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I don't think it was totally, completely inevitable, but I do agree that they split increasingly. | |
| All right. | ||
| I'd like to thank our panelists for a very vibrant and rich discussion today. | ||
| Ambassador Crumpton, Colonel Harriman, Ambassador Powell, thank you for representing us so well, both here in Washington and overseas during your various tours. | ||
| You are an excellent example of what American leadership should be in the world today. | ||
| So thank you for that. | ||
| And it takes a great deal of courage and stamina to revisit 20 years of war. | ||
| And for that, we're duly indebted to you. | ||
| So this now concludes the first panel. | ||
| I'd like to just ask our commissioners to sit tight. | ||
| We are going to quickly switch to the second panel. | ||
| Panelists, you are dismissed. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And we will welcome the second panel. | ||
| And now to a discussion on U.S. tech strategy and priorities amid growing competition from China. | ||
| We'll hear from former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. | ||
| This is hosted by New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy at the National Press Club here in Washington, D.C. | ||
| So we'll get started. | ||
| if everyone wants to take their seats for a moment. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Good afternoon, distinguished guests, colleagues, and friends, both here at the National Press Club and online virtually. | ||
| Thank you for joining us today at the launch of our latest compendium, Future-Proofing U.S. Technology: Strategic Priorities Amid Chinese Tech Advancement. | ||
| I'm Kelsey Quinn, the head of the Tech Sovereignty and Security Portfolio at New Lines Institute, and I'm delighted to welcome you all to what we hope to be a very meaningful and action-oriented discussion. | ||
| We gathered today at a pivotal moment in the technological landscape. | ||
| As the global order shifts, as the global order undergoes tectonic shifts in the balance of power, the United States faces unprecedented challenges to its tech leadership. | ||
| After decades of primacy and technological innovation, we now confront intensifying competition that demands a strategic, forward-looking response. | ||
| The work we're discussing today examines a crucial question. | ||
| How can the United States maintain its technological edge while navigating the complex challenges posed by China's rapid advancement? | ||
| This is not nearly, this is not merely an academic exercise. | ||
| It has real implications for our national security, economic prosperity, and global influence. | ||
| Our compendium that we recently launched brings together expertise from diverse sectors to provide concrete, actionable policy recommendations. | ||
| We focused on several critical areas, including artificial intelligence, alternative payment methods, cybersecurity resilience, critical mineral supply chains, and combating disinformation. | ||
| All of these represent both significant opportunities as well as potential vulnerabilities. | ||
| What makes this work important is its pragmatic approach. | ||
| Rather than offering simple, broad generalizations, our authors have painstakingly developed very specific policy recommendations that are designed to strengthen America's technological foundations while effectively responding to China's growing capabilities. | ||
| Collectively, these analyses offer concrete, actionable guidance, not only for policymakers, but also for industry leaders and defense planners navigating the increasingly complex terrain. | ||
| The New Lines Institute is a global think tank. | ||
| We are located in DC. | ||
| However, we are focused on delivering policy recommendations and research informed by global perspectives to primarily U.S. policymakers. | ||
| Our work is rooted in the firm belief that geopolitics is not a zero-sum game. | ||
| For America to progress, it doesn't necessarily have to be at the expense of other nations. | ||
| Through our research, we continue to find policy pathways the U.S. can pursue to secure our foreign and domestic interests while supporting growth and innovation around the world. | ||
| As the head of the tech sovereignty and security portfolio here at New Lines, my team works at the intersection of technological innovation and national security. | ||
| We bridge the gap specifically between technical expertise and practical policymaking, providing decision makers with research and recommendations to respond to both immediate threats and long-term strategic imperatives. | ||
| The decisions that we make today about how to develop, regulate, and implement emerging technologies will determine whether the United States maintains its technological, it maintains its position as the world's leading technological innovator and whether these innovations enhance or undermine American security and values. | ||
| We're fortunate today to have an exceptional lineup of speakers with us. | ||
| In a moment, I'll be turning things over to the former Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, for his opening remarks. | ||
| Following Secretary Chertoff's remarks, we'll have a panel discussion featuring several of our authors who are seated right there, including Gavin Moore, Director at Forge Front, whose analysis in our compendium examines alternative payment methods as an early warning signal for potential confrontation with China and Taiwan. | ||
| Sam Douglas Bate, also director at Forge Front, who explored the double-edged sword of technology in both spreading and combating disinformation, particularly disinformation driven by foreign actors. | ||
| And last but not least, Courtney Manning, Director of the AI Imperative 2030 at the American Security Project, who addresses the delicate balance between innovation and regulation in the critical technology sector. | ||
| Throughout today's event, we want to emphasize that technological competition isn't just about who produces more. | ||
| It's about developing technologies that align with American values and serve our national interests. | ||
| It's about shaping the technological landscape in ways that strengthen democracy, enhance security, and foster prosperity. | ||
| Now, without further delay, I'm pleased to introduce the Honorable Michael Chertoff, former Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. | ||
| Well, I'm delighted to be here. | ||
| I had the opportunity, and I was pleased to do so, to write a very brief forward to this report. | ||
| And I think it's very topical, particularly at this moment. | ||
| You know, when I started out dealing with issues in security, there was a tendency to have a very siloed approach in the U.S. to the issue of security. | ||
| There was national security, which was guns and bombs and missiles. | ||
| And then there was the economic sphere, which was the free market and let innovation take over and let the market operate. | ||
| And the two were viewed as being separate and distinct areas of operation. | ||
| What we lacked was a strategic vision of how these are really part of dimensions of the same set of problems, which is how do we protect and foster our country and the countries of our allies. | ||
| I think we learned some lessons in the last few years about that fragmented approach. | ||
| Interestingly, one lesson came from COVID, because COVID interrupted and disrupted supply chains, and we began to see the security effects of that across a whole range of activities that were critical to the United States and like-minded countries. | ||
| And that, I think, got us to begin to look more strategically at the issue of how do you integrate all of the dimensions of security, both the obvious ones and the less obvious ones, to make sure we're producing the best result for preserving and protecting the values and the activities of the citizens of this country. | ||
| Interestingly, China has for a long time been taking that integrated approach, one that was more strategic, not hands-off with respect to the economy, but rather viewing the economy as a dimension of national security. | ||
| And I remember telling people a few years ago that I was beginning to realize that while we were playing checkers, the Chinese were playing Go. | ||
| And we needed to up our game and at least get the chess if we don't go further than that. | ||
| And I'm pleased to say that this report is a real big step in terms of explaining what we need to do in order to integrate things. | ||
| There are several dimensions to this, which I think are getting careful consideration here. | ||
| First is recognizing that a critical element of our nationally and economic security is the supply chain. | ||
| I mean, we talk about putting data in the cloud, but the cloud is not just wisps of moisture up in the air. | ||
| It's hardware and it's software. | ||
| And a lot of that hardware requires that we get access to rare earths and minerals and are able to integrate them with chip manufacture into hardware that we can then use as a platform for these kinds of online activities. | ||
| But how do you get the rare earths and the minerals? | ||
| Again, for years, the Chinese with the Belt and Road Initiative have been out in the southern hemisphere trading their economic assistance for being able to access and even monopolize the critical resources that we need to build this hardware. | ||
| And I think we've begun to realize in the last few years, you have to get in the game, you have to be part of that too. | ||
