SVB’s Collapse Is Sobering for US National Security: Hal Brands

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank can be viewed as a story about bailouts, moral hazard, and tech bros who bash the government until they need its help. But it’s also about national security and America’s clash for technological supremacy with China — and it shows how reliant the US has become on a model of innovation that is more fragile than it appears.

Great-power rivalries are technological rivalries: The country that innovates will be well positioned to dominate. “Our safety lies in being farther ahead scientifically and productively than the Russians,” the great nuclear physicist Ernest O. Lawrence ...