2AC

2AC — Adv CP (Alpharetta)

1. Perm: do both. Shields the net benefit.

2. Perm: Do the CP.

3. Perm: do the plan and any combo of the planks.

4. Links to the net benefit —

5. The CP Can’t Solve:

A) Legal Clarity — only removing S101 exceptions provides the legal predictability
necessary to incentivize innovation. That’s Lawson and Johnson.
 AT: Government Fund R&D —2AC
6. Government Funding fails
A) Creates massive uncertainty — investors and innovators are uncertain of sustained
funding given political conditions and changes in government. They can’t perceive
durable fiat. That’s Olson & Ducci.

B) The government will double-down on failed projects — “sunk-cost fallacy” and

empirics prove. That destroys innovation and wastes more resources. DoD IHR System,
NASA Mars Rover.
Pigeon 21 — Sean-Michael Pigeon, a Senior Program Officer at Manhattan Institute, holds a J.D. from
Harvard and a B.A. in Political Science and History from Yale, 2021 (“How Sunk Costs Keep Government
Deficits Growing,” Available Online at https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/06/how-sunk-costs-keep-
government-deficits-growing/, Accessed 07-28-2024)

Politicians are loath to end programs that have already wasted money with nothing to show for it.

As the Biden administration promises the most ambitious spending package in the nation’s history,
conservatives have quickly pointed out how inefficient and wasteful such packages are. While these
critiques tell us how or why the government is wasteful, we need an understanding of government
inefficiency that helps us find a solution. Americans already agree that the way to tackle our budget
deficit is by cutting “waste and fraud,” and that citing Milton Friedman or repeating “the government is
inefficient” won’t solve the problem. One reason government spending is so needlessly costly is
somewhat paradoxical: The state is wasteful precisely because people are so concerned about
wasting money.

Beginning in 2009, the Department of Defense and the Veterans Affairs Department spent four years
and $1 billion fruitlessly trying to build an integrated health-record system. Eventually, a report came
out revealing that wildly overpaid contractors, along with “staffing challenges [and] bureaucratic red
tape,” created the issue. This familiar tale has an even more concerning ending, though: Democrat
Bernie Sanders and Republican Jeff Miller both criticized the decision to cancel the project because so
much money had already been spent.

This is a classic sunk-cost fallacy: Costs that can’t be recovered are “sunk,” and therefore irrelevant
for future decision-making. But while this fallacy is well known in economics, sunk costs are a big deal
in the practical world of politics. Nobody wants to waste money, and politicians don’t want to cause
waste directly. No member of Congress wants to be publicly responsible for a half-built bridge ,
especially when they have to tell taxpayers they still have to foot the bill for it.

This phenomenon can be seen most acutely in spheres where extensive R&D is needed because it’s
hard to estimate costs, but unused research feels wasted. Take the James Webb Space Telescope, a
NASA project significantly over budget and severely delayed. When Congress considered cutting the
program in 2011, there was an outcry from researchers claiming that cutting the telescope project
“would waste more taxpayer dollars than it saves.” Congress caved, and a decade later the telescope
still hasn’t launched, while continuing to rack up high costs.

In 2008, former NASA associate administrator Alan Stern said NASA has a systematic problem of
overspending, which comes from “managers and contractors who accept or encourage [unaffordable]
assignments, expecting to eventually be bailed out.” Using the Mars rover project as an example, Stern
said that “NASA’s main defense for paying still more for this new Mars rover: the $1.8 billion or more
in already sunk cost.”

Researchers at the Cato Institute found Congress’s unwillingness to cut the funding of poorly run
projects is a significant reason government projects always spend too much . It doesn’t take a Ph.D. in
economics to see this kind of thinking in practice. Funding is cut only when construction becomes
prohibitively expensive, and even then, only after years of pushback.

This type of behavior results in more than just unnecessary spending. The folks who write government
grant proposals know that their cost estimates won’t be accurate. Economists at Oxford uncovered a
statistical difference between estimated costs and final budgets. They noted that “cost inaccuracies
have a striking systematic bias, with overestimates being significantly more common than
underestimates.” Furthermore, members of Congress know the projected budgets given to them aren’t
reliable, making it hard for representatives to know which projects are worth the cost.
 AT: Carbon Tax
Carbon pricing fails — Australia proves.
Carbon pricing is useless alone
Noah Gordon 22 {a fellow in the Europe program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.}
- ("Carbon Pricing Isn’t Enough to Mitigate Climate Change," Foreign Policy, published 7-28-2022,
accessed 7-12-2024, https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/07/28/europe-heat-wave-climate-change-carbon-
pricing/)//marlborough-am

Even with these policies, it is difficult for carbon pricing to be aggressive enough to drive change at the pace
needed to meet the Paris Agreement targets. Instead, governments must treat carbon pricing as just
one tool and not be afraid to turn to supposedly radical regulation and state planning. This summer’s heat
wave could allow reticent countries to abandon neoliberal market orthodoxy—which even social democrats are mostly loyal to—and adopt a
more active approach to managing the energy transition. The EU has made progress on this front this year: The European Parliament has voted
to ban new fossil-fueled cars by 2035, and Germany is banning installations of new gas boilers by 2024. This isn’t tilting markets; it’s steering
them.

Europe also needs more old-fashioned industrial policy, where the state accelerates the development of specific sectors, technologies, or
projects. By setting binding climate targets, states have already done this to a significant degree—implicitly favoring clean energy over the fossil
fuel industry. The
risks of doing too little to address the climate crisis are much greater than the danger
of betting on electric vehicles over less efficient technologies like synthetic fuels for cars.
Crises like the heat wave that hit Europe this month can jolt governments into action. Polling from Australia, for example, found that people
impacted by the 2019 bushfires were more likely than others to be very concerned about climate change, and in 2022, Australians voted out
the climate laggards of the Liberal Party in favor of the greener Labor government. The latest heat wave has demonstrated the urgency of the
threat—and it could accelerate a policy shift by showing that tilting markets and waiting for good emissions results won’t suffice.
 Taiwan Add-On—2AC
Banning Patents Bad:
50% of Taiwan’s Semiconductor Patents are from the U.S.
Jou 21 — a Former Global General Counsel at Foxconn, CEO of InQuartik Corporation, former Patent
Agent at the Intellectual Property Office in Taiwan, holds a LL.B. in Law from Fu Jen Catholic University,
2021 (“TSMC’s Recipe for Success in Becoming Taiwan’s Protector of the Nation,” InQuartik, August 13 th,
Available Online at https://www.inquartik.com/blog/case-how-tsmc-surpass-competitors-protector-of-
nation/, Accessed 07-09-2024)

Devotion to patent application, maintenance, portfolio management, and acquisition

TSMC actively invests in managing patent assets, acquiring quality patents, and establishing stringent
protection measures for IP assets and trade secrets.

These factors have shaped TSMC into Taiwan’s “Guardian Mountain” with its strong stance and
substantial influence in the global industry, supply chains, and value chains.

TSMC’s patent portfolio

In April 2021, we used Patentcloud’s Due Diligence to analyze TSMC’s patent portfolio to better
understand its patent portfolio management and investment in process technology. As of this date,
TSMC has 64,937 patents in its portfolio.

First, looking at how TSMC’s patents are deployed globally, approximately 50% are in the United States,
followed by Taiwan and China with 19% and 16%, respectively

<FIGURE OMITTED>.

From the Technical Field dashboard, we can see that since TSMC’s founding in 1987, its patent
applications have been concentrated in the same field: H01L — Semiconductor devices . This indicates
that TSMC’s investment is quite concentrated in a certain technology field.

CP shatters the Silicon Shield by banning patents — guarantees Chinese invasion.

Liu 22 — Juliana Liu, Asia Editor at CNN Business, Bilingual correspondent, Editor, and Media
executive, 2022 (“As the world courts TSMC, Taiwan worries about losing its ‘silicon shield,’” CNN,
Available Online at https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/09/tech/taiwan-tsmc-chips-hnk-intl/index.html)

Semiconductor giant TSMC was feted this week by US President Joe Biden and Apple CEO Tim Cook
during a ceremony to unveil its $40 billion manufacturing site in Arizona — a huge investment designed
to help secure America’s supply of the most advanced chips.

