In this episode of The Great Tech Game, host Anirudh Suri speaks with Michael Brown — Partner at Shield Capital, Visiting Scholar at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, and former Director of the Defense Innovation Unit — about the frontlines of the US–China technology competition and what the U.S. must do to stay ahead.

Together they explore:
– How China’s top-down innovation model is challenging U.S. leadership
– The urgent reforms needed in R&D, budgeting, and industrial policy
– How Silicon Valley and the Pentagon are reconnecting through defense tech
– Why allies and partners remain America’s biggest asymmetric advantage

Brown also unpacks the decline in federal R&D spending, the rise of defense-tech startups, and how conflicts like Ukraine reveal the power of commercial technology in modern warfare.

Tune in for an insider’s look at the race shaping global innovation — and what it means for the future of defense, technology, and geopolitics.

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