| And so I think beginning to recognize that while we want to provide security assistance to allies and friendly nations around the world, we also want to make sure they're serving our needs to make sure we have the rare earths and minerals that we need in order to foster our technology. | ||
| As was said a moment ago, innovation has been a critical element of the way we develop our technologies, both military and non-military. | ||
| But here again, we need to consider other values that have to be balanced and considered. | ||
| Because if you have unrestrained innovation, where, for example, your personal data can be used at will in order to influence you or even manipulate you, that becomes problematic. | ||
| So there need to be, again, some guardrails about the way innovation produces results to make sure we don't get unintended consequences that become dangerous and even undermine our democracy and undermine our safety. | ||
| Now we're getting into some new technologies that we use to defend ourselves. | ||
| For example, cryptography, the ability to shelter our written words or even our speech from somebody hacking and getting a hold of that, that's been a positive step forward. | ||
| But we're entering the age of quantum and quantum is now raising serious questions about whether cryptography will be undermined. | ||
| So how we develop quantum, what are the rules of the road in using quantum, how do we build capabilities perhaps to use quantum as an encryption tool and not merely as a decryption tool. | ||
| Again, these are matters that are going to require a unified approach and a thought process that shares the perspectives of policymakers along with the technology and capabilities of the scientific community. | ||
| We're also looking in a similar vein on alternative payment methods. | ||
| You know, we're used to thinking about the dollar as the backbone currency and then, although not so much anymore, the idea that it be secured by gold. | ||
| But now we're getting into Bitcoin and other kind of cryptographic currencies and those may become the emerging wave of the future in terms of how we do global exchange rates and finance. | ||
| Again, we need to understand what are the risks, what are the advantages, what is the advantage that the Western nations have in using this, and what, as China is beginning to do, is this a threat to our payment system because China will use cryptographic and cryptocurrency as an alternative payment method to what we're used to having in the West, which does give us a lot of control over the international domain. | ||
| And finally, artificial intelligence. | ||
| This is a very interesting and provocative area. | ||
| We're hearing a lot of discussion about it. | ||
| For most people, they're thinking about it in terms of chat GPT, and you're going to get AI to write your term paper for you or something of that sort. | ||
| But it's actually going to be much more than that. | ||
| It's going to be something that can be a powerful tool for persuasion. | ||
| It can be a way to undermine, for example, our cybersecurity and our physical security, but it can also be a way to enhance it. | ||
| I mean, one of the examples of this is if you look, for example, at the issue of securing your border against the smuggling of drugs or human smuggling, one thing AI will allow you to do going forward is to analyze the travel patterns and the similar communication patterns of freight companies, both maritime and land companies, to analyze those which, based on their pattern, look as if there's a higher risk of smuggling something illegal. | ||
| And then that allows the law enforcement community to focus on those higher risk freight and similar companies that are more likely to be smuggling rather than try to do it randomly or slowing up the process by looking into everybody's cargo. | ||
| So all of these tools and technologies have some real positive values that can enhance our security as well as our economic well-being. | ||
| But they also have risks. | ||
| And that's why this project, which looks specifically at a number of these characteristics, is aimed at developing a technological awareness on the part of policymakers. | ||
| You can debate about policy, but it should be an informed debate. | ||
| And this kind of a report focuses the policymakers and their aides and the other counselors that they rely upon on the categories of issues they need to be able to look at and consider as they develop policies for the next decade. | ||
| So you'll find it compelling reading. | ||
| It's a great project, and I'm delighted to endorse it here. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Well, thank you, Secretary Church, for those kind words. | ||
| Now we're going to transition into the panel from our lovely authors. | ||
| So I am extraordinarily grateful to have some leading experts in this space join us today. | ||
| Not only are they very, very well-read, but they are also authors of our compendium. | ||
| There are a few more here in the audience today. | ||
| If you'd like to find them afterwards, please do. | ||
| But I'd like to introduce and then allow them to introduce themselves as well. | ||
| We have Sam Douglas Bate from Forge Front, as I mentioned, director. | ||
| Gavin Moore, also director at Forge Front, and then Courtney Manning, the AI Imperative 2030 Director from the American Security Project. | ||
| So I'd like you guys to introduce yourself for a moment and I'll let Courtney kick it off. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| And thank you to all of the compendium participants. | ||
| This has been a really exciting and collaborative process and I see a lot of familiar faces, I'm sure, online as well as we've gone through this. | ||
| Kelsey, you've been just marvelous. | ||
| So thank you for your leadership, putting all of this together. | ||
| I think if I was to put my contribution to this really exciting project into two words, it would be incentives and restrictions. | ||
| I have to say that now because initially they would have been targeted and precise. | ||
| But as we know, there has been a quite dramatic shift, not just over the last administration, but over the past decade in the way that we view our industrial policy and specifically our trade and investment policy here in the United States. | ||
| After securing international leadership in manufacturing at the end of World War II, America kept its lead in global innovation by localizing high-value, low-hazard activities like research and development and outsourcing labor-intensive tasks like manufacturing, mining to countries in the global south. | ||
| Prioritizing operations higher on global value chains was a deliberate decision. | ||
| It was not a mistake that we found ourselves with around 44% of our GDP coming as a result of intellectual property and other thought-leading contributions to global value chains. | ||
| Now we find ourselves in a highly tense geopolitical situation where these choices, deliberately imposed and highly valuable for the United States and its citizens, are a source of geostrategic stress and dependency that we no longer want to bear. | ||
| I would also though like to highlight the impacts on our domestic innovation ecosystem and particularly our innovation dynamism. | ||
| Innovation dynamism is something that I think we don't think too much about because people assume that it is a self-creating, self-maintaining system that just happens in the background. | ||
| Americans are innovators and I think that is really encouraging and exciting. | ||
| But they don't do this alone. | ||
| There have been strings pulling some of these innovative and exciting evolutions over the past 40 years and we're slowly one by one I believe cutting these strings in exchange for returning to a high tariff, high intervention, high restriction, high regulation environment. | ||
| And we really need to change course now if we want to regain our lead and not just our lead but our significant lead in the future technologies that we highlight through this report. | ||
| Decades of Lises Fair oversight and unregulated capital consolidation has whittled away our innovation dynamism and as it has there has been a behind the scenes for some time, now very obvious in our forefront, actor China, who has embarked on a huge whole of government campaign to lead not only in the areas where we lead, but also to lead in the areas that we have abandoned. | ||
| Critical mineral extraction, financial and international trade, global manufacturing, and all of the other steps that we sacrificed to be the thought leaders of the world. | ||
| And for that reason, we now see that China not only dominates in a range of monopolized supply chain steps that we have left behind, but they're also leading, as far as AI is concerned, which is my area of expertise, number of patents filed, research papers published, and public investment in AI as a share of GDP. | ||
| What we can do about it, that's the promising aspect of all of this, because the truth is we are not stuck, we're not too far gone to be able to reclaim our leadership in these areas. | ||
| Scientists work around the clock in this country to test policy interventions and be able to prove which ones work and which ones don't. | ||
| And we know that demand and supply side policies are able to rekindle global interest in American innovation and also rekindle domestic manufacturing and other areas of our supply chain in a new way. | ||
| There can be innovation on every single step of this chain. | ||