But back home in Taiwan, there is deep unease over the growing political and commercial pressure
being applied to the world’s most important chipmaker to expand internationally. The company is
building a facility in Japan and considering investing in Europe.
“They’re like the Hope Diamond of semiconductors. Everybody wants them,” said G. Dan Hutcheson,
vice chair of TechInsights, a research organization specializing in chips. (The Hope Diamond is the
world’s largest blue diamond, which now resides at the Smithsonian Institute’s National Museum of
Natural History in Washington.)

“Customers in China want them to build there. Customers in the US want them there. And customers in
Europe want them there too,” he added.

Apart from the risk that TSMC will take its most advanced technology with it — stripping Taiwan of one
of its unique assets and reducing employment opportunities locally — there are fears that a diminished
presence for the company could expose Taipei to greater pressure from Beijing, which has vowed to
take control of the self-ruled island, by force if necessary.

TSMC is considered a national treasure in Taiwan and supplies tech giants including Apple (AAPL) and
Qualcomm (QCOM). It mass produces the most advanced semiconductors in the world, components
that are vital to the smooth running of everything from smartphones to washing machines.

The company is perceived as being so valuable to the global economy, as well as to China — which
claims Taiwan as its own territory despite having never controlled it — that it is sometimes even
referred to as forming part of a “silicon shield” against a potential military invasion by Beijing. TSMC’s
presence gives a strong incentive to the West to defend Taiwan against any attempt by China to take it
by force.

Taiwan invasion causes extinction. SCS draw-in, economic collapse, political crises,
instability, ends development, and collapses ASEAN.
Bing 24 — Ngeow Chow Bing, Nonresident Scholar at Carnegie China, Director of the Institute of China
Studies at the University of Malaya, Ph.D. in Public and International Affairs from Northeastern
University, 2024 (“Potential Military Conflict Over Taiwan,” Carnegie Endowment For International
Peace, June 17th, Available Online at https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2024/06/how-southeast-
asia-might-react-in-a-potential-military-conflict-over-taiwan?lang=en, Accessed 09-28-2024)

Regardless, a hot conflict over Taiwan would be disastrous for Southeast Asia . The Philippines could
well be a direct party to the hostilities, while other nations’ resources would be stressed to the limit
in coping with the resulting humanitarian crisis . The lives of many Southeast Asian nationals would
be at stake . Economically , a Taiwan war would ruin all Southeast Asian economies , most of which
are still not rich and resilient enough to survive a drastic economic downturn that could further
trigger political crises or instabilities . The social fabric of some countries could be torn apart . The
end of the peace dividends would have ramifications in the years to come, as regional countries
would likely begin to spend more on defense and less on welfare and economic development . The
cherished ideas and aspirations of ASEAN centrality would be relegated to the margins of geopolitics.
ASEAN itself probably would not survive intact .
 AT: Ban Trade Secrets
Banning Trade Secrets may get rid of IP protection for secrecy. But, companies will still
keep their inventions secret absent a patent regime that’s Kock.
 Patents Good—Innovation—2AC
1. Ag Patents Key — active materials and unique manufacturing processes require
patents to protect them. That’s Exy. They increase novel developments and spillover.
That’s Moscona.
<<FOR REFERENCE>>

The most important parts of any crop protection products are their active ingredients. Although active
ingredients are crucial to the function of crop protection products, their development requires the
expense of enormous amounts of time and money. Therefore, one key reason why agricultural
companies apply for patents is to recoup this massive financial investment. Additionally, the process
of manufacturing these active ingredients is also frequently patented in order to further protect the
active ingredients.

<<FOR REFERENCE>>

This paper investigates the impact of the introduction of patent rights on technological progress and
productivity by exploiting unique features of plant biology and intellectual property protection in
agricultural biotechnology. A plant having imperfect flowers facilitates the development of hybrid plant
varieties, which have de facto intellectual property protection even in the absence of formal patent
rights. This physiological difference across crop species, combined with the extension of patent rights to
crop varieties in 1985, makes it possible to estimate the causal impact of patent rights on technology
development and productivity in US agriculture.

I find that the introduction of patent protection led to a substantial increase in novel variety
development in treatment relative to control crops. This was driven predominantly by an increase in
private research investment, had positive spillover effects on innovation in certain non-biological crop
technologies, and increased crop yields. Patent rights were thus successful at providing ex ante
incentives for technology development and growth in physical productivity. Patent rights, however, can
come with significant trade-offs for consumers of technology, and an increase in technological progress
is a necessary but insufficient condition for downstream benefits. I show, however, that counties that
were more exposed to the change in patent law due to their crop composition experienced a large
increase in agricultural land values and profits.

2. Investors — patents signal strength, enhance credibility, mitigate risk, and boost
valuation of the company. That’s Cain. 62% of biotech investors are less likely to invest
without patents. That’s Kappos.
3. Knowledge Diffusion — mechanisms underpinning ecological function and structure
for are unknown. That’s Jose. Only patents facilitate successful innovation through
disseminating previous knowledge and incentivizing follow-on innovation.
Qin et al 23 — Song Qin is the director of Yantai Institute of Coastal Zone Research, Chinese Academy
of Sciences. Other authors for this peer reviewed journal article included Kang Wang, Fengzheng Gao,
Baosheng Ge, Hongli Cui & Wenjun Li, 2023 (“Biotechnologies for bulk production of microalgal biomass:
from mass cultivation to dried biomass acquisition,” Biotechnology for Biofuels and Bioproducts volume
16, Article number: 131 (2023) https://biotechnologyforbiofuels.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/
s13068-023-02382-4 Accessed: 10/23/24)

Challenging microalgal industry and technology

The commercial production of microalgae driven by biotechnology is considered a new agricultural

model, which can provide sustainable raw materials for hundreds of emerging products and become the driving force of global economic
growth. However, the fact is that the various processes of microalgal biomass production have a number of economic or technical

drawbacks. In particular, high production costs remain an important factor limiting biomass production. In

addition, there is a lack of understanding of biological contaminants in the cultivation process and the
challenge of active ingredient loss during biomass drying has not been fully addressed. Standards related to
microalgae and its products are important to ensure safety and quality. Regrettably, the microalgae industry still lacks sound standards .

These issues involve the r esearch and d evelopment of low-cost, standardized, industrial-scale
microalgal production equipment and the optimization of production processes, as well as the urgent
need to increase the research on biological contaminants and microalgal active ingredients . Briefly, the
future of microalgal biotechnology is still challenging.

4. Innovation — Patents stimulate demand side incentives for long term

commitments. Anything else creates an incentive to copy which destroys downstream
development and commercialization. That’s Kline.

5. Secrecy — absent increased patent protection, people will move towards trade
secrets to protect their inventions, which stifle innovation and knowledge diffusion.
That’s Kline.

Patents are key to plant the seeds for further innovation, increase disclosure, and
generate competition.
IV 13 — Intellectual Ventures, An American Private Equity Company That Centers On The Development
and Licensing of Intellectual Property, 2013 (“Patents are Recipes, Not Monopolies, on Invention,”
Intellectual Ventures, November 18th, Available Online at
https://www.intellectualventures.com/buzz/insights/patents-are-recipes-not-monopolies-on-invention,
Accessed 07-22-2024)
There are many reasons that patents actually increase competition, but here is perhaps the most basic
one: patents create openness. To get a patent, a person needs to do more than just invent something
that is new, useful and not obvious. They must also publicly disclose how to make and use the
invention.

This new knowledge, the recipe for the invention, becomes visible to everybody in the world as soon
as the patent is granted. And even though others can’t use the invention without permission until the
patent expires, the information in those patents often provides the seeds and inspiration for other
innovations. Many inventors will tell you that some of their best ideas come after reading other people’s new ideas. If someone patents a
clever new widget, another inventor may be inspired to invent a new battery, a new app or even a better approach to tackling the same
problem. It happens all the time, and it’s a great deal for society.

The reality is, as good as a new invention might be, it’s very difficult to produce a new product without
also incorporating technology that someone else has patented. The technology is simply too complex
and advances too quickly.

