The Evolving Landscape of U.S. Economic Security | U.S. Must Close the Long-Distance Power Transmission Gap with China | Flush with Investment, New U.S. Factories Face a Familiar Challenge, and more

The paper focuses on the trends forging the path for the United States to define economic security so closely with national security, and in exploring these trends, it delineates how the United States has implemented policies and adopted, reoriented, or created new policy tools designed to strengthen economic security. The paper also explores why the rapid evolution of emerging technologies has played such a defining role. Finally, the paper examines the effectiveness of the U.S. approach to economic security and its challenges and offers insights into how it can be strengthened in the future

After Grilling Fauci on Covid Origins, House Republicans Want to Consider New Rules for Foreign Research  (Sarah Owermohle, Stateline)
House Republicans want to explore tighter inspection and safety requirements for infectious disease work done in foreign labs, following a two-day grilling of former top health official Anthony Fauci.
The closed-door briefing — which GOP representatives have clamored for since taking control of the House in the 2022 election — comes just over a year after Fauci stepped down as director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. His retirement did not placate GOP lawmakers, who have demanded answers about Covid’s origins and the societal impact of early shutdowns.
That included lengthy interrogations about federal oversight of foreign labs that received U.S. funding, including the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a Chinese research establishment that has been central to unproven theories that the virus was leaked from a lab rather than spread to humans from animal contact. In April 2020, President Trump ordered the National Institutes of Health to terminate a coronavirus-focused research project by EcoHealth Alliance based at the Wuhan lab.

US Army Medical Institutions Partner to Counter Bioweapon Threats  (Andrew Salerno-Garthwaite, Army Technology)
Researchers from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), and Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, are working together to develop a treatment to combat the threat of tularemia bacteria as a biological weapon.
The bacterium that causes tularemias, Francisella tularensis, is designated as a Tier 1 select agent, “presenting the greatest risk of deliberate misuse with most significant potential for mass casualties”, marking it as a potential biological weapon, according to a release from the DTRA’s Chemical and Biological Technologies Department on 6 January 2024. 
The initiative between the DTRA, USAMRIID and Walter Reed Army Institute of Research intends to develop new antibiotics to counter this threat, as well as other potential biothreats including Bacillus anthracis (anthrax), Yersinia pestis (plague), Burkholderia mallei (glanders), and Burkholderia pseudomallei (melioidosis). 
The partnered institutions seek to address increasing antibiotic resistance among these common bacteria, aiming to counteract the threat of antibiotic-resistant pathogens, both naturally occurring and those possibly engineered for malicious purposes. 

The U.S. Must Close the Long-Distance Power Transmission Gap with China  (Ismael Arciniegas Rueda, Fiona Quimbre, Henri van Soest, and Avery Krovetz, National Interest)
A 2023 RAND study found that China, as part of its efforts to create a Global Energy Interconnection (GEI), has taken a significant lead on the United States in developing the technologies required to move power long distances. China has emerged as the world’s leader in the transmission technologies needed to connect power grids across regions and even countries. China ranks first in the three of four metrics used to determine national standing on these technology groups. It has also published more academic papers and filed more patents on some of these technologies, such as transmission at ultra-high voltage (UHV) levels and submarine cables than the United States has. And while China has already developed thirty-four UHV lines on its territory, the United States has none.
The gap in long-distance transmission technologies between the United States and China raises significant national security implications, the first of which is China leveraging its growing commercial and civilian penetration of foreign power grids for espionage or military purposes. China’s growing technological and technical prowess in transmission technologies has enabled Chinese companies to grow their global market share while exporting Chinese technologies and standards abroad, often at the expense of established competitors. As Chinese products and standards flood the market, China could benefit from lock-in effects and become the provider of choice for super grids globally, increasing dependency on China for key clean energy supply chains. Therefore, similar to other energy transition technologies such as solar or batteries for electric vehicles, China’s technological lead may allow it to set market dominance in long-distance transmission.
The U.S. government recently announced a commitment of $1.3 billion to address its transmission needs. The United States should go a few steps further by working to reduce the technology gap with China on long-distance transmission. This would both address its current domestic transmission needs while also mitigating potential national security risks arising from China’s GEI efforts. There is a third benefit here, too: improved transmission infrastructure helps lower power prices and leads to fewer power outages, both of which benefit consumers. Limited transmission capacity, on the other hand, can lead to disaster and even death. It was, for instance, identified as one of the major causes behind the Texas blackouts during winter storm Uri, which caused 246 deaths in 2021.

Texas Pulls an Ugly Stunt on the Border  (Jerusalem Demsas, The Atlantic)
The Texas National Guard has taken hostage a 2.5-mile stretch of the U.S. border with Mexico. According to a shocking Supreme Court filing by the Justice Department early yesterday morning, armed soldiers and vehicles deployed by the state have repeatedly denied U.S. Border Patrol agents access to the Shelby Park area in Eagle Pass, Texas. The state did not immediately deny this; a spokesperson for Governor Greg Abbott said the state will keep “utilizing every tool and strategy to respond to President Biden’s ongoing border crisis.”
It’s an ugly stunt, part of a long series of provocations by Abbott, who is clearly more interested in garnering headlines than in generating solutions to the chronic delays and underinvestment that plague the U.S. immigration system. But national leaders have also left a policy vacuum. In 2016, the courts that judge whether migrants qualify for asylum had a backlog of 163,451 cases; that total grew to 614,751 in 2020 and 1,009,625 last year. Asylum seekers wait about four years on average just to get their hearing. Federal officials do not have the resources to process and manage the asylum flows at the border, and, as members of Congress drag their feet, Texas is running to take charge of the situation—not to provide order, but to publicize the disorder for political ends.
This could be “the biggest federal-state fight since desegregation,” Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, the policy director of the American Immigration Council, an immigrant-advocacy nonprofit, posited yesterday.

Flush with Investment, New U.S. Factories Face a Familiar Challenge  (Ana Swanson and Jim Tankersley, New York Times)
The Biden administration has begun pumping more than $2 trillion into U.S. factories and infrastructure, investing huge sums to try to strengthen American industry and fight climate change.
But the effort is facing a familiar threat: a surge of low-priced products from China. That is drawing the attention of President Biden and his aides, who are considering new protectionist measures to make sure American industry can compete against Beijing.
As U.S. factories spin up to produce electric vehicles, semiconductors and solar panels, China is flooding the market with similar goods, often at significantly lower prices than American competitors. A similar influx is also hitting the European market.
American executives and officials argue that China’s actions violate global trade rules. The concerns are spurring new calls in America and Europe for higher tariffs on Chinese imports, potentially escalating what is already a contentious economic relationship between China and the West.
The Chinese imports mirror a surge that undercut the Obama administration’s efforts to seed domestic solar manufacturing after the 2008 financial crisis and drove some American start-ups out of business. The administration retaliated with tariffs on solar equipment from China, sparking a dispute at the World Trade Organization.