Balancing Optimism With Anxiety: How Think Tanks View Technology, Trade, and Geopolitics

Key Takeaways

• This report summarizes a survey among the GTIPA, a network of like-minded proinnovation and pro-trade think tanks. Despite sharing principles, members span diverse and geopolitical contexts, producing meaningful differences in their views.

• Respondents are optimistic about the impact of emerging technologies, as they expect technological change to deliver substantial benefits.

• Trade is the clearest area of concern. Respondents are skeptical that recent changes in the global trading system are improving the world economy, although those from Westernallied countries are notably more pessimistic.  Cybersecurity and green-tech deployment generate strong cross-country agreement. Respondents see cyber risks as underprioritized for policymakers and clean-technology adoption as proceeding too slowly.

• U.S.-China competition is not a divisive topic, as most respondents are ambivalent about whether strategic rivalry will ultimately benefit the global economy.  Respondents distinguish geopolitical competition from the foundations of innovation. Across the sample, they view skills and trade openness as more important than geopolitical alignment.

Introduction

Technological change is accelerating as the political environment around it becomes more contested. Rapid technological developments and geopolitical shifts raise a practical question for policymakers: are innovation-policy experts fundamentally optimistic about the next decade, or do geopolitical fragmentation, regulatory pressures, and technological uncertainty increasingly dominate their outlook? This report surveys like-minded think tanks to examine how those expectations are evolving—and where they diverge across countries.

Surveying global think tanks matters because they help shape policy priorities by informing governments, legislators, industry, and the broader thought leaders’ community. Their views can therefore reveal which technological and economic issues are rising in importance and which policy responses command the greatest support. Comparing perspectives across countries also helps identify where priorities converge or diverge, offering an early indication of where future cooperation may prove easier or more difficult.

In this context, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) surveyed 32 think tanks in 25 countries that are part of the Global Trade and Innovation Policy Alliance (GTIPA). Because the survey draws on a nonrandom sample of like-minded organizations, some convergence in views is expected. Nevertheless, GTIPA members operate across diverse economic, institutional, and geopolitical contexts, allowing the survey to identify meaningful differences despite this inherent selection bias. Respondents assessed 10 propositions covering the following:

• Pace and impact of technological change

• The global trade system

• U.S.-China competition

• Geopolitics

• Cybersecurity

• AI and biotechnology

• Green technology

• Moore’s Law

• Quantum computing

• Fusion energy

Respondents scored each one and ranked five approaches for strengthening national innovation capacity. For comparison, the report groups respondents into Western allies and other countries.

The clearest message is that technological optimism remains strong even as confidence in the policy environment weakens. Respondents are highly positive about technological change overall; however, they are similarly bullish on AI–biotechnology convergence and expect meaningful progress in quantum computing and fusion. At the same time, they are decidedly negative about recent changes in the global trading system, which received the lowest average score in the survey. 

The most revealing differences concern where respondents expect technological opportunities to materialize and how they interpret the changing geopolitical environment. Western-allied respondents are somewhat more likely to view geopolitics as a primary driver of technological change and are considerably more pessimistic about recent changes in global trade. By contrast, respondents from other countries are more optimistic about AI-biotechnology convergence, the continuation of Moore’s Law, and commercially applicable fusion. 

The report proceeds in two parts. It first explains the survey methodology and how respondents were divided into two country groups. It then examines each survey question in turn, focusing on the overall result, differences between Western allies and other countries, and the policy significance of those perceptions. The final subsection presents policy priorities based on respondents’ rank-ordered choices, with skills development and workforce readiness, together with trade openness and international collaboration, identified as top priorities. Taken together, the findings suggest that policymakers should separate the geopolitical forces increasingly shaping innovation from the underlying capabilities that determine whether countries can develop, adopt, and diffuse new technologies.