As a result, companies cross-license tens of thousands of patents every year. Competitors do have products that
infringe one another’s products and they have to find a way to resolve their disputes. Rivals can and do fight about how much to pay each
other, but they do resolve.

patents only confer the right to exclude others from using your exact
It’s important to remember that
invention. If a company figures how to satisfy a customer’s needs in a different way, then the patent
holder has no claims at all. This happens all the time, as well. In fact, the motivation to work around
existing patents often sparks fresh innovation and even more competition.

In many ways, this is the genius of the patent system. Yes, it gives inventors a temporary measure of
exclusivity. But it also creates an open and intensely competitive marketplace for innovation.
1AR
1AR-Patents Good
 AT: Government Fund R&D—1AR
Government Funding Fails —
1. Uncertainty — political conditions and government leaders make the sustainability
of government funding uncertain — investors won’t take risks to innovate. That’s
Olson and Ducci. They can’t perceive durable fiat.

2. “Sunk-Cost Fallacy”— once they start investing into programs that are failing, no
politician will take the damaged credibility to end the program, even if it is financially
beneficial. NASA’s Mars Rover and Space Telescope prove. That’s Pigeon.

Government Funding Fails — limits variety and is subject to politicization, that decks
innovation.
Miron 23 —Jeffrey Miron, vice president for research at the Cato Institute and the director of graduate
and undergraduate studies in the Department of Economics at Harvard University, 2023 ("Governments
Should Not Fund Research,” CATO Institute, July 27th, Available Online at
https://www.cato.org/blog/governments-should-not-fund-research, Accessed 07-22-2024)

Thus, the standard model likely overstates the need for government funding to generate innovation . In
addition, government funding generates substantial costs beyond its monetary expenditure.

If government funds research, it must decide which projects to fund, allowing political forces to
influence the choice. President George W. Bush limited federal funding for stem cell research that used
human embryos in response to pressure from anti-abortion forces. The recent affirmative action case against Harvard is a legal
issue because Harvard accepts federal research funding. The National Institute on Drug Abuse has been criticized for

displaying bias in favor of drug prohibition.

Another concern is that a central source of funding may limit which projects can access funds, reducing
research variety. Special interest groups can successfully lobby for funding that supports their research even
if it is not the most deserving. Indeed, private research funding is distributed more widely: between 2010 and
2019, 200 organizations received 80 percent of National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Science Foundation (NSF)
grants, whereas the top 200 recipients of private funding received only 33 percent of donations. Scientists have explained how
private funding has enabled them to explore new ideas, adjust budgets, and avoid lengthy bureaucratic
approval processes.
Finally, much government funding goes toward applied, not basic, research. In FY 2022, 38 percent of nondefense federal R&D funds were
earmarked for applied research. This piece cannot be justified on the grounds that private actors will systematically undersupply it due to a lack
of monetary incentive.

Milton Friedman famously argued for abolishing the NSF, the NIH, and all government funding of higher education (even though his own field
received funding). Friedman believed that private sources would fund science, as evidenced by major research that took place before
government research funding began. He
also believed the efficiency and quality of research would improve when
privately funded because government officials’ goals divert research from the topics that fit researchers’
talent and interests.
Government subsidies incentivize basic research, and they fail without market testing
— that hurts innovation.
Davis 02 — Lee N. Davis, a Professor Emerita in the Department of Strategy and Innovation at
Copenhagen Business School, Ph.D Lecturer, 2002 (“Should We Consider Alternative Incentives For Basic
Research? Patents Vs. Prizes,” Available Online at https://www.keionline.org/misc-docs/DAVIS.pdf.,
Accessed 07-15-2024)//Aaly

These changes can be explained, in part, by the general liberalization of political and economic life. For
innovating firms, moreover, the costs and risks of R&D have risen, enhancing the need for strong
intellectual property rights. Government subsidies are often viewed as market distorting, allowing
companies to perform (dubious) basic research without subjecting products to a rigorous “commercial
test.” Procurement contracts have been plagued by incompetence, bias and cost overruns.

Doesn’t solve innovation - Bureaucracy dooms the research, government funding still
isn’t enough
Funk 21 — Jeffrey Funk is a consultant on the business models and economics of new technologies.
"The Crisis of Venture Capital: Fixing America’s Broken Start-Up System," American Affairs Journal.
Spring 2021 / Volume V, Number 1. https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2021/02/the-crisis-of-venture-
capital-fixing-americas-broken-start-up-system/ accessed 6-22-2024

University engineering and science programs are also failing us, because they are not creating the breakthrough
technologies that America and its start-ups need. Although some breakthrough technologies are assembled from existing
components and thus are more the responsibility of private companies—for instance, the iPhone33—universities must take responsibility for
science-based technologies that depend on basic research, technologies that were once more common than they are now. New technologies
such as semiconductors, lasers, LEDs, glass fiber, and fiber optics played a major role in the story of start-ups and venture capital in the late
twentieth century. Through their rapid improvements, these technologies provided start-ups with profits, VCs with great returns, and workers
—including engineers and production workers—with well-paying jobs, jobs that are not appearing like they once did. In order to replicate that
success now, some of today’s start-ups should be commercializing nanotechnology, superconductors, quantum computers, and bioelectronics
(Theranos tried but failed), as well as new forms of solar cells, transistors, and computers (e.g., neuromorphic computers), not just the low-end
technologies of gig work, social media, and cloud computing. If these new technologies were being developed, we would also expect a boost in
well-paying jobs for blue-collar workers. This
decline in technological breakthroughs cannot be attributed to a lack
of funding: governments have been funding university research for more than half a century, yet
research productivity has declined overall, including research into semiconductors, agriculture, and
pharmaceuticals.34 Other than the internet being commercialized in the 1990s—the technological foundations of which
were created in the 1960s and 1970s—few new science-based technologies have emerged in the last thirty
years.35 And the small number of successes were mostly achieved by foreign competitors: lithium-ion batteries,
OLEDs, and solar cells, for instance, were commercialized by Japanese, Korean, and Chinese companies.

Fails by default—the government sucks at funding projects.

Lerner 20 — Mark Lerner, Fellow for the Technology and Public Purpose at the Harvard Kennedy
School. Senior Manage at the Federal Technology Strategy and Program at Partnership for Public
Service, 2020(“Government tech projects fail by default. It doesn’t have to be this way.,” Harvard
Kennedy School, October 21st, Available Online at
https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/government-tech-projects-fail-default-it-doesnt-have-be-
way, Accessed 09-10-2024)

During the early months of the pandemic, unemployment insurance systems across the country buckled
under the weight of the rush of applicants, bringing tech failures to light in the most critical moment of
many peoples’ lives. Of course, government tech failures are not new . There’s a report from the
Standish Group that shows that government tech projects over $6M only succeed 13% of the time.
Examples of failing government tech projects are common knowledge and regularly make headlines,
such as the famous Healthcare.gov incident, or the Hawaii missile alert system, or even the very recent
UK COVID-19 data tracking failure. This has been going on for many, many years. The trend is so
common that it’s crossed over into a trope. It’s safe to say that government tech projects fail by
default . Many researchers, practitioners, and observers have outlined reasons why these projects fail:
mismanagement, lack of budget, lack of executive support, inefficient talent pipelines, inadequate
design practices, and so on. When government projects fail and technology is involved, the same
ingredients ultimately come up in postmortems. Even though we’ve come up with new ways to handle
contracts with software vendors, to manage user research within the confines of government laws and
policies, and to reduce risk in budget processes, we still find government tech projects failing to deliver
value to the people that use these services and costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars in
the process.
 Carbon Pricing Fails—1AR
Carbon tax can’t solve climate change — no guarantee
Benney ND — Tabitha M. Benney, Professor in the University of Utah's Department of Political
Science, affiliated faculty in the Environmental and Sustainability Studies Program and the Center on
Global Change and Sustainability University of Utah, "(THE CHALLENGE OF PUTTING A PRICE ON
CARBON EMISSIONS IN THE UNITED STATES," Scholars Strategy Network, ND, Available Online at
https://scholars.org/page/challenge-putting-price-carbon-emissions-united-states, Accessed on 09-11-
23)

Political challenges aside, carbon taxes do not assure the attainment of climate-related goals. Carbon
taxes can be calibrated to affect the price of dirty fuels in predictable ways, but they cannot assure
specific levels of emissions reductions. That is because taxes influence choices in the marketplace in
unpredictable ways. Policymakers cannot know in advance how consumers and businesses will react to
any price increase caused by imposing carbon taxes.

