do much about it, but, two, it's the chinese individuals that are there. they know that we can't bring them to justice here. >> some of you said earlier that, i think it was you that mentioned earlier, there's a contradiction on our laws on privacy and free speech with the laws of the chinese communist party. the expectations they have on extra territorial applications of their censorship norms, can you elaborate on that? ... and could you walk us through a potential scenario, if you are a tiktok operating in the u.s. but accountable to a foreign government? i would love to hear your thoughts as well. if you have thoughts, feel free to weigh in. >> thank you for the question. i will share from personal experience first, i was born in

the communist country. i was born in a communist country. i grew up in soviet union a water was like under communism. my family could escape and finally escape, so for my personal experience, i will tell you that in the communist country no laws make difference except for what communist boss wants to get done. and under that premise i now will not suggest or speculate in a scenario where w a ceo like tiktok is in a room with the ccp officials, and they want the person to do whatever they want, what willan that come what ceo will comply with. that he or xi have a choice. so and i believe no, they don't have a choice. they will comply with the chinese law. >> thank you. i'll ask to the early question about -- i mean, chinese

government owns the radisson hotel chain, okay? publicly available. think for a second the ccp is an rest in a hotel profitability or is a sort of another surveillance capability? but china has the corporate credit rating system which is like the social credit rating system. corporations cannot function in china much like the rest of the world but there's more hurdles for corporations without the government approval for ex-wife and see. in china it is exempted. even if the chinese government doesn't go to a corporation and safe i need you to behave in line with these goals, with its a corporation is time to come in and ask for something, they're going to look at what if you done for the ccp, what you get up in the ccp's best interest. that is an enormous course of tool when the company knows that he can't getoo certain licenses, permits et cetera from the government if it doesn't comply in any respect to advance the

ccp's agenda. of course is going to engage in the first behavior. that's what expected. company so what's expected even if the ccp doesn't record tell them, they know they have to if they want permits, et cetera. >> anything to add? >> nothing to n add. >> would you say it would be accurate to characterize that effectively that claimed by they tiktok ceo with project texas amounts to him trying to describe that he created a one company, to make system approached with project texas? and do we sure are positive a more faith in one company to make system model he's professing tol have created thn the one country two systems model that epically failed in china? >> something fun worth doing what you just lagged, u.s. government has a defense production authority, it is

compulsory. but if the government decide to initiate surveyec to tiktok and ask all of these sort of, like if i'm going to believe you on texas project one of the things you're doing? get the response and follow up by doing audits because if the responses are compulsory the government can go audit, whether the responses are true. the government should take some forensic auditors anything would be really fun to see what the government finds and, of course, were going to find a lot of violations with the u.s. law which image inequity comply with other prohibitions that were putting on you. but that's another instance where the government action has legal authority to assess safety at high risk actors of our operating in the united states. nobody decided to do it. we are still waiting for somebody stand up and take action. the yes have the authority i think it woulde be fun oxley to

exercise it in the ways your question was getting at and they just mentioned. >> thank you. any further questions? >> i just have one of the question for mr. corrigan. going back to some of your recommendations, which are very helpful. one of them, number two, is fully fund with an replace programs. how much money are we talking about? >> so the rip and replace program which initially focused simply on replacing huawei zte equipment in commercial networks was funded at $1.9 billion. the initial wave of applications for rip and replace funding was around 5 billion and this is after they be good everything. the once got up and was 5 billion. that's a $3.1 billion budget shortfall for the firstst roundf application for two companies. if procurement fansre were

expanded and the government was going to use the rip and replace broken to offset the cost as a think they should, weul will be talking in the o order of i mean at least tens of billions of dollars to do so. [inaudible] >> i have one more question. and your third one was banton hibiscus sectors. how would you triage where to start? >> so, i i mean, it's a great question. again, this is a bit outside of the area of expertise. we have a lot of great people working national security apparatus would be able to figure that out. i would n say that it's probably somewhere between a parks, local government parks department and like a nuclear power plant. i think it's really context dependent. i think it depends alike with the specific technology is, the kinds of capabilities that it

would offer bad actors are able to reach ito and the axis networks so whatever it is employed. and i think that those are determinations the need to be made by the regulators that oversee these entities. and right now these way that the ice ets authority is set up, there's a wide range of variables that were taken into account when making determination. these orders they can issuet e n be as targeted or as broad as they see fit. and same with the federal acquisition security council early it. when they are at a do think, i don't mean to come off as saying procurement bands are not warranted. i think they are wanted in the situation. i just think when we doing so we need to be thinking about the impact it will have on the organization that needs to comply. in some cases i mean this should

be custom compliance cost of war. some cases those be very wanted and i think those are the areas we want to be targeting and have potentially vital funding e to make up any of that gap. if you have ap a situation whee say you have public transit authority and in complying with the procurement bands they would have to shut down 50% of the bus lines, the rail lines, like that's a relaunch cost. they can comply with that but there will be massive cost to thend end-users to have that service and in this case if you want to some government stepping in. i don't know if that answers your question. >> thank you. and i think we probably have hours of questions, so you may be expecting some written questions after, and hope that you be able help us. i share the concern about the tiktok. i mean, volume of collection and the ccp authorities written, unwritten persuasive as they

are, you know, to me create a real risk vector. think where to look at this in two ways. one, what is the platform risk that tiktok poses an enormous platform risk? mr. tsarynny, you talked about again pixilated interception. i mentioned pixilated viruses. we have the car whisperer platform that can listen in on any bluetoothn conversation and high gain bluetooth antenna works for amount, not just 30 feet. so there are so many opportunities and vectors and attack services, et cetera, to collect data. shouldn't we also be looking at whether there are kinds of data that should not be subject to mass collection, or should be anonymized, geolocation data, for example? which, you know, when you have

suited to active security clearance you can't wear a fit it into a secure location because that data can be collected and then they can determine where you live and follow you, et cetera, et cetera. so should we do looking at this from two angles? one, what other platforms for collection? but, two, what kind of data gives us the biggest concern? and how can that data be aggregated to create profiles and risks, risks in a very real sense in terms of intelligence gathering, in terms of, ms. nikakhtar as you pointed out about water systems, all the various things. it seems we have an incomplete matrix now. we're playing catch-up and we're not doing it very well. this commission four years ago identified block inc., you know, as an example of a ccp sponsored

platform being used in ports around the globe that collects all data ond ship cargoes, , and 90% of u.s. military cargo travels on commercial ships. it seems to me, you know, and again i want to stop tiktok's collection, but it don't think that is success. i think success is i much broad. any comments from the panelists? >> thank you. yes. definitely. like you mentioned there's a couple of issues and they are kind of layered type of issues. oneis is what kind of informatin is collected should be collectible or uncollectible or prohibited from being collected? second, what is at information, should be collected used for? what's the impact? and then what's the likelihood of its quantity is for the impact? what kind of harm can it cause us?

and the third is actually should there be any kind of rules to govern the first two? it's actually controls in ensuring that those rules are followed and no laws or usefulness the followed, or no regulation is useful unless it's really followed. so to answer the first one, yes, a lot of information is collected and youll can call it broadly, the way data brokers or any other companies look at it,, the want to click as much as possible to monetize it for commercial purposes and then for some cases it can be used for espionage. what can be used for, like you mentioned the cameras and, of course, tracking the cargo. now the cameras like in the school district or on the street, they can track personnel. they know where everyone is atan any point of time. so somebody wants to strike, they find the best time to strike, they can find it because they know where the least personnel is present. and the third point is really at

this time very little accountability, very little to no accountability in most jurisdictions are most aspects of the data collection. >> commissioner wessel, may i also that if anybody is going to be a victim of the opium breached by zero faith in the government's ability to keep our information secure and sort of clear screening at the airport now and information at the social security administration, the department of motor vehicles, et, cetera. the government systems have a lot of chinese hardware and software in it, and our government can't even safeguard our information. genetics has been covered a lot but the other thing i i wanteo mention it shows demographic information. a if the chinese, for example, information from a sporting goods store, they will know the amount likely number of children in the population by how many kids bikes andke kids t-shirts d stuff. we don't want the ccp to have that kind of information.

it could target the tax base and demographic information. >> may i add one more point? about -- >> go ahead. >> one point like you mention, discord, in creating discord. we've seen information being collected about health conditions, miscarriages, abortion information is the one which is very sensitive, and can be used to create discord here i think that all bleeds into our next panel as well as we look at ai ande what large language modules, et cetera models. my time is elapsed. i think the panel, i'll turn back to the chair. >> thank you. thank you to her witnesses for the excellent testimony today. we are at times a wind up undergoing a break for ten minutes and then we will resume with panel two. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> our second panel for military applications, china's significant investments artificial intelligence and quantum sites, breakthroughs in these fields can potentially lead to a paradigm shift in the way wars are wait with wide ranging reaching ramifications for the regional global balance of power. we'll start with jacob stokes from senior fellow for the indo-pacific security program at the center for a new american security. mr. stokes print server iny the white house on the nasty staff of them vice s president joe biden, senior senior adve security advisor as well as acting special advisor to the vice president for asia policy. he willvi provide testimony on e battlefield applications of ai as well as the broader geostrategic implications of ai development for u.s. strategic,

u.s.-china strategicstpe competition. this is his first time testifying before the commission. commission. next, we'll hear from mr. nathan beauchamp-mustafaga -- i hope i press set correctly -- policy research at the rand corporation.at prior to joining ray and he was the editor of china of the jamestown foundation who examine china's efforts to leverage large language models, ll ends in its approach to cognitive warfare, , particularly for the purpose of manipulating information on social meter is also a new voice here at the commission. the mother from doctor edward parker, a physical scientist at rand where his current research focuses on emerging quantum technologies, ai and cybersecurity. prior to joiningng ray and dr. parker received his phd in theoretical physics at the university of california santa

barbara. his testimony was addressed china's aspirations to integrate quantum technologies into its military, military comparisons between u.s. quantum chinese quantum industrial bases. this is also doctor parkers first time testifying before the commission. thank you all very much for your testimony and i would like to remind you all, all of our witnesses to please keep the remarks to seven minutes, reserve time for questions and answers. mr. stokes will begin with you but you just want to put the comet is with the last panel, we're learning a lot. it dr. parker you can describe for me weekly later on quantum physics, , i would appreciate i. i attended a full disruptive technology course up at m.i.t. for three days, and still don't know. so i appreciate it. mr. stokes.

