The American Tech Stack Isn’t a Fortress—It’s a Launchpad

The American Tech Stack Isn’t a Fortress—It’s a Launchpad 🇺🇸 🚀

The announced deal to allow select NVIDIA and AMD chips to be sold to China sparked a predictable flurry of media takes and advocacy noise. At ALFA, our position has never wavered: targeted exports of non-cutting edge U.S. technologies are critical to ensuring that the American Tech Stack remains the world’s benchmark.

The voluntary agreement between the companies and the government—not a tax—is a win, win, win.

• A win for the US government by strengthening the American economy, our trading positioning, and returns to the U.S. treasury.

• A win for American technology networks and platforms that are not just national champions, but world champions.

• A win for American soft power, extending our influence not through forced might but through the technologies the world runs on.

The easiest thing in government is to do nothing when faced with a complicated challenge. The hard thing is to find creative solutions knowing it will arouse complaints from various corners in the political spectrum. And that’s exactly what we’ve seen with the lopsided response since the announcement over the weekend. But maintaining a defensive posture in today’s rapidly changing tech landscape is not a winning strategy. The American playbook has always been simple: compete, win, lead—from our founding days to the frontier of AI and semiconductors. Let’s keep doing exactly that.

In California, Robots Can Cruise City Streets But Not Harvest Almonds 

Last week, NBC Nightly News aired a piece on the promise of AgTech–an issue we have written about frequently.

Prepping soil, killing weeds, and shaking nut trees are some of the tasks that autonomous farm equipment can perform amidst a rising labor shortage.

The Department of Labor estimates 88,000 farming jobs will go unfilled every year through the next decade. And farmers are looking to robots to fill the void.

But as the report highlights, California’s outdated laws prevent farmers from fully capturing the benefit of autonomous farm equipment thanks to a 50 year law that requires a human operator to be at the helm. Meanwhile, cars with no drivers are on the road across the state.

If Waymos are allowed to navigate crowded cross walks, we should allow a combine to operate in parallel lines amongst hundreds of unnavigated farmland.

In related AgTech news … Introducing the Modern Agriculture Caucus

Nineteen members of Congress, led by Nebraska’s Adrian Smith, announced the creation of the “Modern Agricultural Caucus,” which “will champion policy that promotes cutting-edge technologies, stewardship of our natural resources, as well as the development and protection of U.S. agricultural innovation and intellectual property.”

Areas of focus for the caucus and the corresponding leaders for each include:

• Precision Agriculture – Rep. Erin Houchin

• Biotechnology – Rep. Frank Lucas

• Food Affordability – Rep. Rob Bresnahan

• Emerging Innovations – Rep. Brad Finstad

• Smart Irrigation – Rep. Vince Fong

• Automation & AI – Rep. Tracey Mann

Now, caucuses aren’t committees and not all caucuses are created equal. But if wielded effectively, their influence on policy debates can be meaningful. And we suspect this caucus–serving America’s most storied constituency–will outkick the coverage of many others.

At ALFA, we believe AgTech is one of the most important areas of innovation that is both under-covered by the media and lacking a sense of urgency amongst some corners of policy making. The emergence of the “Modern Ag Caucus” gets nothing but three cheers from us.

🌊 ⚡️ Riding the Current vs. Fighting It: The Energy Lesson from China

The Wall Street Journal recently reported on an ambitious hydropower project in China in their continued quest to develop more and more energy. This is a national priority for them as energy is, well … just about everything in this world.

ALFA has delivered you myriad datapoints outlining our struggle here in the U.S. to keep pace with the growing demand. This isn’t because we don’t have the source material for the energy or the technological know-how to produce more of it, but rather it is because of a regulatory structure that is holding us back.

As Congress returns in a few weeks, it is essential they put permitting reform at the top of their to-do list.

China’s hydropower project is no doubt impressive in scale and technological ambition. It’s also an apt metaphor for the approach taken by us and them.

Instead of fighting against the current–as our current regulator structure requires–it’s time to use the gravitational force of technology and ambition to supercharge our energy needs.