What is more, carbon taxes do only part of the job. Carbon taxes target fossil fuels according to how
much carbon dioxide is emitted when the fuel is burned. But emissions dangerous to the environment
do not come from carbon alone. Other gases such as methane, nitrous oxide, and hydrofluorocarbons
can be exponentially more harmful than fossil fuels. Carbon dioxide accounted for 82 percent of U.S.
emissions in 2013, but according to the Environmental Protection Agency, the other harmful gases are
25 to 14,800 times more powerful drivers of global warming than carbon dioxide. Clearly those gases
will also need to be managed if climate change policy is to be successful.

empirics prove.

A) Australia — unpopular
Murphy et al. 15 — Robert Patrick Murphy, an American economist, research assistant professor with
the Free Market Institute at Texas Tech University, Patrick J. Michael, a senior fellow in environmental
studies at the Cato Institute, former research professor of environmental sciences at the University of
Virginia, Chip Knappenberger, Former assistant director of the Center for the Study of Science at the
Cato Institute and coordinated the scientific and outreach activities for the Center, 2015, (“The Case
Against a Carbon Tax," CATO Institute, Sept 4rth, Available Online at
https://www.ourenergypolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/cato-working-paper-33.pdf, Accessed
on 09-13-23

Australia

On July 1, 2012, the Australian government instituted a carbon tax of $23 (Australian dollars) per ton of
CO2‐equivalent, and raised it to $24.15/ton a year later. The tax proved so unpopular that in the
September 2013 elections, Leader of the Opposition Tony Abbott won on a campaign which he explicitly
billed as a referendum on the carbon tax. (The carbon pricing scheme was formally ended in July
2014.43) Dr. Alex Robson, an economics professor from Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia who has
published peer‐reviewed papers on the interaction of fiscal and environmental policies,44 authored a
2013 study critical of the Australian carbon tax.45

Robson’s study shows that the introduction of the Australian carbon tax went hand in hand with a
spike in household electricity prices (the “highest quarterly increase on record,” p. 39) and
unemployment, while many Australian business owners anecdotally reported that the carbon tax was a
key factor in their decision to lay off workers or shut down entirely. Yet beyond these drawbacks—
which help to explain the voters’ embrace of Tony Abbott in 2013—Robson’s study reveals that none of
the pillars in the “conservative case” for a U.S. carbon tax swap came true in the case of Australia.

For example, contrary to the promise that a U.S. carbon tax could be used to provide “pro ‐growth” tax
reform, in Australia the carbon tax was accompanied by so many give‐aways (to mitigate the negative
impact on various groups) that the Australian government actually raised effective marginal income tax
rates on 2.2 million taxpayers , compared to income tax reductions for only 560,000 taxpayers.

In the same vein, rather than allowing for a reduction in top‐down environmental policy as is promised
in the U.S., the Australian carbon tax was not accompanied by any reform of their inefficient wind and
solar subsidies, or Renewable Energy Target (RET) mandates. On the contrary, Australia’s carbon tax was
instituted along with a “Clean Energy Finance Corporation.”

Finally, advocates claim that a U.S. carbon tax will establish a predictable “price” for carbon that firms
can incorporate into their long‐term investment plans. Yet in Australia, the carbon tax was a comedy of
errors. Originally the government promised during the 2010 campaign that it would not implement a
carbon tax in the next 3‐year cycle. This promise was abandoned, as the carbon tax was in fact
introduced in July 2012, with a planned transition to a cap and trade scheme in 2015. Later the
government proposed to move to the cap and trade scheme a year ahead of time, but this was never
formalized, leaving the business community uncertain. And of course, with the September 2013
election of Abbott, the policy was upended again, with Australia’s carbon tax being abolished in July
2014. The real‐world case of Australia shows that achieving a carbon tax most certainly does not
provide “policy certainty” to allow businesses to confidently make long‐term decisions.

B) British Columbia — reversed economic growth and couldn’t solve climate change.
Murphy et al. 15 — Robert Patrick Murphy, an American economist, research assistant professor with
the Free Market Institute at Texas Tech University, Patrick J. Michael, a senior fellow in environmental
studies at the Cato Institute, former research professor of environmental sciences at the University of
Virginia, Chip Knappenberger, Former assistant director of the Center for the Study of Science at the
Cato Institute and coordinated the scientific and outreach activities for the Center, 2015, (“The Case
Against a Carbon Tax," CATO Institute, Sept 4rth, Available Online at
https://www.ourenergypolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/cato-working-paper-33.pdf, Accessed
on 09-13-23

Another significant point is that even if not a statistical artifact, the apparently large reduction in B.C.
emissions was only temporary. The studies trumpeting the potency of B.C.’s carbon tax went only up
through 2012 data. However, officially reported B.C. gasoline sales increased sharply in 2013 and 2014,
such that as of 2014, annual per capita B.C. gasoline sales were down only 2 percent compared to 2007,
which was only a percentage point lower than the rest of Canada.56 (See Figure 5.) On this criterion it
seems B.C.’s carbon tax had a very weak long‐term impact on gasoline consumption, even if we
ignore the significant “leakage” problem.

[graph omitted]

Turning to the claim that B.C.’s carbon tax did not harm its conventional economy (because B.C. has
matched overall Canadian growth since 2008), there is one awkward problem: the B.C. economy was
outperforming the rest of Canada prior to the carbon tax. Specifically, from 2003 – 2008, B.C. real
output grew by a cumulative 18.6%, whereas Canadian real GDP grew by only 12.7%. In contrast, from
2008 – 2013 (the latest annual figure available), B.C. output grew by 8.0%, while Canada grew by
7.7%.57

We see a similar pattern in the labor market. In the five years before introduction of the B.C. carbon tax,
the average unemployment rate in B.C. was 5.6%, compared to a Canadian average of 6.6%. But in the
five years after the B.C. carbon tax began, the average unemployment rate in B.C. was 7.1% compared
to 7.6% in Canada overall.58 Thus the labor market advantage of B.C. versus Canada was cut in half if
we look at the five‐year periods before and after introduction of the B.C. carbon tax, which we have
illustrated in Figure 6.59

[GRAPH OMITTED]

As a final twist, we note that the B.C. authorities report that they actually provided net tax cuts in
conjunction with the “revenue neutral” carbon tax, presumably because they did not anticipate the
sharp fall in gasoline sales in the region.60 (In other words, they gave too generous tax cuts, because
they assumed the carbon tax receipts would be higher than turned out to be the case.) Furthermore, the
B.C. tax cuts are a mixture of rate reductions and lump‐sum payments (the latter directed to low ‐income
groups who would be harmed by rising energy prices). Indeed, although proponents claim that the B.C.
carbon tax swap has yielded the lowest personal income tax rates in Canada, such claims refer to the
average effective rates. In terms of marginal brackets—what really matters as far as supply‐side
economic analysis of incentives—in 2014 British Columbia had six income tax brackets, ranging up to
16.8%, while neighboring Alberta had a flat income tax of 10%.61 The notion that B.C. is now a supply‐
side powerhouse because of its carbon tax is far from reality.

In summary, when we look at British Columbia—the hands‐down best real‐world example of a carbon
tax swap, according to proponents—we find that even the official figures show B.C. has had only a
modest reduction in gasoline consumption relative to the rest of Canada, and that these official figures
are plagued by significant “leakage” into other jurisdictions, which may have led authorities to provide
larger tax cuts than they had intended. Furthermore, B.C.’s offsetting tax cuts were not designed from a
supply‐side perspective, as they included lump‐sum transfers to low‐income groups. Indeed, in practice
the evidence suggests that even with the associated net tax cuts, B.C. unemployment and real
economic growth rates suffered after the carbon tax was enacted. Inasmuch as any U.S. carbon tax will
not be revenue neutral—let alone be phased in with net tax cuts—the B.C. example leads us to expect
modest changes in gas consumption in exchange for a weaker economy.
 Taiwan DA—1AR

Banning domestic patents causes Taiwan invasion — 50% of TSMCs Patents are U.S.
based, the CP would ban those too.
That causes Chinese Invasion of Taiwan —
A. Silicon Shield — US security commitments are tied to their dependence on
Taiwanese semiconductors. Domestic manufacturing ruins that supply and destroys
the incentive to defend Taiwan.
B. Taiwan Strength — strong domestic semiconductor indusstry is key to their their
geopolitical and economic strength — the US is an important customer.
C. Chinese Perception — they perceive weaker US security commitments due to less
economic interdependence — that causes them to be aggressive.
That’s Liu.