>> well, good morning. thank you, chairman barrasso, chairman helberg andou the commissioners for by me to provide testimony on this critical topic. it's a special honor for me as a former member of the commission staff. my presentation will assess china's progress in developing and fielding military artificial intelligence within the people's liberation army. all i will focus on application led to autonomous systems and battlefield functions and support. i will also talk about implications of military security aspects of u.s.-china strategic competition. at the broadest level chime takes an expansive view of military ai's potential to help the pla be, a world-class military by midcentury if not sooner. beijing considersne military aio be an essential component of its campaign to reach the level of military technological development itno calls intelligt -- were ai and other emerging technologies supercharge the pla combat power. in october 2022 general

secretary secretary xi jinping called on the pla to quote speed up the development of unmanned intelligent combat capability, unquote. beijing's efforts could be bolstered by its military fusion program which allows the pla to harness commercial sector technologies for military uses. with regard to implementation in the pla, beijing as engaged in extensive military ai research,, development and expectation. but so far open-source information about the pla actually fielding military ai systems at scale remains fairly sparse. aunt and could autonomous systems i i would often referd to as drones can china has a large and sophisticated drone industry for both the civilian and military sectors. but those systems appear to possess only partial forms of autonomy and cannot yet execute the most advanced types of autonomy that would be enabled by artificial intelligence. in other words, is to rely heavily on human operators.

as the department of defense 2023 china's military power report says, the pla is quote pursuing greater autonomy unquote across a range of systems for various battlefields purposes. regarding ai in the pla's battlefield functions and support, china's like already, china likely already uses ai for some cyber applications with the technology is mature as well as intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance or eyes are tasks that only have high levels of automation. and next stage for an imitation in the pla in this part of the pla will likely the adopting the technology or no risk uses like logistics, maintenance and training, particularly when similar commercial ai systems exist and to be you easily adapted forrp those purposes. eventually the pla could implement ai into more of his decision-making and command-and-control functions to move towards what china calls a

command brain, where machines and humans are seamlessly integrated. those applications would necessarily i t start more at te tactical level where the tasks are more formulaic and/or move up to handle more complex tasks at the operational and strategic levels later on. it's important to note china could fall short of its military ai ambitions for multiple reasons, these include technological shortfalls, and lack of trained personnel, bureaucraticck competition, rampant corruption, the ccp's need for tight control and even a lack of funding at pla priorities compete in other resources.te for to be clear, none of these obstacles mean washington can be complacent, far from it but they should remind us effectively developing and fielding cutting edge military technology takes much more than grand plans, , en for china. that said, if beijing manages to overcome those obstacles,,

military ai system could pose risk to the united states across several categories. i will highlight four. the first is potential shifts the military balance of power a small improvements add up and later on if china achieves fundamental breakthroughs in military ai and give it an adventure over the united states. the second risk relates to a recruit autonomous systems that might have newsy capabilities or which beijing might see us more acceptable to use because it don't risk human operators directly. the third of risk is in command control and communications or c c3, conversely, the use of ai to degrade u.s. and allied c3. the fourth day of risk relates to nuclear weapons if ai capabilities enable new nuclear tracking or counterforce options or its date and a great ai into the nuclear complexes in dangerous ways. so those are the risks.

i will conclude with five recommendations for u.s. policymakers as respond tos china's pursuit of military artificial intelligence. they are first take bold action to constrain china's progress in ai for military and repressive purposes but do so in a in a relatively narrow way that avoids self-defeating steps. two, build u.s. military ai capabilities to stay on the cutting edge. i keepp part of which will be robust testing and evaluation to make sure military ai systems are safe, reliable, and effective. third, continue to shape global rules, norms and institutions around the deployment and use of military ai. and i would note your china is already actively trying to shapi the rules here and proposed a global governance initiative last october. fourth, do you should engage with china and a clear eyed with the military i risks, and in fifth and finally, the goods

should prioritize intelligence gathering and analysis on as well as the met -- net assessment of capabilities which is a set are evolving quite quickly solve wrap it up there. thank you for your attention and look forward to your question. >> thank you. please. >> trigon. >> thank you for the apogee to testify today. about of the chinese military use prospects of generative ai for social media manipulation and more broadly on the evolution of cyber enabled influence operation of a special honor also as former commission staff if i want to make three key points for the commission today. first, generative ai has potential to revolutionize cyber enabled influence operations and supercharge malign actors ability to undermine the democratic process in the united states and round the world. the key breakthrough of generative ai is dramatic

improvement in authenticity and scale at a lower cost also reducing human labor requirements and the probability of detection. second, the pla is already known toea be one of several chinese communist party's state actors engage in cyber enabled therence operations and are many reasons we should be concern concerned that the china military will incorporate generative ai for improved effectiveness att scale. third, congress and the broader u.s. government need tot be prepared to live in a world without much worse information is private. more convincing a pervasive malign influence operations. this that includes the risks of chinese election interference. i want to briefly touch on three main topics. chinese military strategy, capabilities and it did come as well as the potential policy. first on china's military strategy. the pla has long targeted and tailored influence operations. social media gave them targeted il and generative ai is essential to give the tailored il. the china military still

overarching operational concept for influence operations a cognitive domain operations which explains combining psychological warfare with cyber operationsor to shape adversary behavior in decision-making, end quote with they likely intention to quote, deter u.s. or third-party entry into a future conflict or as an offensive capability to shape perceptions polarize the society, end quote. . the shift in how the chinese military thinks about the battle space from the traditional air sea and land based in cyber. this year is not formally the doctrine but it's a transfer of the community. if it's by supercharging the

performance and doesn't seem to be a significant shift in the tactics. to summarize broadly, the writings are reviewed for the testimony. they absolutely recognize the potential for the ai to dramatically improve the content generation and distribution and recognize it as per scale, speed and cost among others. i observed the research discussing three main uses for influence operations. first, influencing public opinions on large-scale bot networks. second, producing intentionally biased publicly available models. third, specifically degrading support for adversarial leadership. this aligns with existing explicit interest by researchers for content sometimes called synthetic information as well as the large-scale populace. i want to note the writing on the topic of the generative ai and influence operations express immense concern about the potential use by the united states against the ccp in so many words undermine.

the public reports on the u.s. government activities especially those distributed to the department of defense are closely watched by the researchers and taken as validation of the intended against china. this is not just an academic point. some researchers recall for adopting cyber enabled i/o to respond. on the topic of the chinese military capabilities and options, so far we have no direct evidence the pla is specifically adopting the ai for its ongoing operations. however, i argue the pla is currently capable of doing so if it so chooses. the report highlights the researcher who's been working on the system for online public opinion struggle since at least 2016 and automated online influence system such as 2019. basically the technology vision in 2019 has come true with breakthroughs over the past

years. other party state actors have likely taken adopting ai and the evidence suggests it may be improving. last on intentions, it is supercharged objectives such as shaping foreign and public and domestic public opinion deterring the involvement in the conflict and degrading among other objectives. however, i want to specifically flag the risk. the declassified intelligence on foreign election interference in 2022 found it is approved efforts to try to influence the handful involving members of both political parties,." and the threat assessment said beijing, quote, showed a willingness with politicians.

a 2021 article by the researchers suggest at least some in the pla are already using social media to identify those that are pro- or anti-china in my analysis back for election interference. i provide more details in my written statement but in the summary with known views to train the model and then use it to predict how other politicians view china and validated by consulting intelligence analysts. in their own words, the capabilities intended to assist intelligence analysts and assessments in future past the u.s. china relations. i will highlight several and have more in my written testimony. first, require social media platforms to label the content and redouble their efforts to combat fake accounts. second, committed now the commiy releasing nonpartisan declassified assessment of the

intelligence community following the 202014 election. third, encouraged i want to information share both publicly and privately about and support taiwan's engagement with other democracies to share the lessons learned and best practices for combating. engaging dialogue with china on ai driven cyber enabled operations to explore the possibilities for an agreement of prohibiting the capabilities. fifth, conduct an independent assessment of the net benefits of the government information efforts including whether the dod combat and command activities aligned with of the data priorities and strategic messaging. thank you for the opportunity to testify. i look forward to questions. >> thank you. cochair, thank you for inviting me to testify before the committee today. quantum information science and technology has been recognized as a strategically important

emerging technology by the highest levels of leadership within the united states and the prc government. most applications are still early-stage and still many unknowns regarding which ones will eventually prove useful. but in the long run to greatly improve the capabilities to collect, process and transmit information with significant applications for both national security and economic prosperity. a specific potential applications relevant to the security include positioning applications, material science and decryption. quantum science is a highly international exercise, focusing on the individual nations does not capture the complete picture. at that having been said, the united states and china are the two clearly leading nations in quantum technology oriented be a most relevant metrics including patenting scientific publishing and demonstrating prototype systems.

.. i would say for the most important national security of boston technology. the nicest is a good fortune to lead and almost all of the mostt important areas of quantum technology. moreover it has a huge advantage the prc does it has huge advantage the prc does not, network of close alliances with many of the other

leading nations in the field. quantum technology other than atomic clocks into actual operational systems. the u.s. military has begun field testing quantum initial testers and clocks in operational environments. to be fairly close behind a few important areas such as superconducting quantum computing. there is a long road ahead. the highest impact quantum technology application are probably still at least a decade away. u.s. policymakers should not get complacent there's still plenty of time for global technology, leadership change hands. u.s. and china are each other's strongest research collaborators in quantum science. was in both directions.

chinese quantum technology firms. i'm not aware of any u.s. firms are considering doing severed private industry plays a relatively small role in the chinese quantum technology ecosystem. most development there occurs a national laboratories. i suspect executive order will have little impact on quantum efforts in the near term. i would like to conclude with a few thoughts regarding steps the u.s. government could take to help ensure continued u.s. strength quantum technology. if congress determines this technology should be a strategic priority most important step toward that goal would be to continue to invest in fundamental science research. another important step would be to strengthen the u.s. workforce including both the domestic and the foreign pipeline skilled

talents. while ensuring that would be in place. would run the risk of slowing scientific progress i believe it narrowly targeted export controls on specific chinese organizations of concern are low risk. congress should carefully consider the impact on the u.s. commercial industry of any proposed broad export controls on quantum technology. unless those export controls are directly tied to a concrete military capability. finally there are three aspects of the emerging quantum technology ecosystem the u.s. government should consider the flows of skilled talents at intellectual property between the u.s. and competitor nations, and the supply chain for critical components and

materials. i do not see any clear needs for immediate action regarding the topics. but all three of them represent potential risks to the long-term stability of the quantum -- the emerging quantum ecosystem or thank you i look forward to taking your questions. thanks thank you, each of you we will begin with questions. we are going in reverse alphabetical order. so i get to go first. jacob, let me ask some questions and appreciate your testimony. the first is and it may be something you have not looked at. i have seen a recent reporting open source reporting about ukraine's use of ai on battlefields in terms of target acquisition et cetera. number one, have you looked at that at all or are you aware of it or to, aware of any chinese efforts to study what ukraine

has done and how it's been applied on the battlefields so we have better understanding? ask absolutely. the war in ukraine has served as a laboratory for a lot of these emerging technologies. it's being watched around the world including china. not just how ukraine is doing it but how russia is responding and the technological tit for tat they have going on the battlefield there. it is certainly an area of key interest for china they have not fought a conflict in a long time and certainly not with the emerging cutting-edge technologies. one particular area that i am concerned about is that russia in the context of fighting that conflict is gathering a lot of data from it systems in the course of fighting that conflict that potentially could be useful in the china russia relationship that kind of data or insight and technology drawn from that might later be transferred to china.

i think of that something will have to watch closely as we go forward. and as it relates to ai and general there are four parts of it. there is the chips for computing power there's algorithms, there is data then there's the talent to make those things come together. we think about china's progress we will look at each of the component parts in the data probably the algorithm space this is a place for china may be able to gain some advantage indirectly through china. >> also how would you assess that you asked and i know some is in your testimony the utilization for example addictive maintenance and the other opportunities for ai. how would you judge u.s. capabilities and implementation? again you also talked about it's

early for china but what visibility or lessons might be gain? >> that u.s. has been very focused on this it's a pretty bipartisan way with things like the development of the chief digital and artificial intelligence office in the department of defense. recently announced dod replicator initiative focused on accrued systems in particular. and also a strategy on data analytics. ai adoption so there is certainly a recognition of what is at play here. the challenge is going to come up again the challenge that many other areas of weapons procurement and other systems procurement meat which is our procurement is based on the 20th century is not always well positioned to leverage technology in the 21st century. there's a lot of energy and dod and trying to get ahead of that there is the obstacles are pretty big.

