Fireside Chat: The Fusion Scoreboard: Assessing the U.S.-China Fusion Competition

Our

next fireside chat titled the fusion

scoreboard assessing the US China fusion

competition will be moderated by Jason

Dean of Washington Post Intelligence.

Please welcome our speakers, David Lynn,

senior adviser for future technology

platforms at SCSP and Jimmy Goodrich,

senior fellow at the University of

California Institute on Global Conflict

and Cooperation.

Let me grab something real quick.

All right, thank you. I am Jason Dean.

I'm the lead technology and AI analyst

for uh WP Intelligence, the Washington

Post's new business insight service. As

we just heard, uh, fusion energy has

quickly become one of the most

consequential aspects of the US China

competition technology and the two p

superpowers have very different

approaches to this battle. To to dig

into where that race stands, I'm joined

by two of the leading experts on this

subject. Jimmy Goodrich is a senior

adviser at the Rand Corporation and also

at the University of California

Institute on Global Conflict and

Cooperation. and I've known Jimmy for 20

years uh since we were both in Beijing.

He's uh one of the foremost authorities

on chi Chinese technology strategy and

capabilities. David Lynn is a national

security and technology strategist with

over 15 years of expertise examining US

China competition in emerging

technologies like fusion. spent a dozen

years helping to shape US China tech

policy at the CIA and the State

Department and now leads forward-looking

initiatives on critical technologies for

SCSP.

David, let me start with you. Uh you

helped assemble this report that we that

you heard about from uh Elie uh and I

think you have some slides to help us

crystallize where this race stands right

now.

>> Appreciate it, Jason. And I'm super

excited to share some of the China

analysis that the SCSP and the

commission team was able to pull

together. And really uh kudos really go

out to Abby, Caleb, and J uh uh Nicholas

for helping pull it uh pull this report

together and pushing it out last week.

Um

maybe I'll back up a little bit and just

talk about Fusion is more than just an

energy generation technology, but the

first nation who's able to commercialize

it and scale it uh will really have will

the opportunity to reshape the whole

geopolitical landscape and that's one

that's the key reason why we're seeing

uh the US and China pursue uh this

technology so rigorously. Um so the

panel is called uh the scoreboard and so

this is our proposition for our

scoreboard here. Um and where you see on

this ven diagram where we identify areas

where we assess China to be leading

where the US to be leading and some

areas where we assess the competition

for fusion specifically to be contested.

So on the right you see the US leading

in scientific breakthroughs and private

funding. On the left China leading in

government funding, supply chain and

materials. Um as we know news from last

week, China exerting its uh rare earth

export controls uh showing its uh

dominance in that field. Um and then in

the middle you see contested R&D

infrastructure and really derivatives

from the R&D infrastructure are talent

and publications. And so this is our

scoreboard. This is our lay of the land.

Um and uh and three things I really want

to highlight. Uh and this is all in the

report. So I encourage everyone to go uh

download and read the report. Um three

things I want to highlight are uh scale,

speed and cache. And these are three uh

themes that we'll see uh very

prominently in China's fusion buildout.

So first is scale.

Um as the secretary mentioned before,

these are the four key centers of

China's fusion buildout. And it's

important to have satellite imagery of

these facility facilities just to give

the audience a sense of again the sheer

scale of these facilities. Uh fusion as

we all know is at today at least still

pre-commercial so hasn't been

commercialized yet. And so it's also

energy infrastructure which requires a

lot of upfront uh investments both in

terms of infrastructure and capital

expenditures. And so if you look at

these images, it really gives you a

sense of just you can see these from

space, right? These are huge facilities

um and the government in China at least

is shouldering all the burden here for

this this pre-commercialized uh

technology. So scale now for speed,

let's focus on uh this facility on the

far right, Shinuo, which in Chinese

means new fire or spark. Um and I wanted

to pick this facility in particular

because

uh well first they're building China is

building a fusion fision hybrid

architecture which no other company in

the US is pursuing for a multitude of

reasons and we can talk about that later

in the conversation but secondly because

uh it it's also a stark illustration of

how fast China is able to build these

huge infrastructure projects. So on the

image on the left, June 22, uh, 2022, on

the right, October 2025, you can see how

this turned from just empty farmland to

a sprawling R&D complex.

And here is a quick uh GIF of what that

looks like from over the past year and a

half. So again, if you focus on that

doughnut-shaped building in the center,

you can see how over the past, you know,

year and a half, again, it turns from a

pile of dirt into the sprawling R&D

enterprise. And this facility still not

operational yet, supposed to go online

in 2030. So we'll see if it gets there.

Uh but again, the speed of which China

is able to construct these first of a

kind deployments is is truly astounding.

Now, last is cash. Secretary mentioned

how uh DOE is assessing that China has

spent some upwards of 10 billion dollars

on uh fusion. Uh our estimate puts it

more conservatively at 6.5 billion since

uh 2020 the beginning of 2023.