Invasion causes extinction. Ripple effects cascade through the SCS and Southeast Asia
escalating tensions and causing draw-in. Regional collapse from trade disruptions,
military expenses, and supply shocks tanks the global economy. That’s Bing.
 Taiwan DA—Extra— 1AR
Taiwan’s best semiconductor patents are the U.S. ones.
Jou 21 — a Former Global General Counsel at Foxconn, CEO of InQuartik Corporation, former Patent
Agent at the Intellectual Property Office in Taiwan, holds a LL.B. in Law from Fu Jen Catholic University,
2021 (“TSMC’s Recipe for Success in Becoming Taiwan’s Protector of the Nation,” InQuartik, August 13 th,
Available Online at https://www.inquartik.com/blog/case-how-tsmc-surpass-competitors-protector-of-
nation/, Accessed 07-09-2024)//Aaly

The fact that only 0.1% of TSMC’s U.S patents have litigation records may indicate a relatively higher
level of uniqueness of its patents, making it a world leader in chip process technology. In addition, the
percentage of patents involved in PTAB invalidation lawsuits is also very low, which implies that
competitors may find it difficult to bring evidence and initiate procedures to invalidate TSMC’s
patents, providing more evidence to support the quality of its patents.

Lack of US reliance on Taiwanese semiconductors greenlights Chinese invasion of

Taiwan — semiconductors are the key to US security commitments.
Eckl 21 — David Eckl, writer for Columbia Political review, 2021 (“The Erosion of the Silicon Shield: How
Changes to International Semiconductor Production Threaten Taiwanese Security,” Columbia Political
Review, November 23rd, Available Online at https://www.cpreview.org/articles/2021/11/the-erosion-of-
the-silicon-shield-how-changes-to-international-semiconductor-production-threaten-taiwanese-
security, Accessed 09-28-2024)

Taken together, these strategic shifts by the world’s two largest economies present a major challenge
for the future. If the policies of the U.S. and China proceed, they will erode the relative strength of
Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturing, reducing the leverage that Taiwan’s economic strength
grants it when dealing with an adversary. The fact that the countries in question are the U.S. and China
is especially important since they are the two powers most involved in Taiwanese security affairs.
China, of course, views Taiwan as a renegade province and has officially sought reintegration for
decades. Since the end of the Chinese Civil War and the escape of Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist forces to
Taiwan, the U.S. has acted as a mediator in the conflict over Taiwanese statehood and the mainland’s
desire for reintegration. Motivated by the political, ideological, and economic factors at play in cross-
strait relations, American diplomatic and military efforts have long been the force backing up
Taiwanese independence, from the deployment of U.S. military forces in the Taiwan Straits Crises in the
1950’s, which deterred attacks by China on Taiwanese territory, to the enactment of the Taiwan
Relations Act in 1979, which commits the U.S. to defend Taiwan against foreign aggression and
provide Taiwan with the military means to maintain the status quo. Taiwan’s security, derived from
economic interdependence, has continuously built upon this foundation of American support.

If the U.S. and China diminish their reliance on Taiwanese semiconductors, it would allow both
countries to take a major step away from the status quo: enabling China to act more assertively
toward Taiwan with less fear of economic repercussions while the U.S. would be less materially
committed to maintaining Taiwanese security after having less at stake in the conflict over Taiwan’s
status. Fortunately for Taiwan, the U.S. and China face a long road in attempting to build their own
industries, and it will be quite some time before either is able to escape Taiwan’s semiconductor
dominance. Once the ball is rolling, though, the scale of investments being made in semiconductor
decoupling will make it hard to stop. As Taiwan’s “silicon shield” steadily weakens, Taiwanese security
will need to be supplemented by other means and, given the history of cross-strait relations,
strengthening American diplomatic and military commitments to Taiwan, regardless of long-term
American economic interests, will be the best way of achieving this objective and preserving peace
between China and Taiwan.

US domestic semiconductor manufacturing decks the Silicon Shield and ruins US

deterrence. Causes Taiwan invasion.
Eckl 21 — David Eckl, writer for Columbia Political review, 2021 (“The Erosion of the Silicon Shield: How
Changes to International Semiconductor Production Threaten Taiwanese Security,” Columbia Political
Review, November 23rd, Available Online at https://www.cpreview.org/articles/2021/11/the-erosion-of-
the-silicon-shield-how-changes-to-international-semiconductor-production-threaten-taiwanese-
security, Accessed 09-28-2024)

The superconductor industry, where countries are heavily interdependent on connections of

international trade, faces the potential for significant change in the coming years. Taiwan currently
dominates the world’s semiconductor manufacturing, producing nearly two thirds of the world’s
semiconductors. The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) alone accounts for more
than half of all semiconductor output. The rest of the world is reliant on this massive supply of
Taiwanese semiconductors since they are integral components in computers, phones, cars, planes, and
almost all other electronics that fuel modern economies. This interdependent relationship is tenuous, as
seen in the havoc on international supply chains brought about by semiconductor droughts in Taiwan
and pandemic-related shifts in demand. Countries around the world, most significantly the United
States and China, are taking steps to decouple their economic security from foreign suppliers, as they
seek to boost domestic semiconductor production and protect themselves from international
disruptions. Taiwan’s national security policy will suffer from this as they lose the stabilizing effects of
semiconductor interdependence, forcing the U.S. and Taiwan to cooperate more closely to ensure
Taiwanese security by forging stronger diplomatic ties and deepening American military commitments.

If American and Chinese policies to fragment and localize semiconductor production are
implemented, the resulting changes to the semiconductor industry will significantly affect Taiwan’s
national security. As the long-time dominant producer of the world’s semiconductors, Taiwan has
leveraged its market power as a deterrent against national security threats : were a foreign power
such as China to encroach on Taiwanese security, the resulting disruptions to global semiconductor
supplies would not only hurt the aggressor, but also draw other dependent countries, such as the U.S.,
to Taiwan’s defense. Taiwanese leaders, most recently the current Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-Wen,
have referred to this so-called “silicon shield” of economic interdependence as a form of protection
which enables Taiwan to protect itself from the disruptive actions of authoritarian regimes—a security
concern that refers to mainland China first and foremost.
 AT: China Not Revisionist—1AR
China will invade Taiwan without the Silicon Shield that was above. Escalating military
drills proves.
Shepherd and Chiang 23 — Christian Shepherd, China correspondent for The Washington Post,
previously covered the country for the Financial Times and Reuters from Beijing, Vic Chiang, part of The
Washington Post’s China Bureau, previously a reporter at Deutsche Welle in Taipei, where he covered
news of China and Taiwan with a focus on politics and human rights, 2023 (“How Chinese aggression is
increasing the risk of war in the Taiwan Strait,” Washington Post, November 13th, Available Online at
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/11/13/china-biden-xi-meeting-apec-taiwan/, Accessed
01-11-2024)

Chinese military provocations are becoming existential for Taipei. Beijing claims Taiwan, an island that
has never been governed by the Chinese Communist Party, as its territory, and top American
intelligence officials say Xi has ordered his military to be ready to invade the island by 2027 .

Taiwan urges China to stop ‘destructive’ military sorties as tensions mount

This has become more than theoretical over the past 14 months, since Pelosi visited and lauded
Taiwan’s democratic system, which Beijing viewed as encouraging “separatist forces” in Taiwan.

China retaliated by severing important channels of military-to-military communication and by

ordering fighter jets and warships in large numbers to menace Taiwan. That has continued for more
than a year . Beijing sent 336 aircraft to the edges of Taiwanese airspace in September alone,
prompting Taiwan’s defense minister to warn that the scale and pace of drills were “ getting out of
hand .”