that is going to be a place of a remove from experimentation to application and scale we are going to have to push forward to keep up with china. also thinking how to do that in a way for the system some are safe, secure, reliable with testing evaluation look like. in particular in systems that can change over time as they learn. you can basically assess a system when it is built but how do you monitor it over time? there are some unique challenges in testing for ai systems were working to get our arms around in dod and in the services as well. >> let me connect the last panel on this one and get your thoughts. the last panel a lot of it was about data collection. one component was data collection. for generative ai and influence cognitive impact et cetera there

is the broad application there's also the targeted application. it would seem to me the ability to target certain cohorts, whatever you will is significant. how do you view the last discussion about data acquisition platforms like tiktok which are able to gain a large data sets and everything from geolocation to particularized information. how does that fit with your comments about generative ai its impact on elections potentially other disruptive approaches? >> it is a great question. i would certainly say it fundamentally it recognized the importance data. talks a lot about data from open source perspective it's difficult to look behind the

curtain as jake was sick once the quality of their data? how well do they manage how did they leverage their data it's a really interesting question. it's hard to look at in depth from an open source perspective. but to your specific question on non- u.s. own social media platforms it's absolutely something that come into can play and looking at chinese military ratings i haven't seen much specific discussion of tiktok or geolocation data et cetera. the theoretical risk is certainly there. and that was something i would consider britt also note beyond a tiktok chinese government and affiliated organizations have been collecting vast throes of data not just u.s. citizens but globally. there is a question of how much researchers would have direct

access to that data. theoretically that would support their efforts to improve the use of generative ai. >> i would just say we have seen over many years some of us have been on the commission the theoretical risk turns into a realrisk in a short period of t. if we can think of it they have thought of it and they're and the probablyputting it into. commissioner schreiber? >> thank you, thank you to our witnesses for this is a very key point it strikes me the stakes are very how you have described it as potentially shifting the military balance in china's favor. some of this to be difficult to track from the concept and rnd envelop development of capabilities to understand the progress they're making in terms of application. seeing and training for contingencies. is this disinformation points

that's a result of generative ai or is it classical? i had a couple specific questions on recommendations and a follow-up if i have time. chinese further development of artificial intelligence with military applications i don't think i noted any specifically under that. are there particular things you have in mind that would constitute bold action in this case? >> to hear it we have to think about, thank you commissioner for your question. here we think about the categories we described earlier. if we think back to october 2022 semi conductor chip controls those are fairly bold and were updated in 2023. someone described them as a leaky that's a good way to think

about them they are still a black and great market around them. it is still possible to access that computing through cloud computing and china's making domestic advances in its capabilities. that is one node. we also have the think about how we look at open source algorithms the data and the question. i support the chip controls i think they were the right levels of boldness and in many ways cutting the feet out from china's domestic manufacturing capabilities at the high end. specifically japan and the netherlands or a lot of the most chipmaking is made. we are going to strike a balance

as it reiterates on how it responds to those kinds of controls. for example on cloud computing my understanding is the commerce department has put forward in u.s. cloud computing companies to report who their customers are. thinking about that comparing that against military entities that was updated just yesterday but those kind of actions we will think about across the full spectrum of ai. >> thank you. your recommendation about social media should be required to identify when const is a result of generative ai is that simple to do? no.

is it simple technological to identify. easy to get such a law passed? >> it is a good question i think there are two parts to this. one is social media at regulationfor congress, the u.s. government that certainly an ongoing conversation as you mention technological challenge to identify content produced by generative ai models. right now it does seem the offense has the advantage it's much easier to produce this then is to identify. over all at scale it seems offense has the advantage been part of my recommendation was indeed for the u.s. government to support investing and probably long-term abilities to.

that is not to be just u.s. government it's beneficial in private partner social media companies are very well-placed to support that technology. one because they have the data so it would be an opportunity to potentially work collaboratively with social media platforms help do that. >> thank you. it seems like that could be low hanging fruit if we could do it from a technological standpoint just labeling and identified. i'll have another question if there's a second round. >> commissioner vice chair. >> thank you, thank you all for your important testimony today. i want to jump in right were commissioner schreiber left off. but we are talking about this need to invest in understanding this and what the long-term need would be. what are we talking about as we

give recommendations to congress what are our numbers how big you think this is? and my second question following on what we just said do we do this media literacy training for others in government? >> those are two great questions. specifically the cost investment i do not have specific numbers available to me. it's worth it on this front. other colleagues have done random work the frequent recommendations is investing in civic engagement and immediate literacy. so for example eod employees who have security clearance go through an annual security clearance to update processing to specific training. so far to the best of my

knowledge that training does not include learning the basics of media literacy. there are opportunities for congress the broader u.s. government to mandate a requirement or otherwise support broader u.s. government employee literacy awareness of these risks. i would certainly say it doesn't have to stop at u.s. employees it's a whole of society challenge. generative ai does not make a new problem but it emphasizes the risks in the shortcoming so far makes an opportunity to support outreach and improve broader citizen awareness of these risks. and improve broader citizen awareness of these risks. mr. parker the end of your statement you talked about the three things we should be monitoring and understanding better. i want to give you a minute to expand on it a little bit more.

and why it particularly? >> thank you for the question, commissioner. the three things i list at the end which i described as a ruse the u.s. government has limited visibility are first financial health second bills and felt and third is the supply chain. briefly i will touch on all three of them. the financial help the technology is very early stage there are big questions as to realistic timelines for revenue-generating applications. most industry investments in quantum computing which is arguably the basic technologically healed with in quantum technology there is a lot of inter- capitol at this a lot of active sector activate the companies who have reported

revenue fairly modest levels of actual revenue. there is a question to the long-term financial stability of the technology timelines are aligned with the current state of industry. what steps might be taken if there was a recession which made the environment less favorable for deep tech technology secondly regarding the flow of international property there's a lot of foreign talent in the ecosystem and the many graduate students are from foreign countries. i think on the whole that is a good thing for the research enterprise but there are questions as to what are the appropriate protections for intellectual property not only

among students but companies which may not have particular expertise and cybersecurity for example. small start up companies. third is to the supply chain technology and there's many different approaches being pursued. i think there is a general lack of understanding as to resend the most important components are coming from. which countries they are coming from as we go at several levels the supply chain whether they're coming from competitive countries how how robust the supply is to be diversified across multiple vendors. and what a mature quantic the supply chain would look like. all three of those areas are areas where more information would be helpful for having a perspective on ecosystem, even if immediate actions off necessarily need to be taken. thank you. >> thank you. >> cochair helberg.

>> thank you cochair wessel. i kindly ask you witnesses to keep the remarks as briefly as possible in interest off time. does the pla you cognitive warfare as a war fighting domain like land airspace and see? >> this. >> how muchch you believe the pa has invested in cognitive warfare? other public estimates the double. >> i know of no public available. >> do any of our other witnesses know of public -- to believe the pla actively working to train models to enhance the way targets americans through information operations and is cognitive warfare efforts? >> it's a good question. i can't point to specific possible they will pla research directly discussing training generative ai models.

right now the public available research that i've surveyed for my testimony was more on what have described the theoretical of understanding the value. but i would not be surprised if at least some of the pla were beginning to experiment and work with these models, yes. >> mr. stokes? >> i agree with mason's assessment that it think it would be prudent to assume that they are but it don't think we have good open source information on the topic right now. >> are right. are either of you aware of efforts to build an open and arrival called lego? does bytedance own tiktok and why have you believe that is a realib plausible risk that bytedance is using tiktok data to train its lego aliment? >> i don't have in-depth knowledge on bytedance for lego, but iow think in general the possibility of any companies .1

to have down with an unmistakable information. dona specific information on that topic. >> i would just add i mean i think every company in the country certainly china companies see that as a market opportunity for themselves and so i think you get a stance recent that they probably are if they can access the data. >> okay. so for the record do believe there is the risk that bytedance is using tiktok been to train its lego arm? >> yes. >> i they inherently dual use in usable in military context as well and wouldn't it be common sense for this country i to bar chinese social media company applications from harvesting and collecting vast amounts american user data to train advance a i'm also could be repurposed to kill americans? >> yes, i think it would be prudent to do that. >> is that your assessment as

well, mr. mustafaga? >> i think social media regulation is a challenging topic. i think it's absolutely worth considering whether foreign owned companies should be able to harvest the data of u.s. citizens. >> when we're talking about social media we're talking about social media companies under the control and influence of an foreign adversary government? and your response replies to those types of compass, is that right? >> yes. >> mr. stokes, on a scale of one to ten how heidi think the chinese leadership ranks ai in the modernization efforts and would you say we are at an affliction put at the history of the character wars is a finaly changed in the yearsar ahead? >> i believe they ranked it pretty high. so by their standards, there's

mechanization in formalization andd intelligent they say they'e reached mechanization of the work of the next stage but increase of trying to integrate with intelligence of the last stage is becoming want to go to speak whether they're able to actually do that is a question but i think that's how they characterize and understand the environment. >> and what you see as being the most important implication for american national security? how should we respond to their embracebr of ai in this intelligent concept that you describe? >> i think we should think about itd a long three lines. one is improving our own capabilities and make sure we can keep pace. two, how do do we slow down their abilities especially where it applies of the most dangerous applications thereof. .. domestically and internationally including in some cases with

china to shape the rules and norms to controlling this technology. it has to be a three-part strategy. >> can you expand more on the first when you describe about enhancing capabilities? the initiative are describedib earlier, i think recognition that they were potential to change with these new technologies and making sure we stand cutting edge not just of basic technologiesed themselvesy integrating them into our institutions and the right personnel to train and operate them and across all dod enterprises and we should understand what to do. >> a particular part of the children, targeting was the focus on all parts?

>> i think there might be more emphasis on trying to have these approaches to disabled or operations and as we go toward a more command-and-control architecture for the u.s., thinking in those same terms, a multi- day mean affair so is the multi decision warfare so across the chain i would say. is for mr. parker. as commissioner wessel mentioned we are still in learning mode when it comes to quantum technology. agreed can be used to conduct underground mapping?

sub surface magnetometer tree at publicly acknowledges. they could be used for underground detection yes in principle. the technology is not there yet but it certainly is theoretically possible. >> thank you. >> commissioner glass? >> many thanks to you all. to what extent do you think we are gathering intelligence with some of our international allies around chinese use of ai in the military space is adequate enough or if not what kind of a risk assessment should be due how much prioritization should be give this? what could congress do in that regard? that is my first question.

and to nathan, sorry i will mispronounce your last name and my apologies. you mention ai in the social media influence influence of the campaign we have upcoming elections this year what could congress immediately do or the administration do to help safeguard your raising your testimony. >> thank you. we have to draw from our closest allies but across the world. everyone will have a little bit they got a different hand on the element to use the metaphor what's going on with china in this particular space. broadly speaking we do need to make it a priority in terms of its intelligence collection. i am not an expert on all of the way she might gather that

intelligence but broadly speaking seeing leaders talk about the need to change the enterprise to catch up with the emerging technologies. the way we gather tech intelligence and synthesize it and analyze it might have to change. i cannot imagine a more important topic of the united states to make sure we get our understanding that we get that right. >> it is a key question this year. i will give you for pillars to think about. first is, as i was talking with the other commissioners before considering social media regulation or engagement it could be positive and collaborative mixer social media companies are well-positioned to do with the kid on their platforms to identify if

appropriate remove content and generative ai concert. empowers much is it possible the transparency on these topics social media companies can only provide so much information only have so much information. sometimes u.s. government has additional information and deep classified transparency is really important for supporting faith in election integrity. third is specific as a role to play in supporting the efforts in investing in those efforts. in terms of services that is something congress can play on as a key touch point but the broader american public and then lastly i do think it is worth having engagement with beijing on the topic. i saw cnn report yesterday morning fishing pain has promised president biden i

believe in and out twice he will not interfere in this year's elections. fbi director wray asked about it i will believe it when i see ita pretty old enough to remember when she champagne president president biden he would not militarize the south china sea i am heartened by the promise the bite administration is at a high level with beijing on the topic. but as an analyst i look at capability equals risk or threats and both are there. and so i am concerned. even with shaping a promise is xi jinping to follow through? is the rest of the chinese communist party state going to follow through? it is not managed every day day today going on we keep sit here and third how do we define election interference?

