The role of innovative industrial policy for the national security of countries

Abstract

The study is devoted to determining the role of industrial policy for the national security of countries. The emphasis in this article is on revealing the specifics of technological nationalism as a specific form of implementation of the state’s innovative industrial policy. Contrasted with technonationalism was an order in which, for several decades, global value chains were organized and managed by transnational corporations in a broader context of a liberal policy approach to domestic production in many countries, prioritizing efficiency, productivity and low costs over safety and sustainability. Since the 2020s, the resurgence of a new wave of technonationalism can be attributed to three main drivers: concerns about the sustainability of semiconductor global value chains; semiconductors as the basis of national security and the process of interaction between great powers today, including the Sino-American race for technological leadership. The study will consider examples of innovative industrial policy on the example of some countries and their technological programs, namely: 1) the USA – «CHIPS and Science Act»; 2) PRC – «Made in China 2025» and «National IC Plan»; 3) Europe – «Recovery and Resilience Facility»; 4) Japan; 5) India. – Semicon India Program. The article also examines the race between China and the United States for technological leadership and China’s desire for self-sufficiency in the semiconductor segment. Since the Trump administration, the US has taken a number of technonationalist countermeasures, including tightening controls on “dual-use” technologies, imposing sanctions and restrictions on several prominent Chinese high-tech firms, and imposing full controls on semiconductor exports to the PRC. China has also taken principled countermeasures against these US-led sanctions. China’s Cyberspace Administration has announced that it will ban domestic operators of China’s critical information infrastructure from purchasing Micron products, citing national security concerns.