Fighter jets that once stayed on China’s side of the Taiwan Strait have been crossing the median line,
an unofficial border down the middle of the 110-mile-wide strait, with greater frequency and are
venturing past Taiwan’s southern tip to the relatively less-defended east coast. On Sept. 17, a record
103 Chinese warplanes flew near Taiwanese airspace in a 24-hour period.

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Where we got the data for this article

To map escalating Chinese aggression against Taiwan, The Post used data compiled by The Reporter, a
Taiwanese nonprofit news organization. It used open-source mapping software to extract the routes of
Chinese warplanes and warships released by the Taiwanese and Japanese defense authorities from
August 2022 to mid-September 2023.

End of carousel

China sent a drone all the way around Taiwan for the first time in April, and this has quickly become a
regular maneuver, with China sending unmanned aircraft to encircle the island five times since.
Chinese aircraft carriers are making themselves at home on the other side of the island, in the Pacific
Ocean, which the United States has long considered its military purview. There, they launch jets at
Taiwan’s east coast and practice repelling the United States should it one day come to defend Taiwan
from a Chinese invasion.

The September drills were the largest in the waters to Taiwan’s east for nearly a decade, with 17
warships including the Shandong aircraft carrier holding large-scale exercises stretching from the
Philippines Sea to near the American territory of Guam.

Barely a month later, the Shandong strike group again sailed through the Bashi Channel between Taiwan
and the Philippines, marking its third entry into the Pacific this year.

For Taipei, the frequency of Chinese drills over the last year confirms Beijing’s disregard for long-
standing norms of standard military behavior in the region. Without those tacit agreements, it’s easier
for accidents to happen and harder to contain fallout if they do.

Taiwan reports a record 20 Chinese warships near its waters as missile destroyers and frigates enter the
Pacific from the Miyako Strait.

“They don’t want us to be able to pick up the phone and say, ‘Hey, what are you doing?’” said Michael
Allen, managing director of Beacon Global Strategies, a strategic advisory firm. “They for sure want us
to be more nervous , more destabilized and to panic.”

There is also a political component to all this military coercion: Aside from wearing down Taiwanese
defenses, it creates psychological pressure on the island’s 23 million inhabitants to give in to
Beijing’s demands for unification.

Beijing is saber rattling, analysts say, partly to try to influence the Taiwanese presidential election in
January. Leading the polls is Lai Ching-te, vice president of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party,
which historically supported formal independence from China. The Chinese Nationalist Party, or
Kuomintang, which favors more trade and closer relations with Beijing, is trailing behind.

Then there’s the problem of trying to parse China’s intentions when its huge drills increasingly look like
the first stage of an assault on Taiwan.

A U.S. military intelligence assessment, revealed in the Discord leaks, described how the United States’
Indo-Pacific Command now considers it harder to distinguish between Chinese military coercion and
the full-scale mobilization that would presage an invasion.

China’s increasingly frequent entries aim to erode the U.S. Navy’s ability to come to Taiwan’s defense
if it came under attacks from China — something Biden has repeatedly said he believes it should do.
The United States does not have a formal defense treaty with Taiwan, but it is committed to providing
Taiwan, through arms sales and military aid, with weapons to defend itself.

China’s exercises are meant to demonstrate to the United States and its allies that China is ready to fight
off the U.S. Navy in the region, said Chieh Chung, an associate research fellow at National Policy
Foundation, a Taiwanese think tank. They are designed to “convey a strong sense of protest” against
American involvement to defend Taiwan, he said.
A large screen on a street in Beijing on April 8 shows a Chinese military plane participating in a three-day
air and sea exercise around Taiwan that started the same day. (Kyodo News/Getty Images)

While Washington is pushing Beijing to restore military communications, analysts say China may be
reluctant to talk as part of a strategy to wear down Taiwan and keep the United States guessing.

“It’s almost like they want us to be unsettled,” said Allen, who was a staffer on the House Intelligence
Committee between 2011 and 2013.

One way China has injected even greater uncertainty is by increasingly incorporating civilian ships,
including ferries and cargo vessels, into its military exercises. Analysts say China would need these ships
to move the huge numbers of troops necessary for an invasion.

In late September, Taiwan took the unusual step of announcing that it was actively monitoring an
“abnormal” drill on the Chinese side of the Taiwan Strait.

An Apache helicopter fires flares while maneuvering during the two-day live-fire drill, amid intensifying
military threats from China, in Pingtung County, Taiwan, on Sept. 7, 2022. (Ceng Shou
Yi/NurPhoto/Getty Images)

The exercise involved at least 12 commercial ships rerouted from their usual routes to practice loading
and unloading amphibious forces onto the coast of Fujian, the Chinese province closest to Taiwan,
according to J. Michael Dahm, a senior resident fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, a
think tank.

Satellite imagery analyzed by Dahm suggested that this year’s exercise involved significantly more
general cargo ships than in the past. It focused on having amphibious forces get on and off ships moored
offshore, a practice that would let troops disembark without needing to dock in Taiwan.

However, China probably remains years away from being capable of using civilian ships to support a
successful cross-strait invasion, Dahm said.

Despite the Chinese efforts at unpredictability, the sheer scale of mobilization necessary to invade
Taiwan means a sneak attack would be very difficult without American intelligence catching wind of
Chinese plans.

But Beijing can hope to numb Taiwan and get a jump-start on the United States by constantly practicing
ever more realistic invasion scenarios.

“These drills keep getting bigger and bigger,” said Tom Shugart, adjunct senior fellow at the Center for
a New American Security. “As the number and frequency continues to grow, it naturally becomes that
much harder to know whether next time is the real thing.”

Aggression in the SCS proves.

Moïsi 22 — Dominique Moïsi, Co-founder and Senior Advisor of the Institut Français des Relations
Internationales (IFRI), Chairholder for Geopolitics at the College of Europe holds a Ph.D. in Political
Science from the University of Paris (France), 2022 (“Why China Is Still Watching Ukraine So Closely,”
WorldCrunch, June 4th, Available Online at https://worldcrunch.com/world-affairs/ukraine-china-taiwan,
Accessed 11-17-2022)

A few days ago in Tokyo, during the “Quad” summit (the security group of Japan, Australia, India and the
U.S.), President Joe Biden promised to use force if China ever attacked Taiwan. Shortly after, the White
House made it clear that nothing had changed in the doctrine of "strategic ambiguity" which was (and
remains?) U.S. policy on the question of Taiwan.

Where do these semantic variations come from? Do they reflect the deep personality of the U.S.
president, who at this age and acquired experience, does not hide his distrust regarding the subtleties of
diplomatic language?

Or more profoundly, is this change a direct consequence of the international context that radically
shifted on Feb. 24 when Russia invaded Ukraine?

Moscow and Beijing get closer

In fact, it is no longer possible to address the question of Taiwan as though the invasion of Ukraine did
not happen. At first, a wind of optimism blew from Taipei to Washington: the military difficulties that
Russia faced felt like a warning to China and that this would maybe bring a few years of security to
Taiwan.

What if the invasion of Ukraine was encouraging to China?

But as time passes, as Russian troops are slowly advancing in the Donbas region, hope was replaced by a
completely different feeling. What if the invasion of Ukraine was encouraging to China?

On the eve of the French presidential election, I was interviewed by Chinese journalists. They directly
brought up the subject of Ukraine and Taiwan: “You understand, young people in our country are
nationalists. They want to take back Taiwan as fast as possible. And if need be, by military action.” Were
they carrying a message of warning from Chinese authorities, or were they simply being frank with me,
as I had been in my own answers to their questions regarding the future of French politics?

One thing is certain, the day after Joe Biden's tough talks in Tokyo regarding America's unlimited
commitment to Taiwan, in a deliberately provocative show of force, Chinese and Russian strategic
bombers flew over the Sea of Japan. They did not violate any rights as they stayed above international
waters, but the message was anything but friendly and seemed to demonstrate the "unlimited"
friendship formalized in Beijing at the opening of the Winter Olympics between China and Russia.