it might need something different for the u.s. i think there's a lot of challenges to that it's good to see the vita ministration engaging with the last point i will make as jake mentioned briefly the china government put out a white paper ahead of the uk summit in october of last year and a global governance. one of those tenants actually said no one should be doing ai driven social media information that is low-lying fruit for the bite administration to say great, we agree let's not do it. so far i've not seen the bite administration see that as an opportunity. again we can discuss whether we should can trust chinese government pledge on that topic but it's an opportunity for positive engagement. >> thank you. >> commissioner i could continue with you. you said in your testimony that

the ccp fears the united states would use and generative ai to undermine. could you say more about what they are afraid of? is this an expression of genuine concern or is it a projection of the thing they would like to be able to do? >> thank you. this is an underappreciated aspect of ccp thinking. so i am reading these pla's they talk a lot about the foreign threats they discuss the western threat sometimes they specifically address the u.s. this is part of a long-standing broader ccp concern of u.s. information operations. nearly every single crisis at some point in time is blamed on the united states. we could go on and on and on. is very kindly put out several white papers of the last couple

years neatly on longform list their view of u.s. government activity. ccp mp elite butte doesn't mean we have to agree with that but it's understand the perspective as an analyst it's important. what really drew my concern was some of these writings described it as to fort tat and retaliation and response. a few of these report to congress last year said the same thing. i quoted in my written testimony rev pla perspective or engaging in justify a response. i think it is a perceived that's important to understand. >> you referred in your testimony to the supply chain for quantum computing and quantum devices.

would you say a little bit more about what is involved? with the computing devices were made out of entirely different components like the typical semi conductors that go with all the other computers. and who makes these things at this point? what are they and where did they come from? >> thank you for the question. it is correct to say the supply chain is very, very different from traditional computing technology. if you require or control. the true heart of it revolves around to get things down to 1000's of a degree in some cases. the refrigeration different ones work in different ways some

revolved around rick there's no supply chain by and large most devices come from allied nations i would say. relatively little comes from china or russia. the united states does not have domestic capacity either. that is one example the large majority of the market is controlled by a single finish company called blue force. on the laser side certain companies in japan and germany make high-powered high quality lasers which are difficult to source and other places. a difficult supply chain to categorize locally other than to say there other distinct types of technologies that are sourced all over the world by enlarged by allied nations the other thing i would say is because there's multiple non- overlapping supply chains that are on different technology approaches many may not be

important in the long run. one of these technical approaches quote unquote winds that supply chain becomes extremely important strategically the other six or seven technical approaches may become irrelevant it's difficult to know which one will win will track the different supply chain simultaneously. >> thank you very much. you made the case or asserted it's important is going to be limitations and controls that it's focused on military applications. how is it possible to do that with the technology having a general application which is in very early stages of development it is it possible to target controls on a narrowing military applications? what is more about targeting controls in their way that we

control what we can without undermining the commercial viability of some of our domestic industries that enable our area progress. i agree with goods very hard. it's not impossible to control military ai or commercial sector ai applications in the context. it's more about trying to understand the market dynamics in any given sector. an account for that. sometimes our instinct is to shut everything off soft and ofn good reasons to feel that way. to be effective over time the particulars of the market including what drives american companies. >> thank you. ing chair cleveland.

please emphasize that. the acting part. i had same questions doctor freeburg interested in the supply chain are likely winner. investment and all the export regimes transfer to china? there's no broad export controls that apply to quantum specific

those couple caveats there. one is certain specific chinese organization have been placed on the entity list. several of the leading chinese research organizations do not have legal access to u.s. exports. which are not specifically tailored to quantum sensors but would plausibly apply to quantum. may or may not it could well be an area they could use updating and clarifying. >> we appreciate that.

much of this is made in japan and were europe. if you could supply for the record and lives understand quantum primary understanding of what were talking about their i appreciate that. also said in your testimony ali baba, 10 cents, and others have invested and quantum and i assume there is some leader designated to undertake the usually designates a leader. they appear to have pulled back

i managed to shut down labs in november could you talk a little bit more about what may be behind that trend or series of actions? >> that is correct. much more heavily funded and national labs. it's an r&d effort is heavier and national labs in china than in the commercial industry. several of the largest chinese players mentioned 10 cents et cetera had quantum computing efforts. several of them if not all of them shut down in the past six months i announced it was selling all of its quantum computing hardware to a national lab. the concentration of national labs is consolidating even more in the past six months.

i do have great visibility wide that i made that decision my guess was they assessed they are not perfectly competitive in that space. they were far behind u.s. companies did not seem to be catching up. did not see it as a revenue generator. so to be something we can talk about chinese thinking as a whole they seem to be further doubling down on national laboratories. the chinese technology companies seem competitive globally ever. >> you would characterize it as an increase risk the government is consolidating under governor control? these along with an assessment by these companies is not profitable? >> i don't know that i would necessarily characterize it as an increased risk. frankly it doesn't really matter too much met u.s. national security perspective for this to chinese government of chinese industry control in the technology i think in china they are more or less the same thing.

i would maybe interpret it as cautious good news. at least one aspect of the chinese ecosystem does not appear to be self-assessed is not at the very top of the global competitive landscape there. i don't think it's a particularly increase or decrease in risk either way. >> think it will go to a second round. >> we will try and keep this round shorter so that everyone has a chance. i am going to fully "star trek" an issue here. it has baffled me. what we were talking i looked at it again. china is rumored to have successfully engaged in teleportation. which was seven years ago. you are nodding your head yes so

i assume you are aware of this. and i believe science magazine and others talk about the profound nature of that. that is seven years ago. number one, has not been. reviewed? an effect is it true? and number two what are the implications i cannot wrap my head around that. >> thank you for the question. it's a difficult question to answer briefly but i will try it. [laughter] the quantum teleportation is a scientific phenomenon may be assured. it's on a completely new scientific phenomenon. in the long term it could but beuseful for things like quantum computers. i think in the near term there's no immediately concrete applications that will prove transformative. but i think it speaks to a larger chinese focus and quantum

which is they are focused on communication technology in the use of quantum technology to secure their communication there is some degree meant about how significant that is operationally. whether it's useful capability. the chinese do you appear to have chosen that to be an area they want to excel globally one aspect of that is china has launched two different satellites capable of quantum communications from outer space which includes quantum teleportation of individual particles mediated by satellite communication. no other countries known to have launched quantumic satellites. again u.s. national security agency publicly said that specific application is how a high priority. stuff like disagreement as to how seriously we should take this they do appear to be leading globally.

one less technical note we think about this quantum internet and how it might enhance survivability et cetera in terms of military facilitation. we are not expecting spock is beaming up somewhere. but we say that for the record. [laughter] commissioner schreiber? >> doctor parker thank you for up to end your sentence with it yet. [laughter] thank you. both mr. stokes and we mention the need for dialogue and direct engagement with the chinese and the pla on these matters. i think nathan you had a chance to expand on that a little bit. note mr. stokes, i am wondering

how you see that as a useful engagement what topics you would prioritize et cetera noting this is an air lock that still claims the spy balint was a weather balloon it went off course in the know we shot it down and collected it. what would the difference been such a dialogue? >> it is important to note the timing of this. that comes after major steps to put in place a regulatory framework for our own ai but to work internationally like the political declaration on responsible use of artificial intelligence and autonomy. would be endorsed about 50 countries it would set a framework for what we think normatively the rules and institutions ought to look like nai and engage china from that perspective. i think it is worth stepping

back on our grand strategic objectives is to support a rules -based order. the rules are being written in real time here. we need to think from that context. it makes sense to build china in if we can get china to accommodate and agree to a certain set of rules we put in place and are leading a coalition in defense of it. and relates to the specific talks sullivan talked will probably happen this spring. will likely be very, very basic about exchanging views on what we see as the actual risk from ai technology. china understands the risk. certain areas sharing information about how we test and evaluate our weapons are what parts of nuclear command and control complex would or would not have artificial

intelligence those very basic topics are where you would have to start here. look great arms control agreement and those type of things it's a good thing and that rate context and with the right low basic expectations, thank you. >> vice chair price. thank you. i have one quick questions mr. stokes on your recommendation for policymakers too. your last one you say we should prioritize intelligence gathering and analysis. are you flagging something or suggesting congress ask for something in particular? >> i think it will be beneficial especially for the opal sourcing communities i work in each of

strathmoreopen source informatit this. one potential way of doing that that congress could do is to mandate an additional section where it's related to some of these topics they've done with other topics in the past. you could also probably mandate the dod or intelligence community provide briefings on this particular topic to relevant committees and commissions those kind of actions because i think we are at a place in the policymaking process we are still getting up to speed on what the technologies are. what they do. try to get past that what should we do about them and having an accurate understanding of where china is relative to the u.s. in a robust way would be really helpful. that is where i would start the

recommendation fits within that china military report. >> thank you for clarifying. that's it. >> cochair? >> no additional questions. >> commissioner glass? >> you mentioned translation i think is a phrase something like controlling the brain. you had several categories of things they talk about. is not simply a figure of speech that they would influence you are thinking or is there more to that? >> you for us in the question i am happy to clarify. that was a reference to one of the popular kind of overarching conceptions of the technology that are often associated with cognitive. it is the most popular operational concept of per se. the chinese military researchers

discuss operations more broadly. there is some discussion of controlling the brain. that has a long understanding history of the chinese military some of the conversations you can find in chinese military writings are futuristic. that is certainly not unique to the chinese military when you look globally it's right about future potential breakthroughs in brain science and other things. but one of the more concrete examples which is a laser weapons and acoustic weapons the ability to use that cognitive function would make them

uncomfortable and ideally they would lay down their arms and surrender on the battlefield u.s. developed it. develop something like the area into an out weapon. which i stated in my testimony. there is some conversations and writings that are futuristic. there are some more concrete and not totally distant from what the dod is considered at the time. >> thank you. >> futuristic we just talked about teleportation. okay. [laughter] acting chairman. >> yes, yes, yes. for decades part of u.s. military policy calculations have been that chinese military doctrine is very hierarchical.

in part of our strategy has always calculated or presumed the decisions motivated by the top leadership and beijing. the idea that she is in charge and in control and it is the ultimate decision-maker on everything. this commission certainly has reinforced that idea. i am wondering is you say in your written testimony there are some military leaders who might not trust applications of ai that loosens that control i am wondering how ai is changing the idea that decisions may not be made in real time by beijing does that question make sense?

