In June, the Senate overwhelmingly passed a bill to spend nearly a quarter-trillion dollars to ignite scientific innovation to better compete with China, a level of investment that proponents say will be comparable to Cold War-era spending if the House follows suit.
There was roughly an equal number of congressional Democrats and Republicans at the forum and all expressed similar concerns.
“We need to be there,” said Senator Tammy Duckworth, Democrat of Illinois, who stressed the need to invest in partners in the region. Some Republicans, however, were critical of Mr. Biden’s policies thus far toward China, particularly around what they view as a lack of punitive measures over the country’s role in the pandemic. “President Biden has to be much more aggressive,” Senator Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa, said.
Although Mr. Austin said U.S. tech firms needed to help the country keep ahead of Chinese know-how, he acknowledged that the Pentagon risked falling behind China in various areas if it did not find ways to work better with Silicon Valley.
“The barriers to entry for working in national security are often just too steep,” Mr. Austin said.
Amid all of the talk of future threats and partnerships within the crowd of senior Pentagon officials, policy experts and business leaders, there was little reflection on the past two decades of war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
When pressed after his speech about his regrets over the Afghanistan withdrawal, Mr. Austin was silent for several seconds, before saying that he regretted the loss of lives of Marines and of civilians killed in an errant drone strike. “I want to make sure that we don’t lost sight of the fact that our American forces in 17 days evacuated 124,000 people from Afghanistan,” he added.