| And I think it's really important that we keep that in mind, that rather than just subsidize manufacturing as it exists in other places, the innovation is not something that can be left only to the people who are in the metas and the X's of the world. | ||
| We need to bring that innovation to every single step, not only because that is going to lead to stronger and more secure supply chains, but because that is going to make it economically feasible to maintain these activities in the United States. | ||
| Currently, they are not. | ||
| Even with the Chips and Science Act, we see that they are not. | ||
| So I'm really excited that my part of this compendium explores some of those tried and true, tested, evidence-based recommendations. | ||
| And to avoid having to spill all of the beans here, I am going to leave it there. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Yes, Gavin. | ||
| Great stuff, Courtney. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Yeah, so I'm Gavin Moore, director at Forgefront, which is a futures and policy consultancy based in the UK, along with my co-director here, Sam. | ||
| Essentially, what Forgefront does, we work with organisations to help them embrace future opportunities and mitigate threats. | ||
| So we work on things like trade issues, global finance, which is what my article is about in terms of alternative payment mechanisms. | ||
| And we'll get into the detail of that in a little bit. | ||
| Also, misinformation and AI, which Sam will speak to in a second, I'm sure. | ||
| Defence issues. | ||
| And we work with clients such as the UK government, the UAE government, Singapore Defence Ministry, and large philanthropic organisations as well. | ||
| Just a little bit more on my background. | ||
| Prior to Forgefront, I was the UK's leading financial regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority, developing cryptocurrency rules, specifically with regards to anti-money laundering and terrorist financing, which is very relevant to parts of my article as well. | ||
| Skipping back from that, I was also leading the UK's tariff and trade policy at the UK Treasury. | ||
| Very relevant and newsy at the moment, as you can imagine. | ||
| That was during the very calm time of Brexit as well. | ||
| So I'm well used to turbulence, particularly with regard to trade and tariffs. | ||
| Prior to that, I also worked at the European Parliament for five years in Brussels, dealing with global financial issues there. | ||
| Maybe just finally to say, you might be able to tell from my accent, I am from Belfast in Northern Ireland. | ||
| Apologies for the weather that we've obviously brought with us. | ||
| I think, I mean, prior to joining this panel discussion today, I actually checked the weather forecast in Belfast, which is 20 degrees and sunny day. | ||
| So, rather than looking at the stock markets for signs of the world being flipped upside down, that weather report tells me a lot about where we are globally. | ||
| And obviously, the US has quite a long relationship with Northern Ireland, right? | ||
| I mean, I'm sure that many people in this room will be familiar with the Northern Irish peace process, the work that the Clinton administration done, and the subsequent Bush administration done as well. | ||
| So, there's obviously quite a special bond there as well. | ||
| So, absolutely delighted to be here. | ||
| And thanks once again, as Courtney much more eloquently put it than I can. | ||
| Thank you to Kelsey and to everyone at the New Lines Institute for making this happen. | ||
| Delighted to be here. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And Sam? | ||
| Thank you very much, Kelsey. | ||
| And it's an absolute delight to be here in front of everyone today. | ||
| And thank you to Gavin for introducing himself, but also Forward Front. | ||
| So he's done me a favour there. | ||
| And it's wonderful to be on the panel with you as well, Courtney, and to hear your opening remarks. | ||
| A little bit about me, perhaps, just like Gavin's done. | ||
| I have previously worked for the UK government, so spent some time supporting the Prime Minister over in the UK in the Cabinet Office. | ||
| Prior to that, I also spent some time actually negotiating on behalf of the UK the Brexit Agreement in the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office over in the UK. | ||
| I had previously also served in the European Parliament as a civil servant there too in the last trance of Brits before we all had to come home. | ||
| My background is in the sort of technology space. | ||
| That's a big piece of focus for Forward Front, analysing future technology trends. | ||
| And the article that I've published particularly analyses fake news and the juxtaposition that exists with regards to fake news, particularly looking at some of the technologies and the propensity that some of these technologies have for both spreading fake news but also defending against some of the worst excesses of fake news, both in the UK and from abroad too. | ||
| So I look forward to having the chat today with the rest of the panel. | ||
| Yes, thank you all for coming. | ||
| So I think we're just going to jump in with probably what is on most people's minds, tariffs. | ||
| It's kind of been the talk of the town and the country and the world and all of that. | ||
| And each one of the pieces in this compendium and the topics that we address are significantly impacted by not only the uncertainty that the tariffs have sort of caused, but also the tariffs themselves that now I believe as of this morning are sitting in 145% US to China and 125 back, although perhaps in the last few hours that's changed. | ||
| Who knows? | ||
| So I wanted to jump first with Courtney. | ||
| There's a significant amount of tariffs discussion within your piece. | ||
| So now that upwards of 145% potentially of tariffs are now placed on Chinese imports, what sort of immediate and long-term effects do you anticipate for US technology and innovation and our competitiveness? | ||
| And after you respond, I'll open it up to our other panelists. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And we were actually discussing this before this panel that it's always a mix of positive and negative impacts on ourselves when you write something with predictions in it that are very negative. | ||
| And then those negative predictions end up coming to pass. | ||
| Obviously, you don't want the negative thing to come, but when it does, and you've been able to successfully predict it, you at least know you're doing something right. | ||
| I wrote in my piece that over a long, long series of former tariffs, not just over the past two administrations, but even previously, China has demonstrated a consistent pattern of refusing to capitulate and, in fact, always rising to the challenge when it comes to its trade policy. | ||
| This is very unlike other friendlier countries that will negotiate when it comes time to promised trusted allies bringing up concerns of economic severity. | ||
| And I think what we're seeing now is exactly exemplifying the pattern that they've demonstrated over the past 40 years, that when a foreign actor comes and challenges them, | ||
| not only are they better equipped to be able to manage some of these challenges because of the deliberate lack of dependence that they have on any one trading partner, but they also have a very centralized military-civil fusion regime that allows them to work with their private sector in a way that the United States, frankly, cannot and should not. | ||
| And because they can do this, they have a lot more agility when it comes to responding to some of these tariffs than we do. | ||
| So analyses have already been conducted of the last tariff war between 2017 and 2019, and the results were pretty startling. | ||
| Around 93% of tariffs between the United States and China at that time were paid by U.S. citizens and firms. | ||
| Only about 0.44% of them were paid by China. | ||
| And when you think about all of the intermediary trading partners who are much greater affected, partners who are much smaller and would like to partner with the United States in the future, they are much more significantly affected in a negative way than China is. | ||
| And not only that, when it comes down to it, China only exports around 2% of their total exports to the U.S. | ||
| So they don't really have as much of an incentive to back down or to change their posture as the United States does. | ||
| Now, this is all very known. | ||
| It's all on the books and has been for a long time. | ||
| But at the same time, we see this happening in incentive policy as well. | ||
| It's not just tariffs. | ||
| We have a wide range of regulations on the state level, on the sector level, and from independent regulatory agencies, or at least we did. | ||
| And these policies coalesce into some pretty significant roadblocks for our U.S. innovators. | ||
| Those are persistent, and even though maybe some of the oversight and enforcement mechanisms have deteriorated over the past few months, they still do have a lasting impact on our economy. | ||
| And the combination of all these factors really is an avalanche that we need to start running away from right now. | ||
| Yeah, thank you. | ||
| Gavin, I'm very interested to hear your take on how these tariffs have impacted sort of the alternative payment world and see what your predictions might be now that these things have come to pass. | ||
| Yeah, no, absolutely. | ||
| Kelsey, I mean, I think probably the first thing to say is I'm not sure we'll see an immediate impact on China's trade policy because obviously supply chains take a lot of time to unwind. | ||
