New Yorker, titled The Future Made in China. He's a staff writer at the magazine, where he's written extensively about China, as well as American politics and the tech world. Before that, he was the Beijing bureau chief for the Chicago Tribune, and was part of teams that won the Pulitzer Prize in 2001 and 2008
Osnos is also a host of the New Yorker podcast, The Political Scene. His first book, Age of Ambition, Casing Fortune, Truth and Faith in the New China, won the 2014 National Book Award for Nonfiction, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His latest book is The Havs and Hav Yachts, Dispatches on the Ultra-Rich. We recorded our interview yesterday.
Evan Osnos, welcome back to Fresh Air. So the way the Chinese leadership sees it, as you described it, is that China is winning the war in Iran. Can you explain why China believes that?

**Evan Osnos** (1:25)
Well, in some sense, it is, from their perspective, always to China's benefit to see the United States drawn back into the Middle East. This has been the place that has consumed so much American attention and blood and treasure as it's known over the last generation. And here, all of a sudden, just a couple of years after it seemed as if perhaps the United States was trying to get out of that region, it's now pulled back in. And in quite literal terms, it has meant also that the US has had to draw on assets, things like aircraft carriers and missiles and munitions that would otherwise have been put in Asia and have had to bring those to the Middle East. And so as a result, it has shifted all of the center of gravity of American national security away from focusing on China, and in fact, now focused on Iran.

**Terry Gross** (2:19)
So does China now have an open door to Taiwan if we don't have as many ships and weapons there?

**Evan Osnos** (2:26)
Well, it certainly sets up conditions that would make it easier. I mean, just as a functional matter, there are many people in Washington now who are concerned that if the United States found itself having to defend Taiwan from a Chinese invasion or trying to repel a blockade, that it would be frankly just short of the kinds of munitions that it would need to do so. The Trump administration denies that. They're saying that reporting doesn't capture the full universe of American supplies.
But the question of whether China is prepared to go and attack Taiwan is a question that is partly based on their assessment of us, the United States, and partly based on their own perception of themselves, whether or not they can actually pull off an attack of that kind and succeed. And the core of that, Terry, is about deterrents, meaning does the United States project the message that we are both a credible and serious deterrent from China attacking and at the moment, the level of our, call it what it is, distraction, consumption, preoccupation in the Middle East reduces that sense of deterrents to China.

**Terry Gross** (3:37)
So we've depleted a lot of our weapons in Iran. The military apparently is worried about that. Pentagon is worried about it.
Would building new weapons require materials from China?

**Evan Osnos** (3:50)
Yeah, unfortunately, the irony here is that we are in some ways beholden right now to the Chinese factory in order to produce the munitions that we need to defend American interests from China. That's the exquisite problem that we've found ourselves in after generations of building more and more reliance on Chinese supply. There is an effort in the United States now to say, we need to figure out ways of processing our own rare earths. These are these really important vital minerals or rare earth magnets. But that is a years away problem to solve, meaning it can't be done overnight. So right now, a lot of what you hear from Washington is efforts to try to beat back the perception that the United States is overstretched.
But you're beginning to hear more and more concern from within American agencies, talking to reporters saying we are finding ourselves with one hand tied behind our backs.