i'm sort of wondering if there's a shift in thinking that more control will be yielded to field commander or regional how are they changing our military thinking about their military doctrine? >> thank you acting chair cleveland for that question. my sense is a could work in one of two ways on the one hand as i wrote in my testimony could see a reluctance from mid-level commanders who will be held accountable for what the systems do to employ them. one of the characteristics of ai systems and sometimes they are brittle. sometimes they fail in unexpected ways sometimes you don't know exactly what it's going to do. when you are responsible for operational effects but the political implications of that. in other words you are in the pla you've got political commissar sitting next to you do

you want to roll the dice i think that is one thing that might hamper military action in the pla. on the other hand we see a lack of trust from the top leadership all the way down they could implement i'm sure you are familiar with the concept. if you have too much faith in ai systems or the machine will make the right decision and the machine is reliable make them from the top and let the machines push a dump of the system. i think it's still too early to tell. something absolutely important to watch which are the exercises

and training its absolutely it'e something as we've already mentioned how they assess trust his or her opportunity for at least making sure they don't trust the rug system as it's itsheard before is probably denigrated that's an amazing thing to say publicly. one of my concerns is indeed after some amount of time

if you were to say define some metrics for us to say if we see a consolidation of leadership, military leadership or e lame nation of a whole layer of leadership, what -- how might we think about what would be a measure of xi saying, okay, ai has to be better than what i've got? >> i think that's an analytical question that we grapple with. i think if we understand more -- one of the ways to look at it, what systems are out there and are being applied in the poa and

probably infer from there about what level the control and orders are coming from and how they are executed from there but we are still at the early stage where we don't really know specifics fielded by the pla and you can lack at training materials, the way grades and specialty for specific personnel are named. those subtle indicators might tell us something about the way the pla democracy and structure is working. >> cochair. >> i have one quick question for mr. parker and quick question for the witnesses at large. you mentioned earlier mr. parker that a censor can do subterranean mapping and if you attached sensor to a helium

balloon guided silos wouldn't that gather information about the silos? my question for the witnesses in general if you look at overall pattern of behavior and if you add facts about china that we know. the military drills, the cognitive warfare, adoption of ai, statements of wanting to unify for taiwan, is china preparing for war, is this the behavior of a peace-seeking country we will start with you and work our way down. >> i think china is preparing to have the ability to fight a war. we know that -- the u.s. intelligence testament is that

xi jinping ordered the capability to invade. it's clear that xi jinping wants china to be in a place to do that, have that as an option. i don't think that necessarily means he will do it. i think he can be deterred with the right set of actions and it's incumbent upon us to determine what those actions need to be and then to undertake them to prevent any such war from taking place. >> i agree with jake's comments and specifically on the topic of operations. i think we are at the beginning of the understanding and idea and there's still a lot of research to be able to -- i think it's really important topic to ups how does the chinese military conceive of

activities that are acceptable or prioritize versus crisis versus wartime. we have some information on that. there's always more to do but i think fundamentally in terms of xi jinping and i think it's important for the u.s. dod, broader, allies and partners support efforts for deterrence so we don't get to that point. i can say that i will not interpret efforts to increase war fighting capacity in the near term. i think the timelines are still fairly large, fairly long. i think they see areas big economic opportunity. a lot of it might be guying

their economy, the third slightly more specific comment i will say a lot of their efforts in quantum communications have the goal of ensuring up security of their communications against external access and i think the provocation of a lot of that was the -- decade a ago. they publicly said that alleged leaks reoriented their thinking about the wisdom of relying on western communication systems for their own internal communications. so i think that may have been a motivation for their communication system which is not directly related to any near term plans for warfare. >> well, a few people on the china committee seem to believe that there might be plans for military for the use of military force in not too distant future but thank you for response.

>> quick follow-up. >> is there discussion in open-source chinese military writing on potential risks or dangers of autonomous weapons? >> i think both in literature and chinese issues there are risks involved and what are talk thed about the catastrophic risks generally and specific risk that, for example, highly autonomous uncrewed vehicle could take an action that would precipitate a crisis unintended and i think there's a recognition and that relates to the control question that we were talking about earlier of my senses still, that's something, you know, china wants to -- there are times when it probably wants to start crises but do so at time and place of their choosing. they want a system that might start an unintended crisis, it's

not something that they are seeking. i think they are aware of that risk and probably see it in their interest to be able to avoid those kind of outcomes, thank you. >> thank you to the panelists, we will take a break until 1:50 and look forward being back at that time, thank you. [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations]

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will promote those having challenges with the irs and we refer to ourselves as a single unit if all else fails, helping taxpayers with problems 11 also gave us the authority to provide recommendations for the irs with respect to problems of service provide administrative recommendations and the ability that's unique to provide legislative patient to begin publishing easier to the most

recent transitions in the iris and turned to cautious optimism, why you say cautious optimism? >> a lot of put pandemic behind us and like everyone else at the beginning of 2020, the irs did shut down and as a result, returns were piling up and it took the irs two to three years to get out of the challenges covid cost the workload so last year the irs close out the year almost even with respect to the returns filed the papers and electronic returns were processed but they still have areas they need to improve.

telephone service. the 2021, 11% were being answered by the irs because that's how much taxpayers were calling, three times as much as in previous years and a real struggle taxpayers in this filing season and we are seeing returns filed on planes so things are looking good so i have my cost will be that way. >> the irs folks have been stolen. think about the return in order

when i finally found my return from some was in order to get back law or the tax return with the irs was doing was borrowing from peter to pay paul. borrowim peter to pay paul. they were moving resources around to prioritize the filing of tax returns. they moved people who helped folks who were victims of identity theft and moved them to do other work. as a result, what we saw was those returns took about an average of 19 months in order for the folks to properly identify themselves and get those refunds, which i think we all agree is not a reasonable period of time. we are currently working with the irs. they are aware of the issue and

trying to move the resources back to that position so we can clear out the backlog and fix it. host: the employee intention recredit? guest: that came out with the cares act in 2020. congress wanted to help businesses in need. think about small businesses, a restaurant for example. with covid, a lot of customers were not coming into restaurants. what congress wanted businesses to do in that situation was keep their employees on roll, in order for them to still receive a paycheck even though the business was not receiving the same amount of customers coming in. it was win-win -- the business stayed afloat and employees received a salary. congress created the employee retention credit as a way to provide businesses additional relief. host: and from the taxpayer

perspective -- the document upload tool, what is that? guest: the document upload tool is something that irs i.t. folks came up with. my office was struggling getting documents into the irs. things were getting delayed. we talked to our i.t. folks and said can you come up with a portal so that taxpayers can upload it directly from their phone. if you are trying to help a taxpayer with respect to income tax credits where they were trying to establish that their child lived with them and we wanted them to upload documents, they could take a picture from their phone and up load upload it through this too get it directly to our case with the irs has done is they have not taken that to all plated across the board.

challenge is the total was not originally designed to take the volume of everything that comes into the irs on paper. now the front end of the total works great -- people can upload the information. but the irs has to create backend processing. when the document comes in through the tool, they can get it out to respective divisions rather quickly. right now, it is all going to a coordinated place. we need the tools to send it to the correct unit so people can work the paper. host: there is a lot in these reports. the most interesting thing is to have you chat with taxpayers themselves. here is how viewers can do that. erin collins of the national taxpayer advocate office, it is (202) 748-8000 for those in the eastern or central time zones. (202) 748-8001 if you are in the mountain or pacific time zones.

the national taxpayer advocate will be with us until 10:00 a.m. eastern. brent in michigan is up first. caller: hello. i do not know if this is something you can address but i have heard representatives, republican representatives, repeat over and over that tax cuts increase revenues. that is one thing. is that true? another is that i am a -- a caller supporting trump a couple of days ago since he voted for trump because trump would lower interest rates. could you address the importance of the independence of the federal reserve from political influence? guest: since i do not work for the federal reserve, i have a similar role in the sense that i am independent of the irs.

our agency is an independent organization housed within the irs. i would not exactly say we are on par with the federal reserve, but we have the same interest in the sense that we look at administration of the laws. we do not opine on policy. we leave that to congress. what we do is we try to take the laws as written and work with congress and the irs to make recommendations as to how to administer it more easily and protect taxpayer rights. good or bad, i do not control interest rate. the importance of the independence of various organizations is critical. host: the caller said tax cuts and what it means for revenues. that aside, what about funding path cuts to the irs and what it does for revenues -- an ongoing

effort to figure out how much money the irs should have worked whether it should be clawed back. any thoughts on that? guest: when you think about what the irs does, it ran is not the best. a lot of people once or twice a year when they have to do with the irs, they mumble bad words under their breath, but the irs brings in over n98% of the country's revenue. that is what congress is able to allocate for services. it is a vital function for this country. it is important that it be properly funded. in order to collect that revenue, we need the resources within the agency to do a good job. if we can help taxpayers provide a better service, better

guidance, quicker resolution, i think that is going to help on the back end, which will be very -- will maybe encourage people voluntary compliance. if they are not funded properly, it makes it hard for thers to do their job on behalf of taxpayers. host: dave you were tweeted in this question, asking about an armed government agency. guest: that seems to have gotten a lot of play in the last couple of years. irs does have a criminal investigation action that -- function that on certain types of things they will get involved. for example, any criminal fraud. they usually work with the fbi are other federal agencies. these are for the most serious cases. it is a small division within the irs.

irs has approximately 90,000 employees. i think the cid division is somewhere between 2000 and 2500, a small portion of what the irs does. we have no intention of increasing the size of criminal investigation agents. good or bad, nobody else carries guns in the irs. i do not think that is where the irs will be going. host: freehold, new jersey, ken, good morning. are you with us? this is bill in florida. caller: [indiscernible] host: we will work on your line and go to michael in cleveland, ohio. caller: good morning. >> my question, there are

certain amount unfortunately that is not an area and expertise but that is something you can take to the help open, he may be able to file relative. >> why is it so hard to check your taxes? >> taxes are complex and i would say part of the reason is transaction so when you look at, or even know how many of the

challenge taxpayers do you have a partnership? are you married life and they are you look at all areas so it's not an easy task. >> does anybody talk about paul ryan out of a postcard think we should do taxes on postcards? >> last year we talked about implications because i think we would all agree it would be very nice. ...

what did taxpayers want? what we want as a society for our taxt system to be? if it's to be simple then you probably are

me.

just yesterday we saw them spend hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks for their corporate donors. just the other day my very first

bill as a member of congress they said they wanted us to work on companies guys a a steady e about inflation, disguising care about working people. the first building of the default on as a member of congress was to cut the irs agents that go after corporate tax cheats. they always find the money for when it's further for the bill unibody pickup find the money whether to wage war are hurt people. but we know the money is there to pay the everyday person that is doing the work of protecting this country. that meet doesn't get inspected on its own. those workplaces don't get kept safe on their own. people don't get the social security check on their own. that healthcare is something that people fought for and build in u.s. congress but you delivered as time u.s. congress to do our job. do your job. do your job. do your job. do your job. i think it's ridiculous. i came here from texas wanting

to make sure that we took care of working people come actually got rid of the right to work for less law. make sure people can bargain if the contracts have more therapy can't. and instead what what was p in saint is don't shut down the entire u.s. government. that's what we're fighting over, really? and the reason for it is because they are the arsonists and to try to blame the firefighters for the flames. are you going to let them blame us for the flames? no, we're going to hold the arsonists accountable. were going to expose -- [shouting] [chanting] do your job. do your job. do your job. do your job. >> so i think as as a memberf congress, i'm also union through and through. [cheers and applause] and so as a closing as who are

we? >> afge. >> who are weak? >> afge. >> who are we? >> afge. >> and we are with you all the way. thank you all. [cheers and applause] >> all right all right. who are we? >> afge. >> are you already? listen. please welcome a strong labor friendly representative of illinois, for ten years she voted for labor brothers and sisters in a work for the united food and commercial workers and international association of firefighters. afge, she as a laborer, she is labor. she's working with us and brought home of front seat in illinois. she stands up for afge members writes every day. not some days but every single day. help me welcome congresswoman -- [shouting] >> thank you, thank you.