| Negotiations and renegotiation of trading partners take a long time, right? | ||
| It's not something that can sort of be a switch can be flicked overnight. | ||
| But I think specifically with regard to alternative payment methods, I think there's maybe two ways that China might react. | ||
| I think the first thing you could see is a sort of turbocharge in the settlement of trade in non-USD currencies. | ||
| There's been reports this week already that Russia and China in the context of the BRICS geopolitical grouping are already settling crude oil transactions in Bitcoin. | ||
| So they're already sort of making that move. | ||
| Unclear if there's a direct link to the tariff policies or whether this is a sort of longer term thing, but probably no coincidence that that's happened and been reported on extensively this week. | ||
| I think the second thing you'll see, which actually sounds quite counterintuitive at first, that actually China's alternative payments method policy, which I talk a lot about in my report, may slow down. | ||
| They might actually see a deceleration. | ||
| Because a lot of the driving motivation of China's strategy has been to de-dollarize with the potential future impact of lessening the impact of economic sanctions were they to invade Taiwan. | ||
| Because economic sanctions on Russia, for example, have been effective because they rely on USD dominance to quite a large extent. | ||
| So once that dominance goes, then the determinant effect of sanctions goes. | ||
| And I think we've seen this week, obviously, with the Trump administration's tariff policy that actually the US dollar is vulnerable. | ||
| So China may take a bit of a wait and see approach, I think, in terms of how it shifts its alternative payment methods. | ||
| I mean, the one thing I would say is the problem with de-dollarization has always been what's the alternative. | ||
| And given the turmoil in the stock markets this week, one thing that's maybe gone slightly under the radar is actually the Chinese currency, the yuan, has actually been at the lowest level for 17 years. | ||
| So it's not as if there's a strong Chinese currency to come in and replace the dollar. | ||
| And I think maybe the final point I would make here is you've pointed out there's 145% tariffs. | ||
| That could have changed as I'm speaking. | ||
| The debate hasn't been about de-dollarization, really. | ||
| It's been about fentanyl, it's been about unfair trading practices, but not de-dollarization. | ||
| And I know this is something that President Trump has mentioned both during his election campaign and subsequently, that if countries do de-dollarise, he's going to use tariffs as a lever. | ||
| And it's not something it would be interesting to see within the administration there might be diverging views on that because Vice President Vance has previously remarked that the USD strength is actually a tax on American producers and there are views within the administration sort of widely reported that they wouldn't be too worried about the US dollar losing its position as a reserve currency. | ||
| So I think it's a really debate, a timely debate that the administration needs to have essentially. | ||
| What actions by China or perhaps other BRICS countries, for example, establishing their own currency would trigger a tariff response from the administration and where's the sort of line in the sand? | ||
| I think it's a really interesting debate. | ||
| And should tariffs be triggered at all is another big question. | ||
| Yes, I think a lot of people are wondering what sort of actions are going to result in tariffs being announced. | ||
| And then, Sam, I'd also like to see the, when we're talking about the information space right now, it is certainly a mess. | ||
| And with the announcements and then revocation of those announcements, tears on, tears off, what would be your assessment of sort of how we can navigate around the information space, if there's any disinformation that you would anticipate being, if there's an opportunity to exploit by foreign actors here, and if there are any solutions that you think might be fitting sort of around this topic? | ||
| It's a great question, Kelsey. | ||
| And I think the sort of underpinning thing here really is as the geopolitical economic picture heats up, we see a propagation of online actors that originate from China. | ||
| China's overseas influencing network is referred to, as many of you might know, as spamoflage, and it is one of the largest covert influencing operations, if not the largest covert influencing operation in the world, alongside the Russian one. | ||
| Microsoft estimates that spamoflage as a network covers or targets 160 websites in 60 languages as well. | ||
| So it's incredibly all-encompassing. | ||
| China, we also know, employs over 200 state employees to act as influencers abroad. | ||
| And those influencers don't make the connection clear between themselves and the Chinese state. | ||
| So I really think as tariffs are ratcheting up, we will see this spamoflage network really start to be properly activated. | ||
| You're seeing that in a number of ways. | ||
| Sometimes it's quite difficult to draw the direct link between spammage actors and Beijing. | ||
| And indeed, that's something that my report talks about a little bit more detail. | ||
| I think it's incumbent on intelligence agencies as much as they're able to do to draw the link so the public really does understand how these actors are propagating information that might impact their day-to-day lives. | ||
| But some of you might have, for example, seen quite a popular TikTok video that came out yesterday from an account called Ajang 67. | ||
| I think it got over last time I checked over a million views of rather disparaged looking Americans on the production line fulfilling roles that maybe might be carried out by people working in mainland China currently. | ||
| And this was a direct kind of response to the sort of the tariffs being ratcheted up. | ||
| You're also seeing just standard kind of foreign influencing campaigns as well. | ||
| So the standard sort of Russian wolf diplomacy, the embassy here in Washington, the Chinese embassy here in Washington has been very active in tweeting out various graphics and various pieces of information. | ||
| I think there was one video recently with Ronald Reagan talking about his non-preference for tariffs, shall we say, making the comparison obviously with the Trump administration too. | ||
| So you're seeing a mixture of both traditional and non-traditional activations in terms of this foreign influencing operation. | ||
| Yeah, thanks. | ||
| Yes, it was quite jarring to see Ronald Reagan coming from the Twitter account. | ||
| I think everyone probably saw that. | ||
| So I'd like to turn now, now that we sort of have established quite well that the tensions between the US and China are quite significant. | ||
| And we only can presume that this tariff and these trade wars will continue to escalate. | ||
| As Courtney mentioned, there doesn't seem to be a great sort of off-ramp in that. | ||
| We anticipate this will continue. | ||
| So part of responding to that situation is the US needs to continue to build its technological resilience as this pressure between the two of them, between the United States and China only is going to increase. | ||
| So Courtney, I think I'd like to know from you what sort of specific sectors the US should prioritize in this moment or in sort of the middle future to maintain or sort of re-establish, depending on which side of that debate you're on, whether we've lost our edge or not. | ||
| Some people in Paris have very seems like they landed pretty solidly on one side of that discussion. | ||
| But which sort of sectors we should prioritize in maintaining our technological edge over China or regaining it? | ||
| I think the sectors themselves are relatively clear. | ||
| We have a slew of militarizable technologies that are also considered dual use. | ||
| And while that list is growing every single day, we know that if we go too large and we start regulating too many different sectors, there's going to be an adverse distortionary effect on the market. | ||
| And that includes incentives. | ||
| So Chips and Science Act, you know, infrastructure reduction act, apologies, IRA. | ||
| We have all of these different incentive policies that are still churning through our different economic sectors. | ||
| And as the CEO of TSNC said last year, there just isn't a way to make this economically viable without continued subsidies in these areas. | ||
| And we know this. | ||
| We know this because there is a very clear pattern of U.S. firms, when faced with tariffs, to choose a different location for their manufacturing or not, but not reintroduce manufacturing back to the United States in any of these sectors. | ||
| So even if China remains at 145% forever, well, Apple has already spent the past six or seven years moving its manufacturing to India. | ||
| They are not planning on starting a bunch of manufacturing projects in the United States, and neither are any of our other firms. | ||
| And that's just a reality, and in fact, an advantage that we have capitulated on for the past 40-some odd years. | ||
| So will we be able to sustainably bring these sectors back through restrictions on other countries? | ||
| No. | ||
| Will we be able to bring these industries back through incentives? | ||
| Probably not, unless we are willing to really foot that bill and do it in a very inefficient way, which I don't think the current administration would like to do. | ||
