Keeping Our Pact with the American People: Science and Technology for Our Future

By Arati Prabhakar, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy

As President Biden has often said, America can be defined in a single word: possibilities. Throughout our history as a nation, we have put innovation to work to open vast new possibilities.

Today, science and technology is as important as it has ever been, because America's aspirations are as great as they have ever been: robust health, no matter where you're from or what your background is; overcoming the climate crisis; vibrant industries that create good-paying jobs across the nation; harnessing advanced technology in ways that strengthen our values; bolstering national security; and opening opportunity for all Americans to achieve their full potential.

That's why our country needs science and technology. Our job is to open doors so that the scale of our advances matches the magnitude of our challenges. Our job is to accelerate the pace of progress to match the urgency of the moment. Our job is to make America's aspirations possible.

From the beginning, the President put a stake in the ground about the importance of scientific integrity, to make sure that Americans can trust in scientific information that the government supports and uses. So, on the day that President Biden was sworn into office, he signed an Executive Order that contained the declarative statement: "The Federal Government must be guided by the best science."

Under President Biden's leadership, we have made important progress in putting science and technology to work for the American people and investing in research and development (R&D) for the future.

Cancer Moonshot

President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden reignited the Cancer Moonshot in 2022 with two goals: prevent more than 4 million cancer deaths by 2047 and improve the experience of people who are touched by cancer. Doing so required a systems approach to fundamentally improve how we prevent, detect, and treat cancer. And the progress that the Cancer Moonshot has made offers a hopeful example for improving American health outcomes more broadly, so that more and more people can live a long, healthy, and happy life.

Preventing cancer means more Americans will never have to hear their doctor say the "C word." The Biden-Harris Administration has taken action to protect Americans from toxic and environmental exposures known to cause cancer, protecting millions of families by cleaning up toxic sites, replacing water lines to eliminate lead and other contaminants through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and establishing the first-ever national drinking water standard to protect over 100 million Americans from PFAS, so-called forever chemicals that cause cancer and other health impacts. The Biden-Harris Administration also banned chrysotile asbestos, the last known form of asbestos that was used in the United States; prioritized smoking cessation resources; expanded access to HPV vaccines; accelerated nutrition research and prioritized actions to make nutritious food more accessible; and more. And the FDA has taken first steps to limit the level of nicotine in combusted tobacco products, which would help those who want to quit to be successful and stop millions more from starting smoking. Because smoking is still the number one preventable cause of disease and death, this measure will significantly improve Americans' health, reduce health care costs, and, most importantly, save and extend lives.

Catching cancer early when outcomes are best is critical to saving lives. Nearly 10 million screenings in the United States were missed during the early days of the pandemic, risking later stage detection of cancer, worse outcomes, and deepening inequities. The President and First Lady made cancer screenings a priority for the Biden Cancer Moonshot. Now, screening numbers have rebounded to pre-pandemic levels.

Under their leadership, we've expanded knowledge and access to screenings for tens of millions of Americans in every state, investing in new early-detection tools and removing cost barriers by improving insurance coverage for recommended screenings. This includes new programs to reach medically underserved communities and veterans. The Department of Veterans Affairs has expanded no-cost screenings for veterans across the United States, made cancer screenings available in Veterans Affairs facilities, as well as expanded at-home screenings for colorectal cancer .

Under the PACT Act, the work that we have done for our veterans is unparalleled-screening more than 5.6 million veterans for toxic exposures and providing them with access to the health and support benefits they deserve.

The President and First Lady have also championed driving new innovation, including by establishing a new research agency, ARPA-H or the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health. With an investment of $4 billion over its first three years to drive breakthroughs in cancer and other diseases, ARPA-H is building on prior basic research to realize progress for people and communities across the country. Its bold programs aim to improve the way doctors remove tumors, find and validate existing medications to treat diseases that currently have no therapies, and monitor tumors and as they change to help patients receive the right treatment at the right time.

The Biden Cancer Moonshot has also expanded the reach of efforts that have long been known to change the cancer experience and improve outcomes. With the President and First Lady's leadership, we expanded cancer navigation services to more than 150 million Americans by providing reimbursement for navigation for the first time, making these services part of standard cancer care. Patient navigators guide those facing cancer through every step of their journey, reducing time between diagnosis and treatment, increasing treatment completion, and bring a measure of calm to people who are facing some of the most challenging days of their lives. Crucially, they also reduce the inequities that too often exist in our health system.

Getting Artificial Intelligence Right

When President Biden and Vice President Harris set out to address what they have called "the most consequential technology of our time," they knew that we must put AI on the right track for the American people. Every country is racing to use AI to build a future that embodies its own values. Whatever else we may disagree about, none of us wants to live in a world driven by technology that is shaped by authoritarian regimes. President Biden and Vice President Harris have been clear: American leadership in the world today requires American leadership in AI. And that means managing AI's risks so that we can seize its benefits.

Even before generative AI burst on to the scene, the Biden-Harris Administration released a Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights, identifying the core values to guide the design, use, and deployment of automated systems. Then, President Biden signed a landmark executive order on AI, pulling every lever under existing U.S. law to address the wide range of issues and opportunities that AI raises.

We have also delivered the first-ever voluntary commitments from AI companies to advance safe, responsible AI innovation. The Biden-Harris Administration has been working with allies and partners around the world-including on the successful passage of the first UN General Assembly resolution on seizing the opportunities of safe, secure, and trustworthy AI systems for sustainable development. We have worked continuously with Congress on a bipartisan basis for legislation. And we have already brought more than 200 new and talented people into government to responsibly leverage AI to improve services and programs.

The Biden-Harris Administration has taken more than 100 common sense steps to protect Americans from AI harms, including:

If you apply for a mortgage or a credit card, those decisions are almost always made by an AI algorithm. ​Now, thanks to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, if an algorithm denies your application, the company is required to give you an explanation-helping you understand what you need to do to get the loan or credit the next time around.

If you are getting less care from your doctor, it could be because an AI system determined that you didn't need as much help as someone else-not because they were sicker than you, but because they looked different than you. New rules from the Department of Health and Human Services make it clear that prohibitions on discrimination based on race, color, national origin, sex, age, or disability apply to AI in patient care. Under the new rule, most health care providers that use AI have an ongoing responsibility to test, root out, and mitigate the discrimination in AI tools.

Impersonation fraud using AI has been on the rise, with scammers pretending to be banks or the Internal Revenue Service, trying to trick Americans into handing over cash. The Federal Trade Commission ruled that the act of impersonating a government or business-including by using AI-is against the law, and it now has new tools to return money to victims.

Image-based sexual abuse-including synthetic content generated by AI and real images distributed without consent-has skyrocketed in recent years, disproportionately targeting women, girls, and LGBTQI+ people. The Biden-Harris Administration announced new voluntary commitments from AI model developers and data providers to reduce AI-generated image-based sexual abuse.

We've taken important steps to get AI right. And the reason to manage AI's risks is so we can use it to achieve our great aspirations. That is much more than the business and consumer applications that the private sector is pursuing with AI today. AI can supercharge how we do the country's work, making possible a future in which we can design and approve medicines for seemingly intractable diseases in months rather than decades; a future in which we use edtech, finally, to close learning gaps among our kids; a future in which we deliver a better weather forecast to all Americans as the climate changes.

Work has started on all of these great possibilities. For example, through its CATALYST program, ARPA-H is using AI to predict drug safety and efficacy accurately before clinical trials even begin. And the Commerce Department' CHIPS R&D program is using AI to accelerate the extremely challenging and intricate work of developing sustainable materials for semiconductors that protect the environment and local communities.

Meeting the Climate Crisis

President Biden and Vice President Harris have taken the most ambitious action that anyone, anywhere has ever taken to address the climate crisis-from clean energy to resilience to conservation.

Under their leadership, we're deploying clean energy at a scale massive enough that, finally, the climate will notice. Since President Biden took office, the United States has added more than 100 gigawatts of clean energy. To put this figure in context: When the Hoover Dam was built, it was a once-in-a-lifetime achievement. 100 GW is more than 50 Hoover Dams' worth of clean power. More than $100 billion in IRA funding is accelerating the deployment of clean energy, catalyzing more than $472 billion from private companies in new clean power manufacturing and deployment investments across nearly every state. Similarly, significant investment has flowed to manufacturing for clean energy products like solar, wind turbines, batteries, and EVs. We've seen $277 billion in new U.S. manufacturing investments in these areas.

This Administration has lowered the U.S. emissions trajectory, created hundreds of thousands of clean energy jobs, and lowered the cost of clean energy for people across the country. These actions are unlocking the path to cutting our emissions in half by 2030 and ultimately reaching net zero by 2050. What didn't seem possible just a few years ago is now visible.

To completely decarbonize our economy will require fully developing and fully deploying dozens of additional advanced technologies. This Administration has doubled down on R&D and demonstration investments for energy storage, smart grids, advanced nuclear, advanced geothermal, fusion, low-carbon building materials, carbon removal, and more.

President Biden also released the Fifth National Climate Assessment, which is the United States' preeminent report on climate change impacts, risks, and responses. The Assessment showed how widespread climate impacts are today-and how communities across the country are stepping up to deal with them. It also provides an important information resource for communities across America as they take action to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change.

This Administration significantly boosted resilience efforts, deploying more than $50 billion to address the impacts of climate change on communities and ensure they are prepared for increasingly intense and extreme weather events. We took new actions to advanced nature-based climate solutions, like investing in coastal marshes and dunes to protect our coasts against storms and flooding, as well as restoring coastal and aquatic ecosystems.

For all this work to move forward, we must have in place accurate and comprehensive measurement, monitoring, reporting, and verification of greenhouse gas emissions. That's why we undertook a broad effort to improve the data and measurement of greenhouse gas emissions, to track progress towards emissions targets and assess the effectiveness of climate actions and policies.

A changing climate is one manifestation of our changing planet. We have also taken steps to reset our relationship with nature to support biodiversity and healthy ecosystems-from our ocean to our grasslands and from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic.

The U.S. economy and our environment are deeply intertwined. Economists have long known that our national economic accounts-the statistics that provide a comprehensive view of U.S. production, consumption, investment, exports and imports, and income and saving-have been incomplete, because they have not included information about nature, including our natural resources. For the first time, the Biden-Harris Administration began developing a system to account for our natural assets-including the minerals that power our technology economy, the ocean and rivers that support our fishing industry, and the forests that clean our air and water.

This Administration has also begun work on the first National Nature Assessment to take stock of U.S. lands, waters, and wildlife and the benefits they provide to our economy, health, and security.

Industrial Strategy

Before the Biden-Harris Administration, decades of globalization hollowed out American manufacturing and manufacturing jobs and made our supply chains fragile. President Biden recognized that robust manufacturing and supply chains in key industries are important not just to our economy, but also to national security. That's why he put in place a modern American industrial strategy that includes the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the CHIPS and Science Act. These historic investments are renewing our physical infrastructure, accelerating the clean energy transition, bringing leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing back to the United States, and preparing the United States to lead in industries of the future.

Thanks to the CHIPS and Science Act, the U.S. is now on track to lead the world in semiconductor manufacturing, with all five advanced-node semiconductor manufacturers now building their futures here in the United States. No other country is home to more than two of these companies. All this growth is catalyzed by more than $52 billion in public investment. The Semiconductor Industry Association recently projected that by 2032, the United States will produce 28% of the world's advanced logic chips here in the United States, up from 0% in 2022. And with investments in CHIPS R&D, we're making sure that we win the future, too. These semiconductor R&D investments are bringing academic and laboratory researchers together with industry to tackle the most difficult technical challenges for the next generation-delivering advances that will help keep the United States in the lead in the years ahead.

Semiconductors, clean energy, and many other innovative industries grew from federally funded R&D in the past. Today, new industries continue to emerge from our public research base. Looking to the future, President Biden understood that we must act now to keep American leadership in these nascent industries. Biomanufacturing and biotechnology hold great promise to harness biology to produce a host of chemicals, materials, structures, and fuels, in addition to the biomedicines of today. With the President's bioeconomy executive order, America is changing how we make products by using bio-based inputs for more resilient and sustainable materials and medications.

Taken together, President Biden's leadership and investments have catalyzed more than a trillion dollars in announced private sector investments in clean energy manufacturing and infrastructure, clean power, semiconductors, electric vehicles and batteries, and other advanced manufacturing. As America builds again, we are creating jobs across our nation, strengthening supply chains, and bolstering national security.

National Security

The United States faces growing threats around the world. Russia's brutal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine has strengthened NATO's resolve, but also brought Russia closer with Iran and North Korea. And the People's Republic of China (PRC) has been intent on combining its economic, diplomatic, technological, and military capabilities to challenge the stable, open international system.

Over the past four years, the Biden-Harris Administration has strengthened America's national defense for this modern era of strategic competition. Today, potential adversaries are using globally available technologies to deploy sophisticated weapons. To deter aggression and succeed against any adversary, the United States is putting in place a new generation of military capabilities. Building on prior research concepts, we have accelerated experimentation, testing, and fielding of the novel military systems that our military service members will wield to prevail in any future conflict.

At the same time, we've taken steps to responsibly manage the risks associated with nuclear, chemical, and biological threats, including managing the emerging risks associated with synthetic and computational biology. We've focused on protecting and investing in critical and emerging technologies such as AI and autonomy, quantum information science, biotechnology and biomanufacturing, advanced materials, next-generation wireless communication, and advanced microelectronics. We have advanced post quantum encryption to secure our data from future threats. We have advanced the protection of critical infrastructure from cyber-physical threats and promoted its resilience to natural and human-made threats. And we have recognized and responded to the growing importance of the Arctic and Antarctic, our ocean and undersea infrastructure, and the peaceful use of space to our national interests.

We have protected the security of American research and researchers, protected the intellectual property of innovative American businesses from foreign threats, and helped insure the vitality of critical national security supply chains and industries. And we've strengthened the technical workforce across the national security community, to secure the talent needed to tackle the challenges of the future.

Federal R&D Enterprise

To realize all of our great aspirations, we must have a robust federal R&D enterprise. Public R&D-funded by the federal government and performed in universities, government and other laboratories, and companies-is essential for the government's responsibilities in security, health, energy, the environment, agriculture, space, education, transportation, and more. And public research is an essential foundation for industry's own investment in R&D as companies build on basic research results and hire students trained on federally funded research projects.

President Biden and Vice President Harris have expanded new investments in federally funded R&D, increasing annual funding by approximately 25%. To make federal R&D more effective for our times, we used this funding to strengthened our world-leading research and to initiate efforts that accelerate the impact from basic research. That includes establishing ARPA-H to drive breakthroughs in cancer, Alzheimer's, diabetes, and more; and the National Science Foundation's new Directorate for Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships to spur regional innovation and economic competitiveness in industries of the future, like biomanufacturing, energy storage, and regenerative medicine. At the same time, we have worked to make the federal R&D enterprise more effective, including implementing research security practices for a changing world and opening access to publicly funded research results.

We have also worked to engage the next generation of leaders and empower them with the STEM skills they need to succeed in the 21^st century. That includes robotics programs that are engaging a million students all around the country, as well as informal education programs to build local resilience to hazardous weather and other environmental threats for people of all ages in every type of community. It includes education and research programs to support the STEM education and career development of students in historically underserved institutions and geographies in every part of the country. And it includes STEM teacher preparation programs to make sure students in rural and urban communities alike have the opportunity to be taught by highly qualified teachers. The CHIPS and Science Act, in particular, has made historic public investments in STEM education and workforce development. These investments are laying the foundation for the next generation of Americans to prosper and contribute to the long-term success of our nation.

Building the Future

For generations before us, researchers and technologists have explored and innovated, and policymakers, companies, communities, and individuals have made pivotal choices about how to use science and technology.

Under the leadership of President Biden and Vice President Harris, this Administration has worked every day to advance and to use science and technology to benefit the American people. In doing so, we have kept the pact that science and technology has with our country: the promise of a better future for all of us.

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