2025年冰山一角：理解科技巨头对美国创新和竞争力的全面贡献报告（英文版）-ITIF

itif.org Tip of the Iceberg: Understanding the Full Depth of Big Tech’s Contribution to US Innovation and Competitiveness HILAL AKA | OCTOBER 2025 While critics attack “big tech” from many angles, these five companies develop frontier technologies that require large-scale development, build infrastructure ranging from data centers to subsea cables, and create spillovers from health care to nuclear energy. KEY TAKEAWAYS  Big tech companies invest more in R&D than both most countries and the federal government’s non-defense research budget do, providing the scale necessary to pursue frontier technologies that require massive up-front investment.  These companies demonstrate a unique willingness to sustain billions of dollars in losses on high-risk, long-horizon projects that traditional investors and even governments cannot support.  Their open research model generates economy-wide benefits through published papers, open-source frameworks, and freely available datasets, enabling innovation across academia and industry.  Technology investments generate substantial spillovers into health care, energy, agriculture, transportation, and defense—from drug discovery to crop disease detection systems.  Large U.S. tech companies provide critical private-sector capacity to compete with China’s state-backed tech champions, which benefit from massive government subsidies and coordinated industrial strategies.  Policy debates that focus only on big tech companies’ harms without recognizing these contributions risk undermining the capabilities supporting America’s technological leadership, economy, and security. INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY & INNOVATION FOUNDATION | OCTOBER 2025 PAGE 2 CONTENTS Key Takeaways ................................................................................................................. 1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 3 Societal Benefits .............................................................................................................. 5 Innovation Investment .................................................................................................... 5 Unique Financial Capacity for High-Risk R&D................................................................ 5 Scale Creates Fundamentally Different Innovation Possibilities ........................................ 8 Risk-Taking That Drives Breakthrough Innovation ......................................................... 10 Competing With State-Backed Chinese Competitors ..................................................... 11 Open Research and Talent Concentration ....................................................................... 12 Open Research Model ............................................................................................... 12 Talent Multiplier Effects ...........................................................................