>> thank you afge. it is great to be with you. wonderful to be at a union rally. my name is vickie. i am proud union member. [applause] proud to be endorsed supported throughout my career by afge and the hard-working men and women of your union. thank you so much. i want to say within time doing your job. you have my commitment that i'm going to do my job. what my job is as you know, keep our government running. you work hard everyday. you deserve the pay at the end the day for the work that you've done and you don't make enough. you can count on me to do my job to raise your wage by 7.4%. [cheers and applause] and you can count on me to do my job for fiscal commission at

some the spokesman help but think about that will cut your pay and benefits and reduce the impact, the workforce of you have that we so desperately need. i will oppose a fiscal commission i will stand with you, absolutely. it want to also say i am on the house veterans affairs committee are the folks that work at the v.a.? [applause] thank you. thank you. thank you for the hard work you do. you are asked to do so much and not given enough to do your very important job for our men and women that have served. i want to say a huge thank you for all of you and work that you do. i want to take one moment, one special moment of privilege to honor my sister april who is from my district. [cheers and applause] out of what you share something with you i haven't shared yet but every member of congress has an opportunity to bring someone to the state of the union. i am bringing a member of the

afge. april is coming with me. [cheers and applause] and what help you know is that my respect for the work that you do an issue fight for every day that i want those to be front and center for all of congress to see. so thank you, april, for joining me. had a good rally. thank you. >> thank you. all right, brothers and sisters. ye already? now listen, listen, listen brothers and sisters. what to take a moment to recognize our sisters and brothers on the first worldwide flight attendant. they are fighting to raise the workplace standards and doing actions at more than 30 airports and it want to raise our voice of solidarity come more than two-thirds of our u.s. flight attendants have contract negotiations right now. let's lift our voices and send them our solidarity. can you sit with me?

go sisters, koch brothers. >> ghostbusters, go brother. >> united flight attendant rights. go sisters, brothers. >> go sisters go brother. >> united for flight attendants writes. >> united flight attendant rights. >> but who are we? >> afge. >> what we want? what we want? i can't hear you. we want 7.4. all right, all right. listen. i am so happy that you are here today. afge i don't know what i would do without you. i really don't because you always step up and take care of the job, right? you always on task and appreciate you for that. and today we need to send a loud, clear message to congress to the united states of america come to the senators of the united states of america that we can't take it no more. we want to be treated fairly, right? we want fair contracts. we want of dignity and fairness

on the jobs. we want to be paid what we are worth. how many we with me on that? [cheers and applause] >> 7.4. >> 7.4. >> we were knocking on your door. >> we are knocking on your door. >> 7.4. >> 7.4. >> we are knocking on your door. >> we are knocking on your door. >> we are knocking on your door. >> all right, all right, all ri. okay. all right. now, i don't know if you want to have the word or not but if you do, i'm calling. you could? all right. all right. you want to talk to her people? all right, located. up to me. i'm going to keep talking. don't nobody ever say kelly long-winded, right? because you also may try to get the mic up right. i'll take it, i'll take it. okay. what are we here for? >> 7.4. >> what i'll be here for? >> 7.4. >> 7.4. >> 7.4. >> afge i love you.

i love you, there's nothing you can do about it. so don't even try, all right? don't even try because we are, what? we are who? who are weak? >> afge. >> afge. the one and only. can't nobody not cassatt because when we unify and we stand together, guess what? we went, right? we win when we, when we stand in solidarity there is nobody or nothing that can come between us. right now we are telling congress we want what? >> 7.4. >> what we want? >> 7.4. >> wind we want? >> now. >> we and we want? >> now. >> what we want? >> 7.4. >> 7.4. listen listen. all right.

-- ♪ ♪ a note ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> let me hear you. ♪ ♪ ♪

>> let me hear y. let me hear you. ♪ for the union makes us strong. >> all right. all right, all right. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

>> all right. ♪ ♪ ♪ >> let me hear you say. what do you want? ♪ just a little bit, just a little bit. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

>> i've got some singers out there. ♪ all of want to do for me is give it to me. ♪ just a little bit. ♪ >> let me hear you. let me hear you. >> just a little bit, just a little bit. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ bad moon rising.

♪ there's a bad move on the rise. ♪ i hear hurricanes of blowing. i know the end is coming soon. i fear rivers overflowing. i hear the voice of rage and ruin. ♪ don't go around tonight. well, it's bound to take your life. there is a bad moon on the rise. ♪ all right. >> all right. are you all feeling all right? all, man, do i i enjoy being n

front of afge. especially the day before valentine's day. listen brothers and sisters, our next speaker has played active n active role in the labor movement serving as a student advocate for workers' rights for the past 50 years. brother reverend got a start in 1973 in the middle of the steelwork again wasted many positions during national vice president -- overseeing the union human rights department. in 2020 -- task force on racial justice in which i was prince to work alongside him and a diverse group of labor leaders to address racism in a country police violence against black people. the first black man to hold a position of secretary-treasurer of the afl-cio.

under his leadership the afl-cio has made great strides, afge please give a warm welcome, a afge welcome, to my friend, my brother for the reverend secretary-treasurer. >> afge is in the house. >> first of all i want to thank my brother everett kelley for his leadership. everett is an inspirational for working from february, and there's no better advocate for federal workers than ever, it's an honor to call you my brother. thank you, brother. >> thank you. >> so good afternoon, sisters, brothers and sisters. look, we all gathered here today come with good here folks different unions from different walks of life to support federal

employees. that's what we're here for. [applause] that is what we're here for. we're here to call on congress to do what is fair. that's all. we are not here to ask them to do us no favors. we're not here to ask them to be kind. we are here to ask them to do their job and do what is there. that's all. and we make that come we holder heads up high. we can stick are just out i i because union members love this country. federal employees love this country. >> yes, sir. >> this is a nation that you serve every day. >> yes, sir. >> with dedication, with pride, you care for our veterans. you serve our seniors.

you protect our environment. you keep america healthy. safe, strong and free. way to this country up every morning and tackett into sleep at night. that's what you do. but there's some members in congress who have forgotten that. some members of congress only see you as ponds and self-serving political game. are you ponds? no. >> hell, no, you're not pawns. your patriots. >> yes, sir. >> you are heroes. you serve the public day in and day out. >> yeah. >> and to do so with dignity, integrity, and professionalism. and today we're going to remind the congress of that.

we're going to remind them that it is our time to give congress the professionalism that you deserve. we want respect. we want government workers to be able to do the work of the government. we want to put an end to the policies that attack your jobs, your pay, your benefits. now look, this labor movement, we have made this country great and we've had to fight tooth and nail to make it great. they haven't given us nothing. we fought for every victory. we made jobs safer. we made healthcare more affordable. an accessible, and we make sure that at the end of our honest days work that to be honest pay. and afge and the american labor

movement, we're going to make damn sure that government workers get the honest pay that you deserve. >> all right. >> look, don't let nobody tell you anything different. a 7.4% pay increase, that isn't a lot to ask. >> that's right. >> that's for the federal employees who love this country. you have contributed more than your fair share. and now it's time for this congress to step up and contribute back. it's time to stop playing games. no more shutdowns threats. no more debt default threats. it's time to fully staffed all federal agencies and fund the government. it's time to pass the fair act. it's time to pass the fair act,

and it's time, it's time for all federal employees to a collective bargaining rights. so let's use our voices today and let's make sure that this country doesn't work without us. look, brothers and sisters, i respect all of you and the work that you do. the work that you do making this country grow every day. you don't owe the government anything. they owe you. let's don't get this stuff twisted. let's be clear, let's be precise, this is our moment and this is our country. we are strong, we are powerful, we are united. and when we rise up together as a powerful labor movement, we

all win together. keep up the fight to hold your heads up high. we will win. we will win. we will win. thank you all very much. [cheers and applause] [chanting] we will win. we will win. we will win. [chanting] we will win. we will win. we will win. >> all right, all right, all right. all right. all right. all right, brothers and sisters not like introduce representative donald norcross of new jersey. [applause] he is the culture of congressional labor caucus and he's a dedicated to getting the word out of our issues. he's helped us out when we need signature or later to support labor and he is a proud card-carrying member of the ibew. let's give him a warm union

well, representative donald norcross. [cheers and applause] >> yes, sir. all right. how are we doing? we got anybody from jersey in the house? [applause] well, you know, what we say, if are not, you got a problem with that? [laughing] listen, i spent 43 years in a labor union and ibew before get this joke i will take us by the been a very long time, two union rallies and one morning here in washington. let's hear it. [cheers and applause] >> thank you. >> president kelly, great to see again. the day before labor caucus. listen, unprecedented times, right? i know i'm preaching to the choir. shutdowns because you don't like the way things are working? are you kidding me? decide not to go to work and not

pay people? we've got a problem here, folks. [applause] we've got a big problem. talking -- just at a labor cost meeting that we had at a democratic retreat. we created the labor caucus about a year ago. i never thought we would need it in the democratic party. what has happened over the years is we sometimes forget about your family, and labor is fundamentally a part of the democratic party. we are just here to remind everybody what you do each and every day. it was a rough time during the pandemic. we lost loved ones. we lost workers. that what we did lose is our pride to be a part of the union movement. [cheers and applause] so we had this little saying

back in jersey, if you're not at the table, you are on the menu. [cheers and applause] and apparently they thought that unions were not at the table anymore and they were going to feast on that. well, you are here to tell them what? we are at the table. we are at the table. we are at the table. and we're going to make sure with its that their act, their act, that's exactly what it says, paying then. you ain't giving them nothing nor earning it. make sure this fiscal commission bullshit -- [booing] come on. you elected him to do something. you don't have to set up a commission the hides behind closed doors. do in front of our faces. if it's a good idea we will do it but you know what? when you're setting up in the back rooms, you're not at the table. >> that's right. >> and you will be on the menu.

so great movements for labor unions. when i started as business agent for the ibew, the ratings for unions were down here with used car salesman and congress. today, labour leader being a member of the unit appear 74%. [cheers and applause] unfortunately congress is still back here. [laughing] but we are here standing with you. i know we have glen ivy of maryland who is one of us who comes from us, who understands. but we just here to say we stand with you. we stand with you yesterday. i stand with you today. most important, we stand with you to march. god bless you. [cheers and applause] >> all right. stand up --

>> fight back. >> stand up -- >> fight back. >> stand up -- >> writeback. >> all right, all right, all right. brothers and sisters please help you welcome representative glenn ivey of maryland. [cheers and applause] he is in his first term but he's already done so much for afge members. he sits on the homeland security and judiciary committee. he fights for our rights. as a member of homeland security committee, afge members count on him to stand up in the collective-bargaining rights. please give a warm welcome to representative glenn ivey. [cheers and applause] >> thank you. >> thank you. >> how're you doing? you did a little snow or cold weather stop you, did you? and not going to let no republican stop either, are you? that's exactly right. the fair act is going to pass, right? 7.4% long overdue. matter of fact you all are the backbone of this government.

when trump was in the white house who kept it together? >> unit. >> that's right. never have the house republican side to run us into a ditch. these boys taking times to pick a a speaker that's about it is. they tried to impeach mayorkas last week. you want to talk about clown show? those guys take it to the next level. but the american people know they can count on you no matter how dysfunctional the house republicans may be, they can count on you, right? him out of how dysfunctional trump made white house they can count on you, right? and we are going to make sure that you all get the pay raise that you deserve, right? my father was a federal employee back in the reagan years like he was talking about. he tried when the government into the ground then that we withstood appear we stood strong and kept it going forward, right? we're going to keep the government, going to keep the country on the right track. you all keep up the great work, keep the faith. let's make it happen. have a great one. all right.

keep up the great work. [applause] >> all right. [chanting] [chanting] >> all right. we will remember in november, all right. all right. listen, give me one more song over there. give me one more song. all right. all right. ♪ dolly, dolly, dolly. all right. ♪ jump and shout and the blood starts pumping, out on the street the traffic starts jump in. the folks like me on the job from nine to five ♪ ♪

>> working 9-to-5, what a way to make a living. barely getting by. it's all taking and of giving. nagy fusion mind and he your mind and they never give you credit. it's enough to drive you crazy if you let it. ♪ ♪ ♪ nine to five, or service and devotion. you would think that i would deserve a fair promotion. want to move ahead, the boss won't seem to let me. i swear sometimes that man is out to get me. ♪ ♪ ♪ they let you dream juice to wash them shouted. you're just a step on the boss man's ladder but you got dreams he will never take away ♪ ♪ you're in the same boat with a lot of your friends waiting for the day your ship will come in and the tide is going to turn and it's all going to roll your way ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ working 9-to-5, what a way a way to make a living.

