Steve Blank Podcast

We just completed the fourth week of our new national security class at Stanford – Technology, Innovation and Great Power Competition. Joe Felter, Raj Shah and I designed the class to cover how technology will shape all the elements of national power (America’s influence and footprint on the world stage). In class 1, we learned that national power is the combination of a country’s diplomacy (soft power and alliances), information/intelligence, military power, economic strength, finance, intelligence, and law enforcement. This “whole of government approach” is known by the acronym DIME-FIL. And after two decades focused on counter terrorism, the U.S. is now engaged in great power competition with both China and Russia. In class 2 the class focused on China, the U.S.’s primary great power competitor. China is using all elements of national power: diplomacy (soft power, alliances, coercion), information/ intelligence (using its economic leverage over Hollywood, controlling the Covid narrative), its military m