| So with that in mind, what can we rely on? | ||
| Well, one of the big ones is demand and supply side policies that incentivize foreign direct investment in the United States. | ||
| China takes in a sliver of the foreign investment that the United States does from other countries. | ||
| Some of that is by design. | ||
| Part of that is because they're a really politically risky investment environment with very few options for foreign partners. | ||
| The United States is not. | ||
| We take in tons of foreign investment from other states and we don't necessarily need to be the world's largest export partner to do so. | ||
| One of your comments was kind of funny because I'm thinking about just how many American workers would be required to operate a Chinese-style manufacturing plant and the labor demand isn't there either. | ||
| So who's going to be working in these facilities? | ||
| And would we be able to have the same low-cost products and services that we have today under that model? | ||
| I mean, I answer to all these questions is no. | ||
| But if we were to try and shift towards something that's a little bit more actionable, I would say look at all of the different diplomatic means and the foreign partnerships we've been able to establish at relatively low cost that may be happening behind the scenes in our foreign service offices, in our diplomatic core, in our digital expansion competitors to China's Digital Silk Road. | ||
| We have a lot of these kinds of arrangements, or rather did, on the books that are highly, highly cost-effective at being able to not only extend U.S. soft power, but also provide a solid foundation for being able to work more collaboratively in areas of geostrategic competition and de-risking, which I think is only going to become more important as we continue to see escalating tensions in the Indo-Pacific, | ||
| in the Arctic, and in our Pacific Islands. | ||
| The encroachment is coming closer to home. | ||
| So now is really the time to act on those partnerships. | ||
| Yes, certainly. | ||
| Hopefully, we make those moves relatively soon. | ||
| Both Sam and Gavin, I'd like you to give me some insight as to how we can build additional resilience within both sort of an economic perspective as well as the information space. | ||
| I think something that's quite interesting about this alternative payments alternative payment methods that you discuss is that the information space around is very confusing to the average sort of person. | ||
| If you're talking about crypto, most people turn off their minds and they ignore you. | ||
| So, these two things are sort of interlinked for having any sort of substantive conversation or real discussion that you get the political or the public sort of engaged in, have their buy-in. | ||
| You have to be able to communicate those in an effective way. | ||
| So, perhaps you can tackle that together jointly as we often do. | ||
| You go for it, Sam. | ||
| Well, I'll go back to your original question, Kelsey, which I thought was really interesting around sort of sectors to prioritize. | ||
| And I'll bring in a little bit of the subsequent question that you asked, too, perhaps. | ||
| I would say that the sort of underpinning thing that I think is really when we're thinking about sectors to prioritize in terms of tackling misinformation and disinformation is does it matter? | ||
| And it's actually very difficult because of that question. | ||
| So, we know that, for example, organizations like ByteDance are able to rent semiconductors from overseas organizations. | ||
| We know that semiconductor intermediaries have a rich seam of work as well, enabling Chinese-based companies in order to continue undertaking sort of vast amounts of technological development. | ||
| The Chinese state obviously offers massive, massive subsidies to some of its biggest tech and smallest tech organizations, too. | ||
| And really, it's a poor reflection on the FDPR as well as a mechanism for controlling this kind of activity. | ||
| And I think that's something that the government, the new government here in the United States of America, needs to focus on very, very closely. | ||
| But I'd love to do a show of hands in the audience, actually. | ||
| And this might seem like a bit of a stupid question, but how many of you have heard of TikTok? | ||
| Let the record show. | ||
| Let the record show that every single person, bar one maybe, put their hand up. | ||
| How many people in this room have heard of Synth ID? | ||
| You have read the report, Carl. | ||
| And how many people have heard of CTPA? | ||
| Okay, so I don't think a single hand. | ||
| And that's totally unsurprising. | ||
| And I think what that reflects really is that some of the offensive ways of getting out and propagating misinformation and disinformation really have a connection to the public consciousness. | ||
| Whereas some of the defensive ones and some of the tools and techniques that we might use to actually help combat this issue are very poorly known and poorly understood. | ||
| And in most cases, actually pretty boring for your person on the street. | ||
| I do think there needs to be an institutional refocus on fact-checking as well. | ||
| So one of the things that the report talks about that I drafted was the establishment of a new fact-checking panel, a bipartisan fact-checking panel that is given the resources in order to undertake analysis on the most egregious cases of misinformation and disinformation. | ||
| I think that would be very helpful. | ||
| Not least because some of these organizations are quite disparate. | ||
| Some of them don't necessarily focus on the issues that your American in the street might necessarily care about. | ||
| Some of them are slow to act. | ||
| Some of them are very political in terms of the sorts of fact-checking that they will do. | ||
| Studies have also shown that people who support particular parties have a propensity to support some of these fact-checkers. | ||
| So making sure that it is really bipartisan and seemed to be bipartisan and expert is really, really important too. | ||
| I also think that there needs to be an additional recognition amongst our decision makers in Washington around really a recognition about actually how bad members of the general public are identifying fake news. | ||
| And apologies to our American friends in the audience, but you are internationally bad at identifying misinformation and disinformation. | ||
| The OECD published a wonderful piece of research analysing 21 countries, and you guys came dead last actually in your ability to identify AI-generated misinformation, third last in your ability to identify human-created misinformation and disinformation. | ||
| So a real doubling down on these efforts and doing that through something like an AI fact-checking panel would be really good. | ||
| Another really important idea I think would be to bring forward maybe some kind of centrally held public communications campaign, encouraging people to basically do their own research. | ||
| Again, we saw quite a disparate approach in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election. | ||
| Actually, bringing together a lot of parts of government into a single coordinated, quite clear campaign for members of the general public would be incredibly useful. | ||
| Very finally, I would say there needs to be an institutional doubling down as well in terms of the levers of government to deliver this sort of work. | ||
| So one of the first things that Pam Bondi did was remove the FBI's foreign influence task force, which undertook the primary amount of work in terms of liaison with social media organizations in terms of sort of taking down some of the misinformation and disinformation. | ||
| So with that organization now non-existent, we need to really think about how government is sort of empowered to deliver this work moving forward. | ||
| Yeah, I'm hoping we make some moves on there. | ||
| I particularly like the synth ID and the CTPA. | ||
| I actually learned quite a bit about that. | ||
| Avaril in the audience, one of our other authors, we've discussed it while we were there. | ||
| So should have raised your hand. | ||
| I knew you knew it. | ||
| So Gavin, I'd really like to get your take on sort of resilience within the perspective of your piece. | ||
| We'll just rephrase the question a bit here to talk about how it seems that this administration has been expressing the idea of these alternative payments to the cryptocurrencies as a type of resilience for our currency. | ||
| Can you speak to sort of how your piece addresses that and what your opinions are on this approach that's been happening? | ||
| If there are any changes that you foresee? | ||
| You know, absolutely, Kelsey. | ||
| I think the interesting space to watch really is stable coins as a means of maintaining the US dollar dominance. | ||
| For those of you who may not know what stable coins are, they are a type of cryptocurrency which essentially pegs itself to usually a fiat currency, in this case the dollar, as we're talking about here. | ||
| And they tend to, or at least try to mitigate the volatility that you see with other cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, for example. | ||
| They also allow instantaneous payment settlements and their method really of keeping assets safe, particularly not so much in the US, of course, but in other countries where governments may not be so Should be slightly more tyrannical, can I say, in terms of how they would approach individuals' bank accounts? | ||
