"A reconfiguration of global supply chains. The redrawing of geopolitical lines and alliances with increasing threats of conflict. A rise in weather-related disasters. And the emergence of transformative technologies."

It sounds as if it could have been ripped from this morning's headlines, but that is, in fact, the opening of the publisher's description for the new book Priority Technologies: Ensuring US Security and Shared Prosperity, a new collection of writings edited by Elisabeth B. Reynolds and published last week by The MIT Press. 

Nobel Laureate Simon Johnson wrote the foreword to this important new collection. He begins by examining what the UK did between the world wars of the last century that laid the groundwork for the defense of the nation in the Battle of Britain. As he writes:

In effect, the RAF built a massive, human-powered analog computer that could determine where the daylight bombing threats were and dispatch fighter aircraft that could break up those attacks. Despite German countermeasures and the strong performance of their own fighter aircraft (particularly the Messerschmitt Bf 109), British air defense prevailed.

What are the lessons from that experience for the United States today?

The entire book is essentially an answer to that question. The excerpt below is Johnson's conclusion to the foreword. 

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Everyone surely agrees that, as technology changes, so does war. This has been evident at least since early in World War I when the machine gun, the tank, and most of all aircraft completely altered how nations fight. 

But while many technologies change all the time—and perhaps at faster rate today than ever before—it is impossible to say what will be decisive at any moment in time. 

We do know that building big stockpiles of weapons is unlikely to be effective, at least when the pace of technological change is rapid. In the early 1920s, France had the largest air force in the world. But all of those planes were obsolete by the 1930s (if not before), and France’s lack of good fighter planes proved a disastrous weakness when Germany invaded in May 1940. 

Drones are surely an important part of future conflict. But what size of drones, controlled how, and used in what way? And couldn’t anti-drone defenses also develop at a rapid pace? I have no idea what the answer will be. I have listened carefully to the world’s experts on these questions, as reflected in this volume, and I have learned a great deal. But mostly what I know is simply that I want these experts to keep working on these important questions, I want this work to be backed with significant resources, and I want people with all kinds of ideas from the full range of relevant experiences—including from Ukraine since 2022—to contribute to this agenda in the United States and in Western Europe. 

If we don’t know exactly what the future global economy will look like, then we don’t know which technologies will be decisive—but we do know that today’s stock of knowledge and capabilities is not likely to be enough. We have to keep innovating. 

The most important innovations for national security will surely be those that move other technologies forward—for example, semiconductors or advanced manufacturing. It’s also appealing to push hard on commercial applications when we can imagine that related or subsequent developments could have defense implications. The Germans were forbidden from having military aircraft after World War I, but they made good progress with civilian aircraft—and in the 1930s, brought those ideas and the associated expertise into their military buildup. 

And that’s another key lesson from history. Invention requires inventors—people who devote years to developing technologies, even when the particular line they are pursuing has not yet taken hold. A country like the United States should be investing in breakthroughs wherever these are possible—for example, in biomanufacturing today. And, as David Baker (Chemistry Nobel Prize laureate in 2024) and I have argued, the best way to promote any scientific enterprise is to strengthen the pipeline of young talent entering labs and thinking hard about innovation.3 In many fields, key inventions are produced and powered by graduate students and postdocs. Increasing the number of talented people entering all scientific fields needs to again become a pressing national priority. 

If you invent the industries of the future, you will get more of the good jobs that are created—a point that Jonathan Gruber and I emphasized in Jump-Starting America: How Breakthrough Science Can Revive Economic Growth and the American Dream (Public Affairs, 1999), and one that was taken up by the bipartisan Chips and Science Act of 2022. But you also strengthen your scientific cadres—your brilliant young people (and the great older experts) who can both build what you want today and also pivot, if needed, to build something different but likely related when needed. 

Before World War II, the US government spent almost nothing on research and development. The lessons of that war—including those from programs to develop radar, synthetic rubber, and penicillin, and of course, the Manhattan Project—convinced Congress and the broader political leadership that supporting basic science was essential to accelerate technological progress. This progress proved not just something that was nice to have but rather an essential part of postwar American prosperity—and national security. 

But what should we develop? Where are the frontiers? What is the set of potential breakthroughs that are available today, even if we cannot yet see the full contours? What are the essential inputs, such as critical minerals, that we will need? Where does “advanced manufacturing” fit into the defense picture? 