have a getting by, it's all taking and of giving. they just use your mind and you never get the credit. it's enough to drive you crazy if you let it. ♪ ♪ ♪ 9-to-5, yeah. they got to where they want you. there's a better life, and you think about it, don't you? is a rich man's game, no matter what they call it, and you spend your life putting money in his wallet. ♪ ♪ ♪ nine to five, what a way to make a living. barely getting by, , it's all taking end of giving. they just use your mind and they never give you credit. it's enough to drive you crazy if you let it. ♪ ♪ ♪ 925, yeah. they got you where they want you. there is a better life, and you dream about it, don't you? ♪

>> just take those the olf the shelf. i sit and listen to them by myself. today's music and got the same soul, i like that old-time rock 'n roll. ♪ don't try to take me to a disco. you'll never even get me out on the floor. in ten ten minutes i'll be r the door. i like that old-time rock 'n roll. ♪ ♪ ♪ still like that old-time rock 'n roll. that kind of music just soothes the soul. i reminisce about the days of old with that old-time rock 'n roll. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

♪ won't go to hear them play a tango. i'd rather hear some blues or funky old soul. there's only one sure way to get me to go. start playing old-time rock 'n roll. ♪ call me a relic, call me what you will. say i'm old-fashioned, say i'm over the hill. today's music ain't got the same soul. i like that old-time rock 'n roll. ♪ ♪ ♪ still like that old-time rock 'n roll. that kind of music just soothes the soul. i reminisce of the days of old with that old-time rock 'n roll. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

♪ still like that old-time rock 'n roll. that kind of music just soothes the soul. i reminisce about the days of old with that old-time rock 'n roll. ♪ still like that old-time rock 'n roll. that kind of music just soothes the soul. i reminisce about the days of old with that old-time rock 'n roll. ♪ ♪ ♪ still like that old-time rock 'n roll. that kind of music just soothes the soul. i reminisce about the days of old with that old-time rock 'n roll. ♪ ♪ ♪ still like that old-time rock 'n roll. that kind of music just soothes the soul.

♪ a note. >> all right, all right. listen. listen. one thing i'm glad about is we do have friends in congress. and our friends work. understand what i'd say? we're scheduled up have to me more congressional people here but they were doing some work that they couldn't leave. some want to apologize for that, okay? but, but, but we still know that they heard us, right? did they hear us? what we want? >> 7.4. >> wind we want? >> now. >> we want it right now. and brothers and sisters what we've got to do is continue to finish. we've got to rise up, we got to rise up together and we got to fight together every chance we get. we need to tell congress we deserve 7.4. let me hear you say it. >> 7.4. >> all right. this last on your on your you all know this is our national

anthem. can you all do that? we are one. you all don't have that? what do they mean? [shouting] >> i got it. 7.4. can we do that? can we find it? >> 7.4. 7.4. >> we .4. >> we got to get one time. this whole time we have played franklyn beverly and may we i went and i know folks are upset because they know that's what i believe in. that song reminds me of afge because guess what? sometimes we don't act like we love each other, that we? we get all confused but at the end of the day we are what?

>> we are one. >> at the end of the day we are one. all right. going to get that and they were going home, all right? are we ready? all right, all right. every go. here we go. every go. let me see you. let me see you. all right. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> everybody, everybody. let's raise one hand up. just a sign of solidarity. we are one. think about it, , think about these words, think about your afge family. ♪ ♪

♪ ♪ ♪ don't understand ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> this is it. let me hear you. let me hear you. >> we are one. ♪ no matter what we do we are one. we are one. ♪ that's the way it is.

>> let me hear you. ♪ sometimes i feel that we try and make each other sad. i don't know why. the things we do. how we make each other feel so bad. ♪ we've got so much. ♪ we are one. we are one deep down in your

heart we are one. and that's the way it is. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

♪ i can't understand why we treat each other in this way. taking up time with the silly silly games we play. we've got our love, our love, and no matter how it's said or done. we are one no matter what we do. ♪ we are one and that's the way

it is. >> all right, all right. listen, listen listen. i would like to introduce representative larson from connecticut. he's a member of the ways and means so secret of the check of the social security -- the future for us and the next generation. and without undue cuts to federal pay and benefits. these champion and let us over half of democrats and in the opposing a fiscal commission which would devastate social security, medicare and federal pay and benefits. please give a warm afge welcome to our friend, representative john larson. [cheers and applause] >> thank you. >> thank you. >> thank you, mr. president.

we've got a fight on our hands. they are trying to go behind closed doors without hearings and a sign of the 535 members of both houses, seven people will determine the fate of social security and medicare and federal employee pay. seven people, and guess what? they don't have to have a public hearing. they go behind closed doors. they got four people that are unelected, so-called experts, and then six from the senate, and six from the house, three republicans and three democrats from each body. but only seven required to pass

legislation that in the case of social security impacts 70 million americans. [booing] >> we don't need a commission to study social security. what we need is a vote in congress on social security 2100, and not only expand solvency but enhance benefits of the more than 70 million people. imagine, in the wealthiest nation in the world, 5 million of our fellow americans get below poverty level checks after having paid in all their lives to a program below poverty. 23 million americans pay taxes that -- would be forgiven.

they've got a lot of talk about taxes over there for leaders of corporations. what about the people of america? what about the social security recipients? what about repealing an unfair practice that was put in long ago? i stand with president biden on that who's called for direct repeal and payment, and how we going to pay for it? well, we are going to lift the cap on people making over $400,000. i want you to do me a favor. raise your hand if you're making more than 400,000. now, funny thing about that, mr. president, everywhere i go nobody raises their hand. that's because only six tenths

of 1% of america makes over 400,000. shouldn't they pay the same thing of someone making 50,000 or 75,000, or even 125,000? of course they should. and guess what that does? that extends solvency for more than 30 years but more importantly it enhances benefits. when is the last time congress enhanced social security benefits? 1971. richard nixon was president of the united states. 53 years, and congress hasn't voted to enhance benefits. i love the card you take around people. i got one for you to take every office that shows them just how much social security dollars come into their district. where do those dollars go?

they go to individuals. so it's the greatest economic development program that we could have in this country. because all that money gets spent right back in your congressional districts. they are not going out and purchasing stock options. they are buying food to put on their tables. they are trying to take their home. >> so god bless you for standing out here and taking the fight. we are with you all the way. and let's count on every door and make sure everybody understands, i want to commend senator wyden for clean the matter when he says when you them say fiscal commission, that's a buzzword for cut from what you think president biden and the white house when they're asked about it, they said that's a death panel, not a commission. the write about it. we stand with you in this fight let's go knock down doors and knock some sense into people

over there, and passed social security 2100. enhance benefits for people that have been done 51 years. god bless you. god bless america. [cheers and applause] >> thank you. the pleasure is mine, yes, sir. thank you. all right, all right by the sensation. are you all right? we are happy now to look into the stage our own nationalist present of -- mvp chairman latta. all right, all right. thank you. >> all right. >> all right, afge. you fired up? now i i know we might be the s that we are fed the hell up. with the attacks on social security administration, the fact that they're not even willing to give reasonable accommodations to the employees with disabilities. that's a complete violation of the law. the understaffing at the v.a. and the blatant racism to take place. we are fed up.

the bureau of prisons, sexual assaults and attacks that take place on our law enforcement officers is unconscionable. the bowling micromanagement that takes place where they can't even get off work to spend time with her family. [inaudible] , the list goes on and on. when i say fired up, you safe bet that. fired up. >> fed up. >> fired up. >> fed up. >> fired up. >> fed up. >> when i say they use a ready. >> they. >> ready. >> stay. >> ready. >> because when to continue, going to continue to say afge ready. thank you, president kelley. >> thank you. thank you. all right, all right. are you all ready? ..

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across the board. [applause] youngest member of congress and someday the dean of the congress. on behalf of our members and he stands up every day undo for allegations. help me welcome maxwell. [cheering and applauding] is everybody doing? [cheering] was discussing? unionbusting. my at the right rally? was discussing? [chanting]

is a blessing to be here this morning, thank god it's not raining. it was raining last year. this year it's not raining and i want to thank you all so much for doing your job and doing it good job at that. we need congress to do the same for my to do their job, we need to do our job. we got this week and three more days and then the government shutdown. on the plan for the next week and how we will make sure you allstate and worked in the government continues for the people which is why we are here in the first place. we cannot let the government shutdown. here's the thing. my colleagues created this approach from a two-part government shutdown.

the reason is there try to set themselves up politically selfish epstein talking points but what i will tell you, i don't care for the court of the government, we can't shutdown any part of it, not with the housing crisis we have right now, not with veterans being left out, not with retirees needing what they need right now make it possible and i want to thank you so much. sit on the house oversight committee with your favorite people, marjorie taylor green -- my bad, bad. [laughter] always coming up real, they use different words.

i want to know this, they use the word bureaucrat like that and who they are talking about our civil servants. what they are talking about working-class people making it so we can take care. we have to call them out for blatant attacks on working families. it's not bureaucracy, it's about people to make this work and my colleagues will spend all day complaining about government agencies and time comes to vote and underfunded. on the government. they want to defund the irs we need more resources and i know you need help, you're doing the

best job you can with the resources you have to look we understand that but they need a lot more money to modernize the risk so we need to call them on the hypocrisy, we need to cast the act and everybody has healthcare so we do it we need to do so thank you for having me here. god bless you all and with the people want is simple, a country that created this. let's go. [cheering and applauding] what's disgusting? [chanting] >> thank you, thank you, thank you.

what's disgusting? [chanting] when do we want it? >> now! [chanting] >> i appreciate all of you being here. we are going back in a year and we want our voices to be heard. we don't want no shutdowns what respect on the job. are you all with that? i love you and don't forget to 30:00 p.m. in the capital room and you're all invited to come by at 2:30 p.m. in the hotel, thank you. i love you.

thank you. [cheering and applauding] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ since 1979, in partnership with the industry because he's been is provided complete coverage from halls of congress from the house and senate floors to commercial hearings, parsley

things committee meetings. c-span is your front row seat with no commentary, no interruptions and completely unfiltered. c-span, unfiltered view of government. ♪♪ she's been now, a free mobile app featuring unfiltered view of what's happening washington from live on demand keep up with the day's biggest offense with live streams and floor proceedings in hearing from you congress. white house offense, campaigns and more in the world of politics at your fingertips. stay current with the latest episodes of washington general and find scheduling information persistence tv network and she's radio plus a variety of compelling podcasts. a bit about the apple store and google play,