| And it's something this administration has leaned very heavily into. | ||
| The President made remarks at a digital assets summit last month, basically, and explicitly named check stablecoins as something that might expand the dominance of the dollar globally. | ||
| And indeed, there seems to be bipartisan support as well. | ||
| There's two bits of legislation now going through Congress, the Stable Act in the House and the Genius Act in the Senate. | ||
| And I'm sure there's a very stable, genius joke to be made with those two acts at some point. | ||
| And a side note that you guys are really good at acronyms. | ||
| When it comes to your acts, as I was discussing with Courtney earlier, we're not so inventive in the UK. | ||
| We just call them what they are. | ||
| So, yeah, there's the legislation. | ||
| I think the idea is to have some of those legislation passed at the end of August. | ||
| CEO of Bank of America has talked about developing a stablecoin. | ||
| PayPal already has its own stablecoin. | ||
| So there's clearly a sort of institutional, political, sort of regulatory moves towards really creating that certainty which has been lacking so far for stablecoins. | ||
| And I think in the context of my piece, it's a really interesting space to look at because both Teller and Circle stablecoins, so USDT and USDC, are by far the largest stable coins. | ||
| Stable coins, I should have said right at the start, are actually the biggest cryptocurrency as well, much more so than Bitcoin, because of that sort of safety and stability that people see in them. | ||
| So really, if you see those currencies expanding, and I think Teller has something like 500 million users globally already, which is quite a feat. | ||
| If you see those currencies being used, particularly in, I think, the BRICS countries, would be really interesting, you know, erstwhile allies of China and Russia and whether they start to use USDT more so than they already are could be really interesting. | ||
| And it's another means of maintaining the US dollar's dominance, which is something the Trump administration spoke in favour of. | ||
| Some way down the line, you could also look at once this legislation is passed, and if we are in a sort of situation of maybe China invading Taiwan, you could also look at secondary sanctions and using stable coins, which would be a bit unprecedented, but it's definitely something that the administration could look to. | ||
| Maybe a side note just to mention and to sort of finalize my remarks with, I would probably say a note of caution a little bit in stable coins. | ||
| They are a type of cryptocurrency. | ||
| As many of you guys will know, I mean, the whole ethos underlying cryptocurrencies was to sort of remove yourselves from traditional finance and oversight from government accountability mechanisms. | ||
| So the further this administration could go into increasing oversight, increasing accountability, there might be a bit of a pushback because that really, yeah, there's a sort of philosophical debate that might come up not long in the future, and I think that's one to pay attention to. | ||
| Yes, absolutely. | ||
| It's quite a predicament for the stable coins and cryptocurrency in general. | ||
| Regulation and oversight legitimizes its existence, and yet the people who are very tried and true into the crypto space, that is the antithesis of everything they stand for. | ||
| So the last topic that I'd like to move into with all of you, I think it's quite applicable to all of your work, is the concept of public buy-in and trust where it's able to be built, but more importantly, public buy-in. | ||
| So, a question that I have for each of you, and you can, whoever feels most comfortable answering first, can go right ahead, is: it seems almost certainly that technologies have developed faster than the general public can gather a good understanding of them, and that is likely to continue. | ||
| So, how can policymakers and also industry leaders communicate emerging technology and the fundamentals of what those technologies are, their functions and their purposes, so we can foster an informed citizenry that is actually capable of providing the support needed for the investments and the policies to make it through Congress to support the US coming out on the other side of the US-China tech competition successfully? | ||
| I'll maybe take that one first, yeah, because I think it follows on from my last answer on stable coins in particular. | ||
| You mentioned, Kelsey, I think, in your sort of opening remarks to the previous section, like people eyes gloss over a little bit when you start talking about cryptocurrencies, sort of blockchain and ledger technology. | ||
| So, there definitely needs to be, a little bit like what Sam's mentioning, I think, with misinformation. | ||
| There needs to be sort of education around these issues, especially as they become more institutionalized, for sure. | ||
| And reducing that regulatory uncertainty, I think, definitely should be one of the aims of this administration. | ||
| There is a very noticeable step change from the previous administration in terms of its approach to cryptocurrencies. | ||
| You have the Presidential Working Group on Digital Assets, for example, a very early executive order to set that up. | ||
| The President's talked about the US becoming the crypto capital of the world and has specifically said that China shouldn't be in terms of that US-China competition. | ||
| But then you do have, I would say, potentially conflicting signals in other ways. | ||
| The Department of Justice recently disbanded the national cryptocurrency enforcement team, for example. | ||
| The ban has been lifted on Tornado Cash, which is essentially a mixer platform in cryptocurrencies, which essentially helps users of cryptocurrencies obscure their identities. | ||
| So, there definitely seems to be a sort of rolling back from the previous administration, at least, in terms of sort of law enforcement. | ||
| So, I think there is a potential for mixed messaging there because I think the average sort of American consumer will want regulatory certainty and will want to know that what they're investing in isn't one of these sort of crazy coins that goes up and down in the stock market too dramatically. | ||
| And stable coins, I think, is probably the primary vehicle of which that could happen. | ||
| But there needs to be, I think, a kind of coherent narrative from the administration here to kind of introduce that regulatory clarity and make sure everyone is sort of bought into what this is actually what we're trying to achieve here. | ||
| Yes, I sorry to step. | ||
| I think it would be very beneficial for some clarity to separate the sort of stable coins and the rest of the cryptocurrency market from the scourge of the meme coins. | ||
| That is certainly not helping. | ||
| Maybe if I could, Kelsey. | ||
| I think when it comes to issues around fake news and misinformation and disinformation, the national intelligence community is in an understandable bind. | ||
| There's only so much that the government can say to secure public buy-in. | ||
| I mean, it's totally understandable that a lot of information needs to remain underwraps for national security considerations. | ||
| This was particularly interesting and particularly came to a head in the Murthy versus Missouri discussions that took place. | ||
| This was, as many of you might know, the attempts from a number of states to stop communications between the government and social media organizations. | ||
| States had accused the government of basically trying to force social media companies to take down some of their content, which impacted people's freedom of speech. | ||
| And when the FBI gave a number of pieces of evidence during the case, we quite literally had to read between the lines because a lot of the content was redacted. | ||
| And some of the officials that were speaking during these appearances had to speak in incredibly vague terms. | ||
| So securing public buy-in is very difficult when you're shrouded in that national security concern. | ||
| Nevertheless, I think there's more that can be done. | ||
| I think one of the things that I think is incumbent is maybe upon social media companies to actually do a bit better around giving the public information about the sorts of information that exists on the platforms, maybe better access to data dashboards, for example, both for members of the general public and for researchers too. | ||
| I think maybe there's something around public support and policymaker support to those platforms that do prioritize echo chambers and algorithms too. | ||
| So there's a number of small emerging social media companies that are really trying to do that. | ||
| And obviously the public utilizes these platforms on a day-to-day basis. | ||
| So if we can have better platforms with less aggressive algorithms, access to information that people know where it comes from, its provenance, that could be really helpful too. | ||
| Very lastly, I'd say in terms of securing public buy-in, it's important to return to the sort of the three A's of some of this content, something I talk a little bit about in the report and a traditional technique for analysing bot networks specifically. | ||
| So we can look at anonymity. | ||
| Are some of these accounts actually seemingly being set up by somebody who doesn't really exist, have a sort of fake name, look a bit odd? | ||
| Their amplifications, so are they working together basically to churn out a lot of content? | ||
