To counter China and support national security, Congress must empower NIST

America’s future competitiveness will be driven by our ability to capture the economic and national security benefits of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and quantum computing. Within government, these efforts are underpinned by the research and standards development done at the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), an agency with a remarkable track record of success supporting American innovation.

Given this success, it’s no surprise that China is seeking to manipulate international standards organizations to its own benefit. In fact, global standards leadership is a stated aim of the Chinese Communist Party and President Xi’s Jinping’s China Standards 2035 plan, specifically to lessen American influence.

In contrast, NIST is being underprioritized. The agency has crumbling buildings and leaking ceilings. The rapid growth of industry salaries for emerging technology jobs means that NIST finds it increasingly hard to compete with the private sector for top talent. Federal agency limitations further currently constrain NIST from bringing the results of its research into commercial practice to benefit the US economy. And during an era of rapid progress in emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, the agency is limited in its ability to respond due to the slow pace of new funding and hiring.

NIST’s legacy is at risk, and we are not equipping the agency to meet this challenge. But if it is willing to grasp it, the outgoing Congress has an opportunity to reverse these trends and poke a thumb in China’s eye.

A solution lies with the bipartisan Expanding Partnerships for Innovation and Competitiveness Act (EPIC) Act, endorsed by more than forty American companies, universities, and think tanks, as well as by heads of NIST that have served under Presidents Trump, Obama, and Bush. EPIC would equip NIST with a non-profit foundation, enabling it to harness philanthropic investment to complement its mission.

While NIST will always answer to Congress and operate within its authorized mission, a foundation can help connect this important work to the private sector where the market can accelerate the best ideas forward. For NIST, a foundation could help further basic R&D and support innovation in critical technologies like AI, while countering China’s manipulation of international standards for new technologies.

As we enter a world where US leadership in emerging technologies is inextricably linked to national security, Congress should support NIST’s important work by prioritizing the full passage of EPIC as part of this year’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

As an agency, NIST is not the sexiest of items to be argued about in the NDAA. It doesn’t blow things up, nor does it fly at hypersonic speeds. To understand its importance, one needs to understand how NIST actually works.

NIST’s role among federal agencies is unique. It is not a regulator, and it doesn’t focus on a particular set of applied scientific or technical domains. Rather, its focus is at a higher level: advancing the leading edge of measurement science — and using that science to help push the boundaries of research and create standards for technologies, opening new domains of innovation.

Why are measurements and standards useful for pushing the frontier of innovation? Once it’s possible to measure something, it then becomes possible to test it and make it better. Technical standards provide American industries with a common language to facilitate trade and enable scientists and engineers to work on common goals that cut across technical disciplines. NIST’s mission is thus tightly linked with American innovation and technological competitiveness — making sure everyone is on the same page allows the full force of American industrial might to be brought on a particular problem.

In pursuit of its mission, NIST has punched far above its weight: Agency scientists have been awarded 15 percent of the Nobel Prizes in Physics awarded to Americans since 2000, with two further prizes directly enabled by measurement work done at NIST. These achievements have come despite NIST receiving less than half a percent of federal R&D funding.

Cutting edge defense technologies stand to benefit going forward. In biotechnology, NIST has developed reference molecules that labs across the United States use to develop new tools. In quantum computing, NIST has run a successful program to identify new encryption algorithms that are resistant to powerful quantum computers. In AI, NIST developed the “MNIST” database, which has been one of the most important benchmarks used to help develop neural networks, the technology behind today’s most powerful AI models.

However, NIST faces challenges in its future capacity to deliver on its mission: the recent rapid pace of progress in emerging technologies has made it hard for the agency to flexibly scale its projects in response. Many agencies have in the past found a similar mismatch between their basic structure as a federal body and the rapidly changing science and innovation landscape they are expected to respond to, and there exists a proven solution for addressing them.

Congress has long used “agency foundations” as a solution, complementing agencies’ missions by enabling the deployment of philanthropic investment. The Foundation for the National Institutes of Health runs fellowships to attract top scientists to the agency. The Center for Disease Control’s foundation hosts an emergency response fund, which raised nearly $600 million in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic to distribute 8.5 million pieces of PPE and hire more than 3,000 surge health workers. The Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research supports the Department of Agriculture by hosting ambitious prize competitions, and innovation and entrepreneurship initiatives.

These and other agency foundations have been an efficient mechanism for amplifying their agency’s work, averaging a return of $67 for every $1 in federal contributions. And compared to more ad hoc solutions like the use of the Intergovernmental Personnel Act to allow an agency to employ technical experts funded by external organizations, an agency foundation provides a more transparent and well-governed alternative.

One key area where a non-profit foundation could be especially useful for NIST’s work is in international standards. American businesses do better when they have a voice in international standard-setting. Today, the Chinese government is manipulating the global standards-setting processes by paying its experts to participate, and incentivizing them to all vote in the same direction.

Because the US approach is industry-led by design, NIST cannot directly support US experts to counter China’s efforts. A NIST foundation could fill this gap by supporting US experts (especially from small and medium-sized enterprises) to participate in international standard-setting, ensuring a level playing field for American enterprises.

Congress should act now to give NIST the necessary tools it needs to deliver on its core mission — promoting US leadership in technical standards, and accelerating the development and adoption of critical emerging technologies, in a voluntary process involving both large and small firms.

To do this, NIST should be equipped with its own Foundation, a proven, effective tool that other federal R&D agencies already enjoy.

Walter G. Copan, PhD, is vice president for research and technology transfer at Colorado School of Mines, and senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies and co-founder of its Renewing American Innovation project. He previously served as 16th director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

Tim Fist is a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Progress, a science and innovation policy think tank based in Washington D.C.