Expansionist ambitions

And what if Moscow and Beijing are encouraging each other in their respective revisionism and
expansionism? If that were the case, wouldn’t it be time for the U.S. to come out of its “strategic
ambiguity” towards Beijing? Isn’t it time to call a spade and spade and tell the Chinese that if they were
to give in to the temptation and take Taiwan by force, they would be faced with America?

Has Vladimir Putin not been encouraged to invade Ukraine in 2022 by the more than uncertain response
of the international community to the capture of Crimea in 2014? Shouldn't it be urgent to dissuade
China from adopting the same behavior towards Asia as Russia has towards Eastern Europe?
From the South China Sea to the South Pacific, Beijing is adopting an increasingly aggressive behavior
that no longer hides its expansionist ambitions. However, Taiwan is not Ukraine, and China is not
Russia.

Revisionism vs. the status quo

“Never forget that Great Britain is an island,” said political scientist André Siegfried. Taiwan is also an
island. There is no Poland, no Baltic states, nor Romania on Taiwan’s borders. Engaging with it means
delivering weapons directly to it on its territory.

And contrary to what Beijing claims, the “Quad” is not the Asian NATO. In its support to Taiwan, and in
the event of an invasion by mainland China, Washington would be almost alone on the front line.

The “Quad” is not the Asian NATO.

Meanwhile, clarity, far from being a universal strategic imperative, can also constitute a major risk.
One of the most worrying elements of the current international situation is that the main actors all
seem (except for the European Union, as it already is a strategic actor) to be revisionists to different
extents. The Cold War was between two groups, one in favor of the status quo behind the United States
and the other revisionist backing the USSR.

Powers fighting for influence

There is nothing of the sort today. From Beijing to Moscow and Washington, each seem eager to
transform the current existing order so they can spread their influence.

This confrontation between revisionists is even more problematic and dangerous due to the nuclear
deterrence becoming more and more abstract. It is as though, from a military standpoint, nuclear
weapons seem a little less frightening. Their use on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki goes back far in
the past, nearly 80 years.

While China and Russia seem ever closer in their desire to move their pawns and impose their
respective powers on their regional environment, we must do everything we can to resist them.
However, we need to do that without providing them an extra measure of determination. To be firm
with Moscow and Beijing is one thing; to talk openly about regime change in Moscow is another.
 AT: Thucydides Trap theory—1AR
The Thucydides Trap theory is wrong — it relies on western theories that don’t take
into account Chinese military strategy, and it assumes that historical models remain
accurate despite new technology like nuclear weaponry.
Peters et. al 20 — Michael A. Peters, professor at Beijing Normal University, Emeritus Professor at the
University of Illinois at Urbana, Benjamin Green, professor at Beijing Normal University, Chunxiao Mou,
professor at Beijing Normal University, Stephanie Hollings, professor at Beijing Normal University, Moses
Oladele Ogunniran, Mahatma Ghandi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development,
Fazal Rizvi, professor at University of Melbourne, Sharon Rider, professor at Uppsala University, Sweden,
Rob Tierney, professor at the University of Sydney, 2024 (“US–China Rivalry and ‘Thucydides’ Trap’: Why
this is a misleading account,” Educational Philosophy and Theory, 54:10, 1501-1512, Available Online at
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00131857.2020.1799739, Accessed 02-05-2024)

Graham Allison, a political scientist at John F. Kennedy School of Government coined the term
‘Thucydides Trap’ in his book Destined for War (2017). Writing for The Atlantic Allison (2015), taking his
cue from The Peloponnesian War, asks the question ‘The Thucydides Trap: Are the US and China Headed
for War?’ suggesting ‘In 12 of 16 past cases in which a rising power has confronted a ruling power, the
result has been bloodshed.’2 For Allison ‘The defining question about global order for this generation is
whether China and the United States can escape Thucydides’ Trap.’ He makes this conclusion after
examining the historical record.3 And sets up the debate in the following terms:

If Hollywood were producing a movie about China and the US on a path to war, central casting
could find no better American lead than Donald Trump. His insistence on ‘blaming China first’
portends a blockbuster finale. Will Washington and Beijing follow in the tragic footsteps of
Britain and Germany a century ago? Or will they find a way to avoid war as effectively as the US
did in crafting a Cold War strategy to meet the challenge posed by the Soviet Union?

Allison also demonstrates the deficit of ‘scientific history’ with its political realist assumptions when he
suggests ‘war is not inevitable’ (at least in four examples of the 16). The problem with the depiction and
the methodology is that Thucydides’ Trap is couched exclusively in Western strategic military terms
that shows little sensitivity to how China and the Chinese might frame the question and whether in
fact there is any evidence of China’s viewing the future in these exclusive binary terms. This is the first
criticism: ‘scientific history’ is a dominant Western historical method that assumes an objectivity in
framing the question—without reference to other frames of cultural history or, indeed, accounts of
world history. Second: the terms of reference are drawn up in terms of binary logic that assumes one
can learn from history in battles between superpowers as a kind of extended scientific hypothesis
(rather than thought experiment). The trouble is that history is not an evenly distributed set of events
that imitate one another, especially in the age of globalization when new interconnectivities and
synergies are clearly not simple linear cases of causation but rather ‘butterfly’ effects of emergent
complexity. ‘Events’ are now embedded in dynamic world historical systems where it cannot be
assumed that history, even Western history, will assume the same flow, source and direction.

Allison continues to outline his case in the following terms:

 What Xi Jinping calls the ‘China Dream’ expresses the deepest aspirations of hundreds of
millions of Chinese, who wish to be not only rich but also powerful. At the core of China’s
civilizational creed is the belief—or conceit—that China is the center of the universe.

And he concludes:

The rise of a 5,000-year-old civilization with 1.3 billion people is not a problem to be fixed. It is a
condition—a chronic condition that will have to be managed over a generation (our italics).

This is the allegedly true description of scientific history that smuggles under cover of ‘scientific history’
a form of history: The rise of China is ‘a condition to be managed’. Allison’s blog and Huff Post articles
addresses issues of ‘coronavirus’, ‘opening the economy while protecting the most vulnerable’ and ‘the
blame game’. When asked ‘Has the black swan of the coronavirus brought China–US competition to its
highest level? How will the pandemic reshape China–US relations?’ Allison responds by employing the
interpretive framework of ‘Thucydides’ Trap’:4

We have to recognize that this coronavirus threat is layered on top of deep, inescapable
structural realities. China is a meteoric rising power that really is threatening to displace
the US from positions we have come to believe that are our natural positions at the top
of every pecking order. In short, this is a classic Thucydidean rivalry - with all that
implies. (including the genuine risk of a catastrophic war neither nation wants)

Allison adds,

To complicate the picture further, each country's successes and failures in its own ‘war’ against
this enemy will inescapably become a significant feature in this rivalry. If China succeeds in not
just flattening, but bending the curve of new infections toward zero - as they seem to have done
- while the US flounders, no amount of rhetoric will be able to disguise this bottom line. The
consequences for the overall competition, for judgments about the relative merits of democracy
versus autocracy, and for America's standing in the world will be profound.

This is an ominous-sounding and threatening scenario. But can Allison really take aim at Trump’s China
beat-up and latest Wuhan Lab conspiracy? Could he mount the same thesis, for instance, actually
proceeding from a set of Chinese historical premises? To be fair, as he says, he has spent the last three
years examining ways of escaping the trap and the possibility of a full-scale nuclear war. ‘Nuclear war’ is
surely only one possible form of war alongside many other possibilities including wars based on trade
and technology?

The problem is that ‘world history’ seems to be squeezed into the next five months or so leading up to
the forthcoming US elections on Tuesday, 3rd November. Chinese thinking is also governed by this
timetable, at least in terms of whether they will be dealing with Trump or Biden in the ongoing phases of
the ‘trade wars’ and the COVID-19 conspiracies.

There are arguments both ways in Beijing: Trump and Biden, both are seemingly anti-Chinese, but for
different reasons. Trump is anti-Chinese principally because it resonates with his supporters’ ‘anti-
communist’ and racial prejudices. He could equally change to being pro-China if there’s political capital
in it. Biden’s anti-Chinese is the same as Hilary Clinton’s and the Democratic Party, basically an
internationalist human rights violation, freedom and anti-authoritarian, anti-Chinese bias that makes
room for trade and development but needs to be fought for in the battle for international institutions
and the (old) western alliance.