| And their activity, looking at the timing as well, you know, are they seemingly doing it all at the same moment? | ||
| So I think that sort of link and drawing that distinction from members of the general public pointing to those three A's can also secure buy-in in terms of helping them understand some of the worst excesses of some of these actors. | ||
| And I think building on kind of the cohesiveness argument that's been laid out quite clearly by my other panelists, there is an ends, ways, and means that needs to be stated clearly. | ||
| I actually think that in regards to our industrial policy, this administration is more prepared than any previous one to secure buy-in. | ||
| They have an enormous platform on some of the biggest social media sites that are out there, as well as pretty significant sway over traditional media as well at this moment. | ||
| And I would say their reach has not only catalyzed a large movement of people within the United States to care about politics in a way that they've never cared about it before, but also their support still remains relatively high despite all of the controversial policy changes that have been put in place. | ||
| And this is something we can't ignore. | ||
| I think it's easy in DC to be in that bubble where you're reading the scientific reports all the time and making conclusions based on that. | ||
| But for a large percent of our country, they are still looking towards our leaders with a sense of hope and optimism that this is going to work out in the end. | ||
| And I think we really owe it to them to make sure that if a direction is stated, regardless of whether that's the direction we would have chosen or not, that we make sure that the direction can be pursued in a way that is smart, is efficient, is helpful for our American public. | ||
| And I think interpretation is going to go a long way there, not just saying, well, this is exactly what we're going to do and this is what they're going to do, but thinking to ourselves and then saying what our long-term goals are. | ||
| What do we want the American public to know about the way our technology is running today? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| What do we want our America to look like in 10 years, in 20 years, in 30 years? | ||
| What is the vision that we are all mutually striving towards? | ||
| And then we can start to look at: well, are the mechanisms that we're putting in place now furthering those objectives? | ||
| And what side effects do we want to mitigate now so that we're not dealing with the unintended distortionary effects of these policies much, much further down the line? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Then I think I've got one more question left for you guys, and I'll try and make it a little bit more of a positive note and then we'll grab some questions from the audience and then we'll have a bit of a lunch reception afterwards. | ||
| So we've talked a lot about the risks and some concerns and our vulnerabilities. | ||
| I'd like to hear from all of you just very briefly where you think the greatest opportunities are. | ||
| So we can end on a bit of a positive note and know where we should go. | ||
| We're not here just to point out the potential vulnerabilities and the concerns, but also offer recommendations for how we move forward. | ||
| So where, in each of your opinions, is sort of our greatest set of opportunities lie currently. | ||
| For the purposes of my report, I would say that we have a huge amount of leverage right now. | ||
| And whether or not you agree or disagree with it, that's power. | ||
| We have the ability to do a lot with the sticks that we've put out. | ||
| And I think, you know, from that carrot and sticks metaphor, we can expand on a number of our goals. | ||
| There are things that we've kind of taken for granted, I think, in DC. | ||
| Things like that we have a huge trade imbalance and disparity, a huge debt problem in this country. | ||
| And everyone agrees that something needs to be done about it. | ||
| But in the absence of solid action towards fixing some of that, these types of changes that we're seeing now, I think, can be levered into successful changes in our relationships as well. | ||
| And hopefully, if what the Treasury Secretary says is correct, that we are kind of playing this 4D chess, that it's all baked into the plan, that we'll be able to see some of these eventual positive changes come to fruition. | ||
| And if not, I mean, I think that there is still plenty of opportunity for growth and for new change. | ||
| And as someone who studies innovation dynamism for a living, there is certainly no more dynamic environment, I think, than the one that we are in right now. | ||
| So is there a lot of risk? | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| I believe that we need to take these risks very seriously and address them with the brilliant policymakers I know that we have here. | ||
| But there is also a lot of opportunity. | ||
| And I think that if we can get all hands on deck right now to kind of manage what seems to be coming at us in a large wave, if we can sort all of that water into the areas where it's going to be most advantageous for us, this could be the start of something really exciting. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Similar to Courtney, actually, in terms of your opening remarks about sort of US power. | ||
| I mean, it's hard to overlook the continued dominance of the dollar. | ||
| I've obviously spoken about the risks here of that becoming less, I guess, less prevalent, but really, it would take something quite extraordinary for another currency, maybe a BRICS currency or the Chinese yuan, to get anywhere near what the dollar is to international and trade and transactions. | ||
| And with that, there's so much power. | ||
| I don't think that means that the US should necessarily rest on its laurels. | ||
| I think something my report talks about is maybe establishing this coordination unit, something called I've called the alternative payment methods strategic coordination unit, which brings together a lot of different US departments, agencies, indeed the new working group that the President has established, essentially to monitor developments in other countries. | ||
| And the piece I've written really talks about this as being a potential early warning signal for potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan. | ||
| But you could also utilize this unit really to maintain the USD's dominance, I think. | ||
| Maybe the other positive thing I would point to is sort of improving on what we have. | ||
| So one thing that I haven't really touched on in my remarks but features in the report quite heavily is the SWIFT banking system. | ||
| And there's lots of reforms and improvements that can be made there. | ||
| SWIFT is entirely almost entirely dominated again by dollars. | ||
| It's what most people use. | ||
| Even the Chinese alternative still has to rely on SWIFT for some of its messaging as well. | ||
| And there's definitely further reforms there that can make it more attractive as a destination for any slightly wavering countries or maybe BRICS adjacent countries who are thinking of going for an alternative. | ||
| So yeah, my optimistic take, I guess, to round things off is that the dollar remains incredibly strong regardless of what's happened this week or for the last few months. | ||
| And despite China's best efforts, it's a huge advantage that the US has and it's definitely worth underlining that fact. | ||
| Well I love the language of opportunity, Kelsey. | ||
| I think that's a really good way to end. | ||
| And certainly I think it draws comparisons maybe with the opportunity and the optimism that JD Vance brought to the Paris AI summit earlier on in the year about the US embracing the challenge of AI and all the opportunities that that brings for the country. | ||
| We have obviously seen the repeal of the previous administration's AI executive order and we are due a policy, a big new refresh of policy in the summer. | ||
| So that represents a real opportunity for the government to put in place support for some of these defensive technologies that I've talked a little bit about today. | ||
| I love the idea around additionally sort of supercharged chief AI officers within the federal government and actually seeing how that pans out will be really, really interesting. | ||
| Again, giving them an opportunity to develop some of these defensive technologies and build those defensive technologies into their departmental AI strategies that will newly be published too. | ||
| America is the land of opportunity and we obviously have a wonderful technology ecosystem here that are developing new defensive capabilities all the time. | ||
| Likewise, a huge amount of stuff is being done in the misinformation and disinformation space in universities as well. | ||
| So at Arizona State University, some wonderful stuff on deep fake audio is being undertaken. | ||
| There's a wonderful research collective that's working out of MIT on this stuff too. | ||
| And I think there needs to be an institutional doubling down of that relationship between the academic community and the policy community here in DC too. | ||
| Very finally, I mean, we come from across the pond, so perhaps a nice note to end on, which is just this international collaboration point, particularly between five eyes nations. | ||
| There is all sorts of best practice that is being led from around the world, which we can draw upon here in the US in order to tackle the worst excesses of fake news. | ||
