A prestigious research institution recently made a startling pronouncement: Of the 44 crucial ingredients that are key to the world’s most important technologies , China leads research in 37 of them.

For those wondering how the United States can regain the lead in mineral production and decrease our dependence on China’s supply chain, Pennsylvania Senate candidate David McCormick ’s new book is brimming with ideas. Having succeeded at the highest levels of government and industry, McCormick would be justified in relaying his accomplishments and secrets to success. Instead, Superpower in Peril: A Battle Plan to Renew America is a private sector-led, solutions-oriented blueprint for America’s geopolitical competition with China.

One fascinating theme of the book is how conservatives might grapple with the tension between state-run industrial policy and government-enabled private-sector leadership. McCormick, who served as undersecretary of the U.S. Treasury for International Affairs, sums up this balance this way: “Outcompete China, don’t be China.” For example, taking a recent U.S. technological success, the development of a COVID-19 vaccine, McCormick urges policymakers to consider Operation Warp Speed as an exemplar of how government can best work with the private sector. OWS succeeded because the government set a goal, provided regulatory flexibility, and appropriated the necessary funds, while the private sector brought ingenuity and the innovative spirit.

With OWS as a guide, McCormick looks for additional ways policymakers can catalyze innovation and enable natural entrepreneurship. Called a “Battle Plan to Renew America,” this is America’s answer to China’s plan to become the world’s leading science and technology superpower.

Take, for instance, government-funded research into the commercial development of next-generation technologies. Given that most technology races, such as the one referenced above, put China in the lead, McCormick calls for a significant increase in basic scientific research and development funding more in line with Cold War levels. While McCormick gives some credence to congressional efforts to subsidize semiconductor fabrication in the U.S., he finds the CHIPS Act hews too closely to industrial policy and is merely a one-off subsidy and limited tax relief for semiconductor production. McCormick rejects “picking winners and losers” and aims to promote competition, not companies.

Drawing upon his business career, McCormick seeks to unlock the “unlimited potential of American capital markets” to fund national innovation. McCormick endorses an American Innovation Fund, a public-private vehicle to provide low-cost capital and liquidity to firms in strategic sectors. Wary of crony capitalism, McCormick suggests several safeguards, including supporting high-reward, low-risk efforts of strategic importance and technologies with unique upsides.

McCormick also elevates the development of talent as part of his plan to face the Chinese. He emphasizes the importance of education in making up for a high-skills deficit and endorses aspects of former President Donald Trump’s merit-based immigration plan to argue that more skilled workers will create more jobs and economic opportunities for Americans.

To be sure, McCormick interestingly acknowledges roles for the government may be in tension with pure free markets as advocated by its high priest, Milton Friedman. But to McCormick, the gravity of the China threat, fueled by its subsidies and market-distorting behavior, justifies some U.S. government-enabled role. Again, he supplies some helpful criteria for government support for U.S. domestic development, such as limiting government involvement to sectors in which foreign firms are highly subsidized by U.S. competitors, in which the technology is critically important, and by only promoting investment where there is a first-mover advantage.

More blueprint than bromide, McCormick outlines an agenda for the nation. McCormick reminds readers that U.S. dynamism and the free market can thrive in the right conditions. Helpfully for the GOP, this commonsense framework carefully delineates a role for the government and the private sector in the China competition.

To regain the lead over China, U.S. policymakers should absorb Superpower in Peril as a playbook to restore U.S. leadership in fields spanning space, robotics, energy, the environment, biotechnology, artificial intelligence, advanced materials, and key quantum technology areas.

Michael Allen served on the National Security Council as special assistant to the president and senior director for counterproliferation strategy, as well as at the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence as staff director. He is currently the managing director of Beacon Global Strategies.