The China Factor: Scale, Speed, and Strategic Risk
The global ASCEND (Advanced Sensing and Computation for Environmental Decision-Making) technologies landscape is heavily dominated by China, which has filed 80 percent of the nearly 76,000 ASCEND-related inventions worldwide since 2010.
In 2023 alone, Chinese inventors accounted for roughly 96 percent of new ASCEND inventions.
China now leads across every major ASCEND technology cluster, including advanced computing (85%), image recognition (87%), radar sensing (76%), and optical systems (70%). This matters because ASCEND innovation is systemic rather than modular. Leadership requires not just excellence in one domain, but rapid integration across sensing, computation, and deployment. If the United States wishes to remain competitive, it is essential that we invest in domestic ASCEND ecosystems with urgency, coordination, and place‑based investment.
China’s innovation model emphasizes speed. The average age of scientific sources cited by ASCEND patents has fallen dramatically in recent years, signaling a compression of the time between discovery and application.
At the same time, China’s dominance comes with important caveats. Most Chinese ASCEND patents are single‑origin, protected only domestically, and weakly cited abroad, suggesting an insular system optimized for national deployment rather than global interoperability.
Why Colorado–Wyoming Is the Place to Develop ASCEND Technologies
As noted in an earlier article, the Colorado–Wyoming region stands out as one of the most concentrated ASCEND innovation hubs in the United States. Since 2010, the region has produced hundreds of ASCEND inventions across every major technology cluster. It ranks among the top ten U.S. regions in overall ASCEND invention volume and produces nearly twice as many ASCEND inventions per job as the national average. There are several interconnected reasons that the CO-WY region leads in ASCEND innovation:
1. A Deep Scientific Base
The region hosts globally recognized institutions in atmospheric science, Earth systems modeling, and environmental research, including the National Lab of the Rockies, NOAA laboratories, the University of Colorado Boulder, and Colorado State University. These institutions are among the most frequently cited sources in ASCEND patents worldwide.
2. Sensing and Aerospace Infrastructure
Colorado–Wyoming has longstanding strengths in remote sensing, optics, radar, navigation, and satellite systems. Colorado ranks second nationally for Space Tech and Defense, third for optically enabled gas analysis, and in the top five to seven across multiple ASCEND technology clusters.
3. Real‑World Test Environments
From high‑altitude terrain and agricultural systems to wildfire‑prone landscapes and energy infrastructure, the region offers living laboratories for ASCEND technology piloting and deployment—an advantage that cannot be replicated digitally.
4. A Ready Labor Force
The region boasts over 120,000 undergraduates and has among the highest STEM enrollment in the nation, providing a strong foundation for talent development. At the same time, Colorado currently ranks 40th among states in generating a local workforce and faces acute shortages in AI, software, and systems engineering. The NSF ASCEND Engine is addressing these gaps through targeted upskilling programs, stackable credentials, systems engineering pathways, and K–12 STEM engagement across both states.
A Dense but Underserved Innovation Node
ASCEND innovation represents a larger share of the local economy than it does nationally. Since 2010, ASCEND inventions have raised $162 billion, with 55% coming from venture capital. Despite these strengths, the region remains under‑capitalized, and the commercialization pathways for such technologies remain fragmented.
This gap between innovation and commercialization is where the NSF ASCEND Engine is determined to make its mark. The Engine is intentionally building an interdisciplinary ecosystem capable of identifying promising innovations, accelerating their path to commercialization, and connecting the resulting environmental intelligence with the utilities, agricultural producers, land managers, and municipal planners who need it most.
The Engine provides direct financial support through grants and prizes, while also brokering strategic partnerships that offer testbeds, domain expertise, and commercialization pathways. These efforts are complemented by workforce development programs designed to build the skilled talent pipeline that ASCEND industries will require.
With targeted investment, the Colorado–Wyoming region could function as a national testbed for dual‑use ASCEND systems, linking environmental resilience with defense, energy, and intelligence applications.
The Strategic Imperative
ASCEND technologies can and will shape how nations understand and respond to environmental, economic, and security challenges in the decades ahead. The question is not whether the United States has the scientific talent to compete. It does. But rather if the country can coordinate among innovation, commercialization and workforce development programs to ensure something coherent, sustained, and connected to real-world application results from regional innovation efforts.