| So, just to give a very quick example, in Australia, we currently have a federal election taking place at the moment, and the Australian government has a register of the worst cases of disinformation that it publishes online for consumers to see, and that's a really nice repository of information for people. | ||
| So, I think that would probably be my final collaborative note that I would end on. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Well, I'd like to thank all of you for coming today and having this discussion. | ||
| I want to see if we have any questions in the audience. | ||
| I think we'll take maybe one or two. | ||
| I see the food is set up, so I know you will want to run over there. | ||
| Yes, go right ahead. | ||
| I'm not sure if there's a microphone around. | ||
| I'm Matthew Wallen, I'm Courtney's boss at ASP. | ||
| I actually got a question for you, Sam, on the idea of this sort of disinformation review organization board. | ||
| It seems to me that we sort of attempted that in this country. | ||
| We formed the Disinformation Governance Board at the Department of Homeland Security just specifically to look at foreign disinformation coming into the United States. | ||
| And within about a month of that being formed, there was some media reporting absolutely excoriating the woman who was put in charge of that based on nothing that she had done, just the concept that this board had existed. | ||
| And it seems that there's no real appetite in this country for such an organization to exist. | ||
| They're labelled as disinformation czars and that sort of thing. | ||
| And based on that, I'm wondering how you would build such a thing in a way that would actually be politically acceptable or palatable for a country like the United States. | ||
| It's a really good question. | ||
| I think there is an institutional public scepticism of some of these kinds of organizations. | ||
| And I think probably my underpinning thought would be that the organization that you referenced was obviously quasi-part of government, right? | ||
| I think it would have to be separate as much as possible from government, or at least perceived to be separate from the branches of government, potentially drawing upon people who have a range of expertise from different areas of government. | ||
| So, you know, the executive, the legislature, and maybe the judiciary, too. | ||
| I think there would also need to be a very deep focus on ensuring that it had a bipartisan make-up as well, and also people from academia and expert organizations involved with it too. | ||
| So, whichever side of the political spectrum you sat on, you might be able to see people who you might be more sympathetic to in terms of thinking that they might align with your particular views. | ||
| One thing that I think we should maybe draw some inspiration on with this is Meta's oversight board. | ||
| So Meta's been very good at publishing online. | ||
| Well, the Oversight Board has been very good at publishing online some of its recommendations. | ||
| So I think there would also need to be an element where this new organisation was much basically better at that and giving the public a real deep sense of how it had come to the decisions that it had made. | ||
| The last thing I would probably say is I think there also needs to be some kind of mechanism by which members of the general public can actually put forward their suggestions and there needs to be a very clear way in which the public can understand the sorts of issues that the organization chooses to go with and the organizations, the issues, sorry, that it may choose not to. | ||
| In the cases where it may choose not to focus on a particular issue, it could be, for example, that that issue had already been addressed by the Associated Press, for example, in one of their fact-checking outlets. | ||
| But I appreciate the challenge, but irregardless, I think that the alternative is much worse. | ||
| I had two pressing questions, so thank you for taking one of them because now I get to ask the second one. | ||
| So I work as a dual tech technology consultant and also as an AI researcher at the Federation of American Scientists. | ||
| So my question is related to AGI governance. | ||
| I saw in the report one of the recommendations was to have increased governance transparency on AI projects and particularly with like-minded allied nations. | ||
| So I'm curious, as we're looking at AGI, what do you think is the possibility of U.S. government maintaining operational control when the first AGI technology emerges while still maintaining the balance of like governance transparency with allies? | ||
| Like how do we sort of walk that fine line? | ||
| Was that towards anyone's prediction? | ||
| Otherwise, if anyone feels ready to say that. | ||
| No, whoever feels the most confident, you stumped them. | ||
| Well, I'd be happy to weigh in, though that is not the subject of my paper with new lines. | ||
| It is the subject of plenty of work that I do in my typical capacity. | ||
| I'll say that there is a time and a place for open and closed source models. | ||
| There's also very wide spectrums of open that open source really is. | ||
| And I, of course, want to highlight that open source doesn't actually mean what you might think it means. | ||
| There's still a lot behind the scenes there that is not typically disclosed. | ||
| So when it comes to working with our allies, and I'll rehighlight Five Eyes as an important distinction, not just all allies, but specifically allies that we have previously agreed to collaborate in certain areas on, that interoperability framework already exists for a number of other defense technologies that we have. | ||
| We have certain stipulations and agreements that allow our proprietary technology to be protected while at the same time recognizing that collaboration and interoperability are key, especially when we have a number of more close to the potential area of conflict actors that we're working with, like in the Indo-Pacific. | ||
| Some of those frameworks may need to be reassessed, some of them may not, but I would say that certainly it depends on who is going to be ultimately tasked with developing and sharing that technology. | ||
| If it is a defense contractor, for instance, they're going to come under a different set of expectations as other kinds of groups that could be working, let's say, a DARPA-esque mechanism. | ||
| Those types of innovations, while increasingly important, are certainly mechanisms that are held to a different set of standards and expectations when it comes to securing those things. | ||
| It's not as exciting of an answer as I think an alternative answer could be, which is like we're going to have to design entirely new modes of being to grasp this challenge. | ||
| In some cases, we will. | ||
| But thankfully, we are not new to innovation here in this country, and we're not new to sharing that innovation with deserving partners and allies. | ||
| And I think that will continue through AGI and through some of these more destabilizing technologies through the frameworks that we already have to kind of reduce some of like the duplication and unnecessary adding-ons of regulation that we already see in the space. | ||
| I think I totally agree with everything you said, Courtney. | ||
| I would make an addition perhaps to your excellent answer, which is that there needs to be a doubling down around integration between the public and private sector here. | ||
| So, you talked about control versus governance. | ||
| I mean, we're dealing with a technology here that is being propagated almost entirely by the private sector at the moment. | ||
| And then, we look on the other side of the coin and the governance picture, that will primarily be picked up by government actors. | ||
| So, it's almost a bit terrifying how little there is in terms of kind of liaison between those two sectors. | ||
| People from big tech organizations developing these technologies need to be in government. | ||
| They need to be there every day explaining to policymakers exactly what is happening and showing them the future of these technologies because they will be the people delivering the governance piece. | ||
| That might look like stress testing, kind of new AI technologies as they're coming online, too. | ||
| So, there's an operational element that I think government should be undertaking too. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And with that, I think we'll close out the panel time. | ||
| There will be food over there in just a moment, but I'd like everyone to give a big round of applause for our lovely panelists. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| Well, thank you all very much. | ||
| That concludes the discussion part of today's event. | ||
| Please feel free to have some food over there. | ||
| There's coffee, tea, all of that. | ||
| On Saturday, freshman Democratic Representative Suha Subramanyam speaks to constituents at a town hall in Fairfax County, Virginia. | ||
| Watch live at 3 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN. | ||
| C-SPAN now, our free mobile video app, or online at c-SPAN.org. | ||
| Next, White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt answering questions about a court order compelling the Trump administration to work to bring back a Maryland man who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador. | ||
| Kilmar Obrego-Garcia was removed from the U.S. under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. | ||
| This week, the Supreme Court ordered the government to facilitate his Return. | ||
| Ready? |