For most of the past several decades, U.S. technology policy has been structured primarily as a regulatory exercise: set rules, manage risks, adjudicate disputes. Justin Fulcher argues that framework is now insufficient. The technology entrepreneur and national security advisor who co-founded the digital health platform RingMD and later worked on defense acquisition modernization says the country needs a fundamental reorientation. Technology policy must be viewed through the lens of national capability.
Governance matters. So does competitiveness. His argument is that policymakers have spent too much time on the first and not enough on the second.
“The biggest shift is recognizing that technological competition is now a central feature of geopolitics,” Fulcher said. “That means technology policy can’t be treated purely as a regulatory question. It also has to be viewed through the lens of national capability and long-term competitiveness.”
From Regulatory Thinking to Strategic Capability
The distinction Fulcher draws between regulatory and strategic thinking clarifies something that often gets lost in Washington debates about AI governance, export controls, and research funding. Regulation asks what risks a technology creates and how to manage them. Strategic capability asks what advantages it creates and how to build them.
Both questions matter. His point is that policy organized primarily around the first will systematically underinvest in the second.
He identifies three areas where that reorientation is most needed: foundational technology investment; public-private partnership structures that let government act as a strategic customer rather than a distant regulator; and institutional modernization, updating the procurement and acquisition systems that determine whether advances actually reach the people and missions that need them.
“In practice, that means focusing on three things: investing in foundational technologies, building stronger public-private partnerships, and modernizing the institutions that absorb innovation,” Fulcher said. “Regulatory frameworks should aim to manage real risks without slowing the underlying pace of technological progress.”
He draws on his experience with Singapore’s Ministry of Health regulatory sandbox, where RingMD participated in a structured framework for testing new telemedicine models. Regulators and builders engaged early. The technology evolved in ways aligned with the healthcare system rather than at odds with it. The broader lesson: when institutions are designed to absorb new capabilities, progress accelerates on both sides.
Allies, Adversaries, and the Deliberate Use of Openness
On technology relationships with other nations, Fulcher resists binary framing. He argues the real policy challenge is calibration, knowing where openness produces compounding advantages and where it creates strategic exposure.
“Technology is now a central arena of geopolitical competition,” he said. “The United States should focus on strengthening its own innovation ecosystem while deepening collaboration with trusted allies around research, supply chains, and critical infrastructure.”
The supply chain dimension is specific and grounded. In semiconductors and critical minerals, who controls production has direct implications for both commercial and defense capacity. Fulcher has written on the importance of resilient industrial supply chains as a component of national competitiveness, and his technology policy thinking follows the same logic. Strategic independence where it matters. Deliberate openness where shared progress is the stronger outcome.
“The key is being deliberate about where openness creates shared progress and where resilience and strategic independence are necessary,” he said.
U.S. Advantages and the Conditions for Sustaining Them
The argument Justin Fulcher makes about technology policy is, at bottom, an optimistic one. He describes a country with substantial structural advantages in talent, research infrastructure, and entrepreneurship. Advantages that could erode if the policy environment around them is mismanaged.
“The most successful approach historically has been to create environments where innovation can flourish while maintaining clear guardrails,” he said. “If we get that balance right, the United States has enormous advantages in talent, research, and entrepreneurship.”
Fulcher is currently pursuing doctoral research at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, focused on how technological change reshapes institutions and geopolitical competition over time. His academic work and policy thinking converge on the same point. The institutions that govern technology are as consequential as the technologies themselves, and the United States still has the capacity to get both right.
