Rapid Innovation with Chinese Characteristics: National Defense Science and Technology Innovation Rapid Response Teams and the Military-Civil Fusion Innovation Ecosystem

Abstract

To respond to China’s military–civil fusion (MCF) strategy, the United States needs a prioritization framework. The United States must determine what technologies to protect and capabilities to develop. These determinations must be informed by U.S. goals, accounting for relative strengths and weaknesses. The determinations must also be informed by the adversary: how China operates, to what ends, and with what resources. This paper leverages the technological demands of China’s National Defense Science and Technology Innovation Rapid Response Teams in order to begin to address those questions—and to provide an example of the sort of data sets that might be used to answer them more comprehensively moving forward. Beijing’s MCF innovation ecosystem clearly prioritizes information technology, broadly. More specifically, entities charged with fusing commercial and military innovation appear to prioritize autonomous systems (e.g., UAVs, UUVs), sensing and network technologies to dock into and connect them, and information aggregation and analysis platforms. Advanced algorithms and software do not feature prominently in the surveyed data set. These findings can inform U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) acquisition. Defensively, Beijing’s priorities and commercial dependencies should shape the DoD’s efforts to protect. Offensively, the insight this data provides into Chinese capabilities can assist U.S. efforts to identify and exploit weaknesses.