America Needs Better Economic Intelligence

Source Domain: time.com

Economic Cold War: The U.S.-China competition is framed as an economic cold war focused on access to markets, infrastructure contracts, data, and digital systems.
Lack of Measurement: The U.S. lacks a clear picture of where it stands competitively against China, despite tracking numerous elements related to national security and economic activity.
China’s Strategic Metrics: In contrast to the U.S., China measures its economic competition rigorously using directional and strategic metrics like manufacturing dominance and technology self-sufficiency.
Backward-Looking Indicators: The U.S. uses backward-looking measures such as trade balances and foreign direct investment, which do not adequately capture the digital economy’s backbone assets like cloud infrastructure and AI platforms.
Necessity for Modern Economic Intelligence: To effectively compete, the U.S. needs to develop modern economic intelligence, incorporating various data sources to understand its competitive positions clearly.
Importance of Activity Metrics: Even rough indicators of AI activity (like where AI workloads run) can provide better insights than anecdotes if properly contextualized.
Leadership and Measurement: The first act of effective economic leadership in this age of economic power is to implement clear, systematic measurement processes.