The Geopolitics of Technology and Innovation

Session Submission Type: Paper Session (90 minute)

Description

This is an open session sponsored by the section on Science, Knowledge, and Technology. During the Biden administration, initiatives such as the Green New Deal and CHIPS and Science Act signaled a turn away from market-led regulation of science and technology and the return of industrial policy. The Trump administration’s aggressive use of tariffs in the name of restoring American manufacturing, securing access to rare earth minerals, and improving domestic resilience has consolidated this turn away from neoliberal governance . Today, from chip wars and AI to the green transition, it is increasingly common to understand scientific innovation as a strategic domain of international competition and a matter of national security. This session invites papers relating to the geopolitics of technology and innovation and the emerging political economy thereof. Papers of a wide variety of methods and substantive foci are welcome. Topics could include, for example, historical investigations of the entanglements between the military and research funding, analyses of contemporary trends in foreign policy discourse, international struggles over AI initiatives, or the impacts of recent immigration policies on scientific research.

Sub Unit

• Science, Knowledge, and Technology Section / The Geopolitics of Technology and Innovation

Presider

• Mary Shi, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

Individual Presentations

• Biopolitical Entanglements: The Political Economy of China’s Genetic Data Troves - Abigail Coplin, Vassar College

• Defense Innovation Reform and Bureaucratic Incumbency: Limits of DARPA Emulation in Korea - Soul Han, Cornell University

• “Give me a Patch and I will Create a Market”: Pharmaceutical Innovation in Neuroscience in China - Yanze Yu, Columbia University

• The Return of Industrial Policy and the No-longer Hidden Developmental State in the United States - Erez Maggor, Ben-Gurion University

Discussant

• Ya-Wen Lei, Harvard University

Session Organizers

• Mary Shi, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

• Claire Laurier Decoteau, University of Illinois-Chicago