Tarun Chhabra has written extensively on U.S.-China strategic competition, particularly as it relates to technology. His views are quite clear, as he had written on his belief that China poses perhaps even a greater threat to U.S. interests than did the Soviet Union: 

Beijing’s “flexible” authoritarianism abroad, digital tools of surveillance and control, unique brand of authoritarian capitalism, and “weaponization” of interdependence may in fact render China a more formidable threat to democracy and liberal values than the Soviet Union was during the Cold War.

His past research has looked at the implications of how China could weaponize and extend big data and artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled technologies abroad and how this. Specifically he argues that the US must “collaborate with allies and partners to shape the trajectory of artificial intelligence in ways that will promote liberal democratic values and protect against efforts to wield AI for authoritarian ends.”

In this role, Tarun Chhabra is likely to make a strong push for government spending in technology. In an article he co-authored on Foreign Affairs, he had said, “Although the private sector in the United States remains one of the most innovative in the world, government spending is critical to support promising but unproven technologies with unclear commercial applications.”