As an economist, I also have to ask the question: How much will any of these initiatives cost us? How large are the potential spillover benefits? And why isn’t the private sector going to do this of its own accord?  

And please remember also this essential lesson from what happened at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The US Navy already used radar for fire control on ships, the Battle of Britain had demonstrated the value of radar for air defense almost eighteen months previously, and the British gave the cavity magnetron (a key element for the future of radar) to the United States in September 1940. But on the morning of December 7, when two radar operators reported an incoming flight of likely enemy planes, the officer in charge of the command center told them they were hallucinating, and they should go have breakfast. 

Ultimately, effective defense is not about the hardware or the software. It is about how you incorporate technology into your decision-making apparatus, so that accurate enough signals trigger effective responses. Or, to put the same point more forcefully, it’s never about the machines—it’s always about how you use them. Nothing is more important than the vision we have for the future of technology. 

At MIT, we do not have all the answers for the deep puzzle of how to boost shared prosperity while mounting an effective defense against all possible threats. But we have some pieces of the answer, and publishing this volume is intended to encourage others to put forward their ideas. It is also intended to help us, across all parts of MIT, think harder about what is needed and why the federal government should put taxpayer resources into particular efforts. 

Technology has been central to society at least since the first human figured out how to sharpen a stone. How militaries are organized and equipped has always been a central feature of any civilization. But how we organize production more broadly is just as important for the nature of our society. 

Today’s world is highly uncertain. But other countries are investing heavily in upgrading their scientific capabilities, taking pages from the post-1945 American playbook. Some of these countries see themselves as racing against the United States to invent the future partly for commercial purposes (and to grab more of those good jobs), but also likely with at least some potential military-related rationale. 

The United States is an incredibly inventive place—surely the most creative place, over the past 150 years and still today, in terms of imagining and implementing new technology. We have a population of close to 340 million. But the world has more than 8 billion people, most of whom would welcome better technologically powered solutions for a myriad set of problems. As Vannevar Bush wrote in his famous 1945 report, science really does offer us an end less frontier. 

We can invent better futures for ourselves and for the world. We can do this in ways that are responsible, respectful to the environment, and careful with regard to all forms of unintended consequences (including what happens to jobs)—all points that Daron Acemoglu and I emphasized in our book, Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity (Public Affairs, 2023). And while we focus on this, we can also make ourselves, our allies, and the entire world a safer place. 

To do this, we should invent, develop, and implement everything discussed and proposed in this volume. And a lot more. 

Simon Johnson 
December 2025 

Excerpted from the foreword by Simon Johnson to Priority Technologies: Ensuring US Security and Shared Prosperity edited by Elisabeth B. Reynolds.

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The security of our nation will increasingly depend not just on traditional armaments and allies but on an eclectic set of economic inputs and the critical industries they enable. In an ocean of options, where our society places its bets is of paramount importance. For policymakers, investors, and the general public seeking to separate signal from noise, this carefully curated collection comes not a moment too soon.

—Jon Finer, Former US Principal Deputy Security Advisor, National Security Council

The path forward to ensuring American national security, shared prosperity, and well-being is fraught with hard questions and few answers. This book highlights the positive role technology can play in these outcomes, including how effective national strategy can require simultaneous government action across multiple agencies, timeframes, and market segments to ensure capabilities that private actors cannot sustain independently, given the dynamics of global markets.

—Erica Fuchs, Kavčić-Moura Professor, Department of Engineering and Public Policy, 

Carnegie Mellon University; Director, Critical Technology Initiative
Priority Technologies should be required reading for US policymakers. The MIT contributors consider technologies, processes, and materials critical to national and economic security—and offer roadmaps for the United States to overcome its atrophied industrial base and recapture its global leadership in these strategic fields.

—L. Rafael Reif, President Emeritus and Ray and Maria Stata Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT

This book reveals a fundamental truth: Innovation alone is not enough. We must rebuild the entire ecosystem to translate scientific breakthroughs into strategic advantage. Priority Technologies is required reading for anyone interested in building the abundant, resilient future America deserves.

—Hemant Taneja, CEO, General Catalyst; author of The Transformation Principles

About the Editor

Elisabeth B. Reynolds is Professor of the Practice, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, at MIT. She previously served as Special Assistant to the President for Manufacturing and Economic Development at the National Economic Council in 2021–2022 as well as the Executive Director of the MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future and the Industrial Performance Center from 2010–2021.