1. Was involved in a discussion today with some senior members of the administration. SV tech, defense tech, and threat from China was the agenda. Clearly, China is in the crosshairs. And not just with this admin – seen as a long term threat to economy and national security.
— Bilal Zuberi (@bznotes) January 16, 2020
2. It is imperative for US continue to invest in innovation, and compete. China used to copy our innovation, but is now starting to innovate on their own, esp in field line AI, quantum computing, biotech. Will we be able to retain our competitive advantage going forward?
— Bilal Zuberi (@bznotes) January 16, 2020
3. There have been lots of discussions all over SV regarding this. Working with China had never been easy. But quite difficult now. IP was always a risk, then came CFIUS restrictions, tariffs, and now also export restrictions. Much worse if tech is considered dual-use.
— Bilal Zuberi (@bznotes) January 16, 2020
4. China has done an amazing job scaling tech they consider to be core focus for them. They have used their supply chains and capital to reduce cost dramatically, selling globally, esp in countries with lower regulatory or privacy barriers, and learning/iterating fast.
— Bilal Zuberi (@bznotes) January 16, 2020
5. If US is going to maintain its technical advantage and competitive edge, esp in defense tech…we need to create structural incentives for our innovators and entrepreneurs to win in these spaces. Just small SBIR type grants that are made today are not even remotely enough.
— Bilal Zuberi (@bznotes) January 16, 2020
6. We need early stage capital to flow to deeptech innovation, esp defense related tech, but that will only happen if there are customers and money in the sector. If we regulate and trade block the heck out of them, why would they want to be in deeptech spaces?
— Bilal Zuberi (@bznotes) January 16, 2020
7. We need to attract brilliant talent from around the world and keep them here. We need gov’t to become meaningful customers, supply chains to be built locally, and US relationships leveraged so our startups can sell to gov’t, military, etc in friendly countries as well.
— Bilal Zuberi (@bznotes) January 16, 2020
8. As someone said today, we need to learn from the relationship that technology industry and DoD/gov’t enjoyed in the 1950s and 1960s. Not what we have had in the last few decades. Time to make that change.
— Bilal Zuberi (@bznotes) January 16, 2020
DoD was very interested in what we were building @PcPursuit. I ran the other direction. We needed to be able to sell worldwide, didn't have 6 months to get a security clearance to have a meeting, and needed cash flow. They're only set up to buy from Beltway defense contractors.
— TProphet (@TProphet) January 16, 2020
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A jack of both sides is before long trusted by nobody and abused by both parties.