Global and country findings

• China’s lead continues to grow
• China significantly strengthened its standing in the middle of the last decade
• The US is losing the strong historical advantage that it has built
• China has built up potential monopoly positions in scientific expertise and top performing institutions
• India accelerates: India now ranks in the top 5 countries for 45 of 64 technologies
• The UK ranks in the top 5 countries for 36 technologies—a decline from 44 technologies in last year’s results
• The European Union, as a whole, is a competitive technological player
• Germany is the top-performing European Union country
• South Korea’s performance shows that Japan has work to do
• Iran excels at defence-sensitive technologies
• Australia has improved in some technologies and slipped in others
• AUKUS—the trilateral security and technology partnership involving the US, the UK and Australia28—closes the gap in some Pillar 2–relevant technologies, but not all

Technology monopoly risk metric results

• Scientific breakthroughs and research innovations in key defence technologies are increasingly likely to occur in China:
• China’s research lead in advanced materials and manufacturing technologies grows

Institutional findings: US tech companies, government agencies and CAS

• Private-sector research is increasingly concentrated in US technology giants
• Private sector research was more diverse between 2003-2007
• The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) is the global science and research powerhouse
• Government agencies and national laboratories feature prominently
• Chinese companies play a relatively small role in the global research ecosystem