>> thank you all. all right, good morning, everybody. thank you for joining us after a long night. today was not just a long night and weekend but after all this work we can say it's been worth it and we witnessed one of the most consequential bills, a bill

so greatly impacted not just on national security, not just security of allies of western democracy and we know it. tonight finally america by the way for freedom and democracy. the senate and american leadership will not falter or fail. today the senate toward jews ukrainians and need desperately and palestinian civilians in need of relief. raelis in need od to u.s. service members on patrol in the indo-pacific, the red sea and around the world. today we sent a clear, bipartisan message of resolve to our allies in n.a.t.o. with

the strong, bipartisan vote in the senate, it's clear that if speaker johnson brings this bill to the house floor, it will pass with that same bipartisan support. the responsibility now falls on speaker johnson and house republicans to approve this bill swiftly. and i call on speaker johnson to rise to the occasion, to do the right thing, bring this bill to the floor. as i said, given the large, robust majority here in the senate, it is clear that if that bill is brought to the floor, our bill is brought to the floor, it will pass. but if the hard right kills this bill, it would be an enormous gift to vladimir putin. it would be a betrayal of our partners and allies and abandonment of our service

members and as i said, i believe if this bill is brought to the house floor, it will pass with strong, bipartisan support. there are large numbers of democrats and republicans in the house who know we have to stand up to our responsibilities and aid ukraine. i thank all of my colleagues in the senate who supported this bill. thank you to senators murray and murphy, sinema and lankford, collins, leader mcconnell as well and thank you to the senators and staff who worked through thanksgiving, christmas, new year's and even the super bowl to get this done. finally. these past few months have been a great test for the u.s. senate to see if we could escape the centrifugal full of partnership and summon the will to defend western democracy and our own country's values when

it matters most. today the senate passed that test and makes me proud of the senate. today the senate makes sure that the united states is closer to meeting the monumental and consequential moment that we are in and now it's up to the house to meet this moment, do the right thing, and save democracy as we know it. questions? we'll take this subject first. ryan, go bills. >> next year. >> you're wearing your ukrainian outfit. mine is on purpose as you can probably tell. >> speaker johnson has already put out a statement great skepticism with the package. will you speak to him directly and if you do talk to him directly, what will your message be? >> my message, i would hope to speak to speaker johnson directly and my message is this is a rare moment where history

is looking upon the united states and seeing if we will stand up for our values, stand up to bullies like putin and do the right thing. i will say to speaker johnson, i am confident that there's a large majority in the house who will vote for this bill. i am confident there are many republicans in his caucus. i know, i've spoken to a whole bunch of them who feel strongly we ought to pass this bill and i will urge speaker johnson to step up to the moment and do the right thing. >> yes. >> do you think it's time for the white house and speaker johnson, and with the-- >> i think the house should pass the senate's bill. it's been through lots of negotiation. it's got a large robust vote, 22 republican votes in the senate, they should pass this bill. >> are you ruling out adding any border security language to

this bill, either through amendment in the house or congress negotiation, ruling out anything-- >> look, the bottom line, this bill passed with a majority. and we cannot dither back and forth. we must pass this bill. we democrats as you know were willing to go steps and a bill supported by the wall street journal editorial page a bill supported by the border patrol union, very much a republican organization, supported by the chamber of commerce and unfortunately too many republicans succumbed to administration of donald trump and too many who said the border is in an emergency. in his own words, crass political purposes, let's delay

this for a whole year because it might bring me help in my election, that's not going to wash with the american people. >> would you encourage house democrats and others to discharge petition and if speaker johnson doesn't-- >> i leave that-- i speak regularly to hakeem jeffries, maybe as much, maybe as much as i spoke with speaker pelosi, and his great help in getting this done. >> this funding, ukraine through the end of the year, how long do you think the u.s. needs to fight ukraine's fight and how do you build a coalition given this took several months to build for the next round of funding? >> i think that the strong vote, particularly on the republican side in the senate, despite the fact that they're, you know, punitive presidential candidate argued so strongly against it gives us more momentum and i think that it will be, if we have to pass future aid to ukraine, it will

be easier, not harder, but right now this is a robust package that lasts until the end. year so i'm glad it was full and robust, yes. >> when you come back from recess, it will be a very short period of time until we have government funding deadlines. where does that stand? and what are your thoughts on that. do you think that ukraine aid, would you like to see that possibly rolled in. >> first, patty murray and susan collins are working as a really good team together. there's broad support in the senate and i believe in the house where we worked with speaker johnson on the last bill, to not shut down the government and fund things. we've done our 302a's, 302b's, and almost as we speak, maybe not early this morning after we were all up last night, but as we speak in day-to-day talk, they're working on getting these bills done. so i'm very optimistic that we can get them done by march 1st. as for adding one they think or

another, we'll have to wait and see. the first step, the next step is for the house to bill the house the senate passed. >> former president trump seemed to suggest the other day he might want to see foreign aids be turned to loans and this package would that be a nonstarter? >> look, the house should pass our bill. it's been through the crucible of four months of negotiations and ups and downs. it passed the crucible on the republican side of almost a majority of republicans, rejecting the results of their punitive presidential candidate. we ought to stick with this bill. i mean, no one even knows how this loan program would work, you know, because donald trump says something off the cuff doesn't mean republicans should march in lock step to do it. >> and polls shows that voters president biden, the state of his memory, you deal with him a lot what is your personal

information on that and what about your practical political concerns that he might not be able to get reelected. >> okay, on the first one, i talk to president biden you know, regularly, off, sometimes several times in a week, usually several times in a week. his mental acute is great, it's fine, as good as it's been over the years. i've been speaking to him for 30 years since we worked on the brady bill and the assault weapons ban when i was a young congressman and he's fine. all of this right wing propaganda that his mental acutety is wrong. he's going to win because of his record, because the americans see the record, the economy is improving, and a large number of republicans fear a donald trump presidency for the future of our democracy. >> last one. >> you talked a little how

trump was able to influence or attempt to influence this negotiation, is that something you're expecting to deal with for government funding, everything else this year, the trump factor? >> look, donald trump inserts himself almost always for his own political purposes and it's no way to govern and i think the american people are getting wise to that. thank you, everybody. >> thank you. >> thank you for staying here and for next year, go bills. >> go bills. [inaudible conversations] if you miss c-span coverage, you can find it many times online at c-span.org. years of key hearings, debates and events that guide you to interesting as were the highlights.

timeline makes it easy to get an idea of what was debated and decided in washington. scroll through and spend a few minutes on c-span's points of interest. >> c-span is your unfiltered view of government funded by these television companies and more including midco. ♪♪ ♪♪ will. ♪♪ >> up next, katherine tai talks about the role of trade policy in the global economy and current u.s. trade strategy.

>> good morning, everybody -- good afternoon, everybody. thank you for joining us. i'm told about 100 people here in about 250 people on zoom. we are delighted katherine tai, did you make it all away down

the street? >> the entire half block, yes, quite a commute. [laughter] >> we are going to talk a lot about issues of coming. before we get there, i want to cover a couple of things important, u.s. trade representatives, only somewhat less than the secretary of state. >> exactly. >> which is better, global services on united or on america? >> your opening a can of worms. it is an honor to serve. [laughter] >> oftentimes serve in an economy class.

i feel your pain. [laughter] let's start with worker centric trade policy. back in the old days since the u.s. market is relatively open, average light was about three and a half%, if we were able to reduce areas to other countries, we could export more and export related jobs and we could use access getting other countries to perform and raise your standards and that. but tell me, can you say what an agreement that is worker centric that reduces barriers or

increases? >> i wouldn't put it that way but i know what you mean. we are trying to do something new but talking about style.

lots of our policies and agencies in the room. traditionally we kept our scorecard by how many are finished and how many are across the finish line and we should still be keeping track of that. this changing approach we are trying to harness and get our partners on board. in that sense, let's look what progress lies. this is how it has shifted, the conversation now is focused on supply-chain resilience, equity and how not to lead with an economies brother, not to lead

developing countries behind especially where less the worse of the pandemic behind us. if you track the conversation, we have come a long way, opening up this next phase trade policy approaches no longer persuading people you have to change because given us around us things are changing and success lies in embracing that i should change. the next set of question we are approaching, what you look like? doing a little advanced work, is the aspect going in for people to focus on. the first reform in the question before the members of the wto in

this big family, what are you looking for, what kind of improvements are you looking for? i think it is deeply exciting and a marker of the amount of progress was made. >> let's talk about that than. used to be known for multilateral or broad negotiations, monitoring trade policies you could talk about trade policies and in this development did all of those have broken down over the last ten years or so in different ways. their reporting more on other countries and on their own subsidies and it has ground to a

halt in their multiple administrations over time, what you see the value now going forward and how does this -- how will this decision impact this going forward? >> i know we are hard on ourselves and each other and it is -- >> everybody thinks we are really fun. [laughter] >> amongst ourselves, i think there's a certain fund. [laughter] i guess what i would say to your question which is going in, you have articulated the three branches and we tend to go

around, is the multilateral system on the road? if you can get yourself out of this trade negotiators and patriots and you look at the wto and you look at the world bank and you look at the un, this wto the current incarnation course post-world war ii system, all of these institutions grounded by the fact that they are showing age, born at a time world order that has been successful but today in 2023 this different

world we live in then in 1925, 48% is one of adaptation, modernization and reform, how do we reflect these institutions kinds of relationships in this world we live in right now? if we look at it that way, i'm not deeply in the world, we are all adjacent but there's a very serious reform consciousness need for reform but if you look at the wto, reform is squarely on the agenda and we have questions of reform robustly,

honest and difficult conversations and the reinforcement is how important it is and we are ahead of the institutions and grappling with this. one more item i want to emphasize as i am preparing, one thing i'm truly looking forward to is having the opportunity to see so many of my counterparts. that is a huge part of the value, 164, 166 all continued to show up and maintain relationships with each other and it is valued. >> the trade on people like

ourselves shiny the wto, was the political consensus of the global trading system from your from a where are the elements? what should the elements of reform be? >> how can the wto reflect the fact that the economies today different than when it was formed and 94, 95? there more members which means there's more diversity and complexity in negotiations and even amongst members and their existence so brexit has happened and that's one example that's been spanned out, at the beginning of the wto and ec 15

it went up to 2018 so you see manifestations of change and also on our minds and relevant his china in 2001. n95, china joins in 2001 the economic indicator forces china in 2024 you see how immensely china has grown and changed and hug different all of our relationships with china happen and india. india over the course of 30 years now is an example of how will with all these things. what i might do is the fact that

we have scoped to conclude all three of the primary auctions is important because it is about the wto's role adopting and reflecting the needs of the modern world economy and aspirations and challenges of all the developing roles, there's so much diversity and nuance in this developing world. just look at the settlement piece, one of the primary questions we are asking in negotiations and conversations, how can we have a health system true to what it should be doing and what it should have been doing all along? is going to happen all the time, no matter what but over time in

this litigation form, as happened at the wto when you look at the understanding addition to arbitration, there's all these other avenues nobody has used and if you look at education over time it's very costly, time intensive and it's not the membership, it's a small subset so majority of the wto doesn't even use that. it isn't helping members to what i should be doing so this reform conversation pays attention to how we maintain a constructive

approach across these economies and make it more useful. >> i want to move on to another thing that has changed a lot in the same period of time, the nature of technology into brings you to data issues and things of that sort and across borders and across recent changes in the wto, how much is concerned that something might happen in the trade deal that would constrain the ability of congress to legislate privacy or antitrust concerns regarding our large digital platforms or the

department of justice from taking the actions with regard to competitiveness? what does it mean for us to get away from defending these from what we have tried to do before? >> i just want to acknowledge that you have always been a generous source of a device and guidance. we had a conversation during the transition in a previous job where you raised these issues and this economy we live in, i know i'm looking at myself on the screen here, often people in

this digital infrastructure, our entire lives and economy have become digital so what does it mean for trade? it's a challenge for us in this time. in collective history to ensure we are reflected of reality. what does it mean for digital trade? i'll let this tell a bit of a story that i think will be relatable online. when you started on these trade practices, i think the first that have chapter singapore and we are about to celebrate 20 years this year so early 2000's,

it's called the e-commerce factor ended in several iterations going forward and i think it makes sense if you think about what the digital economy looks like, it really was e-commerce. amazon was still early. mostly selling books in the early 2000's. when we thought about how it intersects with trade and things we negotiate, we appropriately thought about e-commerce digital trade provisions at facilitated provisions. the flow of data was there who want to do safeguard the data and traditional trade transactions, the movement of

goods across borders. the services we also used but also the trade facilitation. that makes sense but fast-forward to today in 2024, one of the things you realize is the decisions where data needs to be handled, it takes on a much different dimension because over a period of time in the digital economy, it's no longer just facilitating transactions, the data becomes the commodity in and of itself. the ability to obtain the data and be combined with this to

create things like benedict a.i., it gives you a sense of normal trade negotiator but they are much bigger equities for what we might be doing in trade negotiations, not just about facilitating trade. it is appreciating questions around how we relate data and companies that harvest the data and something we need to resolve before we can responsibly have trade negotiations to figure out the limