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-ITIF

HILAL AKA|OCTOBER 2025 While critics attack “big tech” from many angles, these five companies develop frontiertechnologies that require large-scale development, build infrastructure ranging from data centersto 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 federalgovernment’s non-defense research budget do, providing the scale necessary to pursuefrontier technologies that require massive up-front investment. These companies demonstrate a unique willingness to sustain billions of dollars in losseson high-risk, long-horizon projects that traditional investors and even governments cannotsupport. Their open research model generates economy-wide benefits through published papers,open-source frameworks, and freely available datasets, enabling innovation acrossacademia and industry. Technology investments generate substantial spillovers into health care, energy,agriculture, transportation, and defense—from drug discovery to crop disease detectionsystems. Large U.S. tech companies provide critical private-sector capacity to compete withChina’s state-backed tech champions, which benefit from massive government subsidiesand coordinated industrial strategies. Policy debates that focus only on big tech companies’ harms without recognizing thesecontributions risk undermining the capabilities supporting America’s technologicalleadership, economy, and security. itif.org CONTENTS Key Takeaways ................................................................................................................. 1Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 3Societal Benefits .............................................................................................................. 5Innovation Investment.................................................................................................... 5Unique Financial Capacity for High-Risk R&D................................................................ 5Scale Creates Fundamentally Different Innovation Possibilities ........................................ 8Risk-Taking That Drives Breakthrough Innovation......................................................... 10Competing With State-Backed Chinese Competitors ..................................................... 11Open Research and Talent Concentration ....................................................................... 12Open Research Model............................................................................................... 12Talent Multiplier Effects ........................................................................................... 15Strategic Infrastructure ................................................................................................ 17Private Capital Fills Critical Infrastructure Gaps ........................................................... 17Infrastructure Ownership as Geopolitical Leverage........................................................ 17Strategic Competition for Global Digital Infrastructure .................................................. 19Dual-Use Technologies and National Security ................................................................. 20The Commercial Technology Foundation for Defense Innovation .................................... 20Military Adaptation of Commercial Platforms ............................................................... 22Spillovers Into Other Strategic Sectors ........................................................................... 23Health Care and Biomedical Research ........................................................................ 23Manufacturing and Materials Science ......................................................................... 24Agriculture and Food Security.................................................................................... 24Environmental Science and Climate ........................................................................... 24Nuclear Energy ........................................................................................................ 25Transportation and Urban Mobility ............................................................................. 25Quantum Computing Breakthroughs ........................................................................... 26Nurturing the Startup Ecosystem ................................................................................... 26Creating Exit Markets and Providing Capital ................................................................ 27Rescuing and Scaling Promising Technologies ............................................................. 28American Soft Power.................................................................................................... 29Culture and Narrative..........................