However, that 6.5 billion excludes some

known Chinese fusion infrastructure

projects that we excluded for a

multitude of reasons. But the $6.5

billion is a conservative estimate. If

you include some of these other uh

facilities, that estimate skyrockets

upwards of$1 13 billion. And again, this

is 13 billion dollars since the

beginning of 2023. As we all know, uh

the national ignition facility in

December 2022 uh demonstrated uh net

yield positive uh in their ignition

experiment. And since then, we've seen

fusion expenditures really take off in

China. So scale, speed and cache.

>> Jimmy, um we just saw on that slide the

comparison. Te take us a little deeper

into the difference in China's strategy

versus what we were hearing earlier from

the secretary about what the US is going

to do.

>> Great. And you know, excellent work by

David and SCSP really highlighting the

scale and speed of China this buildout.

Um I think if you step back and look at

the Chinese approach as we heard from

the secretary as well it's very much

driven by the public sector in China.

You have their China Academy of Sciences

the China Academy of Engineering Physics

two governmentr run organizations one is

civilian China Academy of Sciences the

other is the military the China Academy

of Engineering Physics and those are

really the two main hubs of China's

fusion activity. It's only recently that

China has seen several startups to

compete with the private companies here

in the United States. And even as

David's data points out, half of those

startups, if not more, are heavily

funded by the government as well. And so

you have a majority public sector

government effort as opposed to the US

effort which is really driven today by

the startups. The other main factor

driving China's, you know, step back.

Their energy security is fundamental for

them as they rely heavily on imported

fossil fuels more than the United

States. And so, uh, fusion energy has

been seen within Beijing for decades as

sort of the holy grail of their overall

national energy framework. The other

driver uh that is accelerating a lot of

Chinese efforts is some forms of nuclear

fusion particularly on their R&D side

have a significant nuclear weapons

science um application particularly for

inertial confinement fusion for laser

ignition and pulse power and as China is

building up its largest uh nuclear

arsenal in its history it needs a lot of

these facilities for nuclear weapons

modeling just like the national emission

facility 90% of the time is actually not

doing fusion but it's doing weapons

science. And so that's another main

driver for China's fusion efforts is

that civil military fusion aspect of

their of their program.

>> China's been ahead for decades uh in

civilian fision nuclear energy. Is that

giving them any advantage? Is that

giving them any tailwind uh in in the

future?

>> I mean, China's civilian fision program

um is building over uh two dozen 30 plus

nuclear power nuclear reactors right

now. And what that's enabled for China

is a huge engineering industry that can

scale up and cost down nuclear power

plants uh pretty much faster and cheaper

than any country in the world. Whereas

fusion today still has not move to a on

the-grid power plant. So you know the

can China take advantage of that cost

and that scale they've been able to

deliver for nuclear as they could

infusion a lot of that's going to uh

rest on if they can prove a lot of these

concepts in their pilot facilities which

they're building right now.

David, you talked about the the speed.

Um, give us a sense of the timetable

here. So, we know from uh from this end

uh the commission's uh report talked

about having more than one industry-ledd

demonstration fusion plant in the US by

the end of 2028 um and starting to build

uh commercial uh fusion plants by the

end of the decade. Where what how does

that compare to China's timetable for

fusion energy? So in the Chinese last so

China's industrial policies come in

five-year increments. Actually starting

next week we'll start to get glimmers of

what the 15th 5-year plan looks like for

the next five years of China's

industrial planning. Um fusion was

highlighted in China's 14th 5-year plan

five years ago uh as a major I think

they called it a major S&T

infrastructure project. And I think you

see some of China's uh major fusion

infrastructure projects really take off

over the past 5 years, but some predate

that. Um and again going back to the

speed China's really able I think there

were we highlight in one of our

newsletters SCSP newsletters on fusion a

Tik Tok video that was floating around

of uh Chinese construction workers

building uh their best facility. it's

best uh is one of their fusion

facilities and they're welding at night.

So it's almost like a 24-hour 247

building operation. Uh so that again

demonstrates the the the speed and and

scale by which uh China's been working

on its fusion infrastructure.

>> Jimmy, so we're talking about the

urgency on the Chinese side. We heard

some urgency from the secretary earlier,

but in the context of a discussion about

this as a race or a competition, do do

you feel like um people really looking

at it that way in the US uh here to for

I mean there's still a lot of there's

still a lot of cooperation in in nuclear

energy,

>> right? I mean in and sort of the global

science of fusion energy and high energy

density physics, it's quite an open

community. I'd say you know when I

started doing research in this space

about a year ago the overall awareness

of China's activities is quite low and

that's actually China has spoken openly

about its civilian tokamac um HTS

program but they do not speak openly at

all about their laser ignition or their

pulse power programs as those are

classified military programs. In fact

their laser ignition facility the

Shanguan 3 was classified until they had

it operational. The current two

facilities they're building, a 50 mega

amp pulse power facility and a laser

ignition facility are also in the 14

five-year plan that's not public. They

have a classified version as well. Um

that's not been made public. And that's

overall the strategy that China's taking

is this civilian military side, but

obuscating as much as possible the

military side of things. Um and you know

again it's those hybrid dynamics of both

energy dominance and nuclear weapons

science uh that is driving China's

overall ambitions here.

>> Do you do you think we're getting uh

sufficient understanding where China is?

I think we're starting to I think uh you

know the work that SCSP is doing the

work that uh the institute that I'm

affiliated with UCSD which is a

partnership with the um Lawrence

Livermore National Lab starting to

increase some research here and also

it's forcing some I think healthy

conversation amongst the private

industry around what to publish and when

uh who to hire and who to engage with.

um as you're a fast-moving startup,

you're not necessarily thinking about

sort of the risks to your intellectual

property or the technology, but you

know, there's a half dozen startups in

China, a dozen labs, all pursuing this

very aggressively. What we don't want to

see is the US invent the technology,

have first proof of concept on the grid

in the United States, and then China

take the technology, um, innovate some

on their own, and then scale it up, and

then we lose the race like we have in

many other, um, energy and advanced

technologies.

>> I mean, one of those is is

semiconductors. And I'm curious about

the workforce side of this, David,

because in chips now, we're trying to

reshore the semiconductor manufacturing

industry. And one of the issues that uh

companies are finding is we we don't

have the talent for that industry. We

haven't developed it. We haven't

invested in it over the years. Um what

about uh the nuclear workforce in China

versus in the US?

>> Yeah. I mean some would say the the

workforce follows the infrastructure

especially in these more you know

pre-commercial industries. uh ask PhD

candidates on campuses today one of

their key determining factors why they

go to certain places to work and it's

because they have the lab equipment,

they have the facilities, and they have

the financial resources that they're

giving their researchers. And so the the

danger that we fall in here is if China

is able to commit a significant amount

of resources toward fusion science uh

build the infrastructure build the

research facilities that researchers

want it will be this they'll have this

gravitational pull of pulling the

world's talent into it. Uh China also

recently executed its um K visa or

implemented its K visa. Sorry, execution

was the wrong word there. uh but

implemented its K visa which is intended

to attract uh STEM talent to China and

and has several perks along with it. And

so you see uh China building um all the

infrastructure both figuratively and

physically uh necessary to to kind of

commercialize this this still emerging

technology.

It's so striking the difference in in

the US um uh that the way that is led by

not just the private sector but really

by the tech sector fusion um when we're

talking about advantages on either sides

I mean what do you think what kind of uh

advantage do you think that gives the US

>> I mean the you know definite clear

advantages in the private sector in the

startup capital in our VC funding uh the

philanthropy that's also involved with

long-term vision for fusion energy

financing. You know, on the other hand,

we cannot u not have a robust public

sector because there are still many

scientific particularly engineering

challenges that need to be proofed out.

Uh and that's where these major

facilities in China are going to bring a

huge benefit as their companies and

their scientists will be able to tinker

their way towards success. And a lot of

this you can see the Chinese approach

they don't have a clear idea of which

pathway is going to lead to fusion

first. They're investing in all pathways

like we are but they are all

predominantly in government labs. Now

the you know challenge they may have is

they may not move as fast. They may not

be as nimble but they will be

sustainable for the long term. And the

risk of course um in a US privately

financed um environment is if there's a

market dynamic where that financing is

squeezed then the Chinese companies and

labs will have the longer term advantage

and so I think we need to invest also in

our public infrastructure uh to keep

pace with the private infrastructure in

the US. If you say for example in pulse

power the US hasn't built any new

facilities in two two three decades

whereas China's building six new pulse

power facilities across the country and

that's going to give them a huge

advantage in all the different domains

fusion energy weapons science

astrophysics that are going to benefit

from this. I think we also need to step

back and look at China right now is in a

uh era of big science. And so it's not

just infusion, it's in uh chemistry,

material science, astrophysics, marine

biology. China's building national labs,

research vessels, investing billions

into science, and this is, you know, one

of Cining's top priorities for the party

outlined in the 20th Party Congress.

>> In our our last minute here, I just want

to ask you quick lightning round for

both of you, 10 seconds or so. What do

you think is the most important thing

the US needs to do to give itself a leg

up in this race? David, you first. Uh,

build up national capacity. Um, we have

the US has innovation velocity. Uh, but

China has clearly demonstrated

construction velocity and we need

stronger government capacity like we

talked about. We have a very vibrant

private sector ecosystem driving fusion

right now that needs to be backed up by

the public sector.

>> Jimmy,

>> I agree. And again, don't let up on the

gas on the private side. Deregulation is

important. Ensuring that fusion remains

uh unre, you know, regulated in the way

that it is now and not overregulated

like other industries uh that we've

approached particularly in energy. And

then on the public sector investment uh

in our people, in our infrastructure and

our facilities um you know we have to

remember there is partially a national

security dynamic here as well and in

laser ignition and in pulse power. If we

don't invest, China will be at the

cutting edge, the global frontier of

nuclear weapons science, able to model

uh weapon simulations beyond anything

that our facilities will be able to do

because they'll be higher yield, more

powerful uh coupled with advanced

competing in AI and those will have

significant national security

implications for the US. This is not

just about our economic security, but

it's also national security, energy

independence, and our own nuclear

deterrence, which is critical.

>> Thank you both. I feel like we we just

scratched the surface. A lot more

conversation to come today and I

encourage everyone to read the report

that they both worked on. Thank you.

>> Thank you.

[Applause]