BUSINESS, Page 42Battle for the FutureUnless the U.S. can match Japan's all-out research effort, therace to dominate 21st century technology may be over before ithas begun
If a modern-day Rip Van Winkle were to fall into a deep sleep
for the next ten or 20 years, he might wake up to the whoosh of
trains being propelled through the air by superconducting magnets.
He might observe crowds of commuters toting supercomputers the size
of magazines. In average homes, he might see 7-ft. TV images as
crisp as 35-mm slides and enticing new food products concocted in
the lab. But if he could read the labels on those futuristic
creations, he might also discover the outcome of America's struggle
to remain the leading technological superpower. Sad to say, a
majority of those products might well bear the words MADE IN JAPAN.
That is the worrisome analysis of U.S. experts in Government,
industry and academia. Virtually every week seems to bring fresh
evidence that Japan is catching up with the U.S. -- and often
surpassing it -- in creating the cutting-edge products that long
were the turf of U.S. firms. Last week the American Electronics
Association reported that from 1984 through 1987 electronics
production rose 75% in Japan, vs. a paltry 8% in the U.S. Most
ominously for the U.S., Japan made its gains in increasingly
sophisticated components, such as the disk drives and
optical-storage devices used for today's higher-powered computers.
Says L. William Krause, chairman of AEA: "The Japanese are eating
their way up the electronics food chain."
Now come indications that Japan is ahead in developing many of
the building blocks of 21st century technology. Last week a
presidential panel reported that U.S. efforts to exploit recent
breakthroughs in superconductivity were seriously fragmented
alongside Japan's. The Japanese have not only filed more than 2,000
patents worldwide, but have already started to develop motors and
generators using the superconductors. U.S. projects are still in
the planning stage and, in the words of the report, "unlikely to
survive what we believe will be a long-distance race."
U.S. researchers harbor similar fears about falling behind in
a broad range of disciplines, from optical electronics to
supercomputers. While the U.S. is still plowing ahead in pure
science, American industry has fallen behind in the race to turn
those advances into products that are reliable, reasonably priced
and directed toward the needs of consumers. "America is probably
the world's greatest innovator nation," says Robert White,
president of the National Academy of Engineering, "but we don't
have the ability to capture the benefits of those scientific
discoveries." The risk is that the U.S. will lose its competitive
advantage even before the marketing contest has begun.
For the U.S., the good news is that the Government is waking
up to the threat from Japan and beginning to respond in a very
Japanese way: by encouraging rival firms to cooperate rather than
compete on the most difficult research tasks. The U.S. is making
concerted efforts in several strategically important fields:
Superconductors. These extraordinary materials, which carry
electrical current without resistance, may be used to build
battery-like devices that store power indefinitely or
supercomputers many times smaller than today's. In 1986 American
researchers discovered a new class of ceramics that become
superconductors without having to be cooled to nearly absolute zero
(-460 degrees F). Nine months later, President Reagan announced an
eleven-point Superconductivity Initiative that included plans for
relaxing antitrust laws to allow joint-production ventures. Last
week's report, citing Japan's rapid advances, called for creation
of four to six research consortiums that would pool the talents of
leading scientists from industry, academia and the national
laboratories.
Advanced semiconductors. Scientists on both sides of the
Pacific are moving beyond silicon as a base material and creating
superfast computer chips of such exotic materials as gallium
arsenide and indium phosphide. The Japanese have already taken a
decisive lead in a new manufacturing technology that could pack a
thousand times more data into a single chip by using X rays rather
than light to etch the tiny circuits. The U.S. semiconductor
industry has responded by forming a research consortium called
Sematech to develop advanced chipmaking tools. Last year
Austin-based Sematech got its first $100 million transfusion from
the Department of Defense, bringing its annual budget to $250
million.
High-definition TV. The Japanese have taken a daunting head
start in the race to develop television of the future. In 1987
Japan launched a 20-year project to perfect and market HDTV
worldwide. The new televisions would not only double the resolution
of the images on home TV screens but could also have a ripple
effect on the rest of the electronics industry by creating huge
market opportunities in semiconductors, computers and VCRs. Support
is building in Congress and the Commerce and Defense Departments
for a national program to ensure that the market for this product
does not become another virtual Japanese monopoly. The AEA's Krause
has proposed a joint Government-industry venture to wire almost
every U.S. home with cables capable of carrying HDTV signals, a
project he estimates would cost about $20 billion annually for a
decade.
Biotechnology. Prowess in creating new life-forms in the lab
is one of the bright spots on the U.S. technological horizon. Yet
Japan has launched an initiative targeting biotechnology as one of
the "next-generation industries" it wants to dominate. The
centerpiece of the U.S. response is the Government's mammoth
effort, known as the genome project, to map and analyze all the
genetic material in the human cell. Last fall the National
Institutes of Health announced that the $3 billion, 15-year project
would be led by biologist James Watson, the Nobel laureate who
discovered the molecular structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA)
with Britain's Francis Crick in 1953.
Cooperative projects are not the only ingredient in Japan's
stunning progress. Japan has other advantages that may be more
difficult for the U.S. to imitate: first-rate technical-training
programs, intense corporate loyalty among its work force, and a
culture that confers high status on manufacturers and engineers.
But a little Japanese-style teamwork, in which companies pool their
resources on long-term research, could do wonders in the U.S. "The
Japanese don't share all their secrets either," says John Young,
CEO of Hewlett-Packard. "They get people to develop the basic
technology, and then they go home and build like crazy."
The first high-tech consortiums in the U.S. have had rocky
beginnings. The Austin-based Microelectronics and Computer
Technology Corp., which a group of electronics companies formed in
1982 for research in advanced computer technology, was shaky at
first because member firms were reluctant to share their best
researchers and ideas with rivals. But retired Admiral Bobby Inman,
former deputy director of the CIA who headed MCC until 1986, melted
their resistance. Now under the stewardship of former Texas
Instruments executive Grant Dove, MCC has brought to market its
first products, including a new method for connecting chips to
circuit boards and software that uses artificial intelligence to
speed the development of complex microcircuits.
Such cooperative efforts tend to go against the grain in the
U.S., where entrepreneurs often view their colleagues as blood
rivals. "America has been wickedly competitive within itself,"
observes Robert Noyce, a co-inventor of the integrated circuit and
near legendary figure from Silicon Valley who now heads Sematech.
The danger is that by focusing too much on short-term competitive
standings, U.S. industry will spend too little time preparing for
the future. The most complex technologies require long-term
planning and investments, and the payoffs, while potentially
enormous, may be long delayed. But U.S. business leaders are
showing signs that they realize, as the Japanese surely do, that
the technological leader of 2009 is being determined today.