Why would an episode from an ancient Greek historical period of war between Athens and Sparta have
relevance to Sino–US relations today? It there really a kind of invariable logic of history that might be
applied in this case or universally? The idea has been debunked by various scholars East and West.
Arthur Waldron (Citation2017), for instance, argues there is no Thucydides Trap, observing that the two
greatest classicists Donald Kagan and Ernest Badian suggest that no such thing exists as the ‘Thucydides
Trap’, at least in the actual Greek text of the great History of the Peloponnesian War.5 Here, we
consider why such a historical episode is misleading in terms of a series of arguments.
 Patents Good—T/L—1AR
Patents are Good for Innovation —

1. Ag Investments — they require sizeable, long term, risky investments that need a 20
year patent monopoly to recoup. They’re directly correlated to commercialization of
ag products, studies prove. That’s Exy and Moscona.

Framing Issue — none of their evidence is specific to ag innovations that have unique,
expensive input prices.

2. Knowledge Diffusion — lack of understanding over microalgae processes hinders

innovation. That’s Qin and Jose. Only patents disseminate previous knowledge and
incentivize follow-on innovation. that’s IV and Kline.

Patents k2 ag innovation – multiple studies

Caner et al 20 – Doruk Caner is an associate partner in McKinsey’s Waltham office; Julien Claes is an
associate partner in the Brussels office, where Djavan De Clercq is a data scientist; and Michael Taksyak
is a partner in the Tel Aviv office, 2020. (“Needle in a haystack: Patents that inspire agricultural
innovation.” September 1, https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/agriculture/our-insights/needle-in-a-
haystack-patents-that-inspire-agricultural-innovation Accessed: 8/20/24)

Agricultural innovation is increasingly important given the need to feed a growing global population —
ten billion people by 2050, two billion more than today.2 Worldwide, agricultural production will face challenges, such as
skyrocketing demand for crop calories3 and constraints on crop yields.4 In addition to addressing global challenges, enhanced patenting may
Research has shown a positive correlation between granted
also lead to better corporate financial performance.
patents and financial performance.5 We find similar indications within the agricultural-input sector,
with high-patenting firms leading their low-patenting counterparts in three-year average earnings
before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) margins by two percentage points.6

Ag Patents are key to GE crop innovation necessary for plant CCS.

Clancy & Moschini 17 — Matthew S. Clancy, an economist at the Economics Research Service at US
Department of Agriculture, GianCarlo Moschini, Professor and Pioneer Chair in Science and Technology
Policy at Department of Economics and Center for Agricultural and Rural Development at Iowa State
University, 2017 (“Intellectual Property Rights and the Ascent of Proprietary Innovation in Agriculture,”
Iowa State University, Jan, Accessed on 09-07-24, Available Online at
https://dr.lib.iastate.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/5ea51d97-8286-4120-93a3-4d62aa201dc8/
content)

4.5. Effectiveness of Utility Patents for Plants

Patenting of microorganisms, and a host of other biotechnology innovations rooted in the DNA
manipulation of living organisms, now constitute patentable subject matter for most jurisdiction.
Patenting of whole plants and specifically plant varieties, however, remains far less widespread, as
discussed earlier. There are really no empirical studies of the impact of (recent) availability of utility
patent protection on the rate of plant innovation. But there is plenty of suggestive evidence that the
patenting of biological innovations has been essential for the development of modern biotechnology,
including GE transgenic plants used in agriculture. Fixed costs are high in this setting, which make strong
IPR protection particularly valuable for the private sector: a recent study estimated the cost for
discovery, development and bringing to market of a plant biotechnology trait at $136 million (25.8% of
which associated with regulatory requirements) (Phillips McDougall 2011).

Moreover, GE trait development requires use of a range of technologies from disciplines outside the
traditional plant-breeding sector, which may be more responsive to stronger IPRs. Arora, Ceccagnoli and
Cohen (2008) found biotechnology patents to have one of the largest patent premiums of any industry.
Cohen’s (2010) extensive review did not single out agricultural innovations, but finds utility patents are
most valuable to medical, health, and chemical industries. Agricultural biotechnology shares many
similarities with these sectors (it draws on a similar scientific basis, and is subject to regulatory oversight
in similar ways). Also suggestive of the high value of agricultural biotechnology patents is the rate at
which they are challenged. In the European Union, patents may be opposed (within nine months) if the
challenger believes they do not meet patenting criteria. Because it is costly to challenge a patent,
challenges imply the patent helps a firm exert market power. Schneider (2011) documents that
European plant biotechnology patents are challenged twice as frequently as the typical patent.

In addition to their use in GE traits, in the United States the use of patents has rapidly overtaken the use
of PVPCs for varieties of major crops. Moschini (2010) supplied evidence on the use of PVPCs and utility
patents for varieties of the two most important commercial crops: corn and soybeans. Utility patents for
varieties of corn and soybeans assumed a nontrivial role starting in the mid-1990s. For the last five years
of the period considered (2005-09) the number of utility patents on varieties vastly exceeded that of
PVPCs. Pardey et al. (2013) provide a more complete characterization of these trends by including plant
patents as well, by covering all varieties, and by considering the longer time frame 1930-2008 (for the
first half of this period, of course, only plant patents were possible).

Figure 1 returns the focus on corn and soybeans, and illustrates the number of PVPCs and utility patents
issued over the last 40 years, from 1976 to 2015. Such counts are reported as the total for five-year
periods, to smooth out year-to-year variations. This figure shows that the trend in growth uncovered by
earlier studies has persisted. Indeed, nearly half of the utility patents on varieties ever issued were
granted in the last five years (2011-15). Interest in PVP certificates appears to have shot up as well in
recent years: the number of PVP certificates issued in the period 2011-15 were three time and four
times as large as in the period 2006-2010, for soybeans and corn, respectively.

This all suggests patents are valued highly by the seed industry. Moreover, as in the case of PBRs and
plant patents, the privatization of seed development continued to deepen after plants were granted
utility patent protection. While private corn varieties already accounted for 100% of planted US acres by
1980 (facilitated in part by hybrid technology), the percent area of US land planted with private (as
opposed to public) sector varieties of wheat rose from 5% to 24% between 1980 and the late 1990s,
while the percent planted with private varieties of cotton rose from 72% to 93% over the same period.
Most dramatic was the increase in private soybeans from 8% to 70-90% over the period (Heisey,
Srinivasan, and Thirtle 2001).

Over this same period, the seed industry also rapidly expanded R&D in breeding and biotechnology,
both relative to private agricultural R&D in other sectors and relative to public funding of agricultural
R&D. Between 1975 and 2010, private sector agricultural R&D in the seed and 20 biotechnology sectors
grew spectacularly, from $80mn (in constant 2010 dollars) to $2.2bn. Over the same period, all other
private sector R&D for agricultural inputs rose from $1.4bn to $2.5bn (Pray and Fuglie 2015), and public
sector spending on all agricultural R&D rose from $4.0bn in 1975 to $5.9bn in 2006, declining thereafter
to $5.3bn by 2009 (USDA 2012).

Stronger IPRs surely contributed to the rapid emergence of a large GE seed industry. While there are no
studies to examine the impact of utility patents on the rate of agricultural innovation, there has been
some work on the impact of GE technology on the rate of biological innovation in agriculture. To the
extent that the development of GE crops depended on strong patent protection, these gains may be
partially attributed to stronger IPRs. Both Nolan and Santos (2012) and Leibman et al. (2014) take as a
benchmark Duvick’s (2005) finding that over the 1930s-2001, traditional crop breeding (including
hybridization) contributed to maize yield gains of 1.8 bu per acre per year. They then compare this gain
to the observed rate of yield gain since GE technology emerged. Nolan and Santos (2012) suggest GE
technology may have boosted corn yield gains by about 40% over what they would have been
otherwise. Leibman et al. (2014), using historical data on average US yields, suggest an increase on the
order of 30%. Xu et al. (2013) find empirical evidence that GE traits boosted realized yields in US corn
but not in US soybeans. Yield enhancements due to GE varieties may be even more significant in
developing countries (Qaim and Zilberman 2003).