Our Freedom or Their Tyranny
An old Cold Warrior reminds us of the stakes of technology competition.
The science of today is the technology of tomorrow. Many people are afraid we will be attacked by China. I am not free of such worry. But I do not think this is the most probable way in which they will defeat us. They will advance so fast in science and leave us so far behind that their way of doing things will be the way, and there will be nothing we can do about it.
Every year without war is a benefit for all mankind. But the Chinese can conquer us without fighting, through a growing scientific and technological preponderance. Already today we are beginning to have some global control over the forces of nature. Throughout the world we already are beginning to change conditions. The planet will become smaller and smaller. What one country’s technology is doing will obviously more and more affect other countries. If the Chinese go ahead faster than we do in this direction, then we will be just helpless. If we are not able to use our freedom in the direction of accelerated progress, and if the Chinese use their tyranny in this direction, they will win.
Maybe you’ve already guessed: the words above were originally spoken about Soviet Russia, not China. They come from Edward Teller, the father of the hydrogen bomb and one of the twentieth centuries’ greatest heretical heroes. Teller was speaking in 1957 about the very real threat that Russia posed to America’s technological primacy and way of life.
The Soviets had just sent Sputnik into orbit, demonstrating that they could launch a beeping metal ball into space. And if the Soviets could launch a ball, Teller and other scientists knew it was only a matter of time before they could launch a nuclear weapon. America had to mobilize once again to develop the same capability in order to avoid a world dominated by the communists through nuclear overmatch. And it did.
Before the decade was through, America’s first ICBM—Convair’s Atlas missile—was in the field. Within five years, America had a nuclear trifecta as its ultimate deterrent and last line of defense.
Not only that: America had a successful spy satellite program, CORONA, to put eyes on the Soviet arsenal at all times. And it had a civilian space agency, NASA, to oversee manned spaceflight and the Moon mission.
America played a wild card, too: it developed a brand new technology (the microchip) that launched a Digital Revolution, exposed Russian science and technology as uncompetitive, and hammered a nail in the coffin of the Evil Empire.
The speed and scale of these accomplishments are staggering to contemplate. They were possible because America’s approach to innovation was nothing like the Soviets’. Yes, America’s mobilization had direction from the top and plenty of public support. But money isn’t magic, and rulers can’t simply wave a wand and produce innovation.
The X factors were other things. For starters, America had the world’s best people at every level of society: truly elite-level scientists like Teller’s “Martians” and Von Braun’s Germans, plus a massive industrial labor force of American workers with skills forged in the ultimate crucible of the Second World War. And that’s not all. America also had patriotic capitalists, fiercely competitive companies, and a Pentagon that welcomed those things instead of crushing them.
As Madeline Hart and I relate in our forthcoming book, Mobilize, CORONA spy satellites were built by great American companies like Eastman Kodak and General Mills, which served commercial and defense markets alike. The Polaris and Minuteman missiles were fielded so quickly because of competition among program managers and contractors alike. The semiconductor industry, meanwhile, was nurtured in its infancy by defense contracts but exploded in scale and sophistication when it made contact with the commercial market. The American Spirit of capitalism and competition was the jet fuel that ignited rapid technological progress, as well as serendipitous breakthroughs that no planner foresaw on either side of the Iron Curtain.
I relate these stories, and Teller’s quote, because America has to perform comparably difficult feats at comparably breakneck speeds today. Great causes are on the move again in the world. Cold War II is on, the AI race has begun, and 2027 is right around the corner. China is building landing craft suitable for an invasion and sending its navy—the largest in the world by hull count—deep into the Pacific on maneuvers. This competition spans all frontiers, from biotechnology to telecommunications to advanced manufacturing to space itself, where China is working to erode our lead in a new space race. America has to mobilize again and use our freedom in the direction of accelerated progress, or live in a world shaped by the Chinese Communist Party and its tyranny.
There’s no sugarcoating it: this is an even greater challenge than the one that Teller and his generation confronted. After all, Russia’s economy was half the size of America’s. Our populations were roughly the same. Russia’s command-and-control system was capable of brute-force development, but it had none of the genius of America’s capitalist system.
Communist China is a more capable and dangerous enemy by far. It has a larger economy than the United States, adjusted for purchasing power. It has four times as many people (and is exploiting American surrogates and reproductive technology to create more). It has one-third of the world’s manufacturing and even larger shares of defense-critical manufacturing of metals, ships, cars, and much else. It has world-class research institutions and technology clusters like Shenzhen that are dynamic, bustling, and innovative. Like a chimera, the CCP has adopted some of the best aspects of capitalism and competition in service of its tyrannical vision for the future. We underestimate this new enemy at our peril.
It’s a daunting challenge, but I believe we can meet it. There’s a new sense of urgency in Washington, from the Department of War’s accelerating reforms to initiatives like the U.S. Tech Force, Pax Silica, and the Genesis Mission—a national effort “comparable in urgency and ambition to the Manhattan Project,” which Teller himself helped lead and that became the foundation for the Department of Energy and its national laboratories.
The parallels are intentional and profound.
The Genesis Mission’s aims are especially audacious: double the productivity of American science and engineering within a decade by harnessing AI to accelerate discovery. It will unite the seventeen national laboratories—the crown jewels of American scientific infrastructure—with leading universities, pioneering companies, and the government’s vast stores of research data and supercomputing power. The ultimate goal is to build a “scientific instrument for the ages” that can reason, simulate, and experiment at speeds no human researcher could achieve alone.
The scope is breathtaking: fusion energy, advanced nuclear reactors, quantum computing, new materials for defense, grid modernization, biotechnology, and more. These are precisely the domains in which China is racing to overtake us. As Secretary of Energy Chris Wright put it: “Throughout history, from the Manhattan Project to the Apollo mission, our nation’s brightest minds and industries have answered the call when their nation needed them. Today, the United States is calling on them once again.”
The Genesis Mission explicitly acknowledges that we are “in a race for global technology dominance” against China. It understands that the revolution in AI and computing will determine which civilization’s values shape the coming century.
Teller and most of the old Cold Warriors are gone. Their example can inspire us, but it can’t save us. We have to put in the herculean work so that technology continues to serve America and our way of life.
The good news as 2025 comes to a close: we know the stakes, we have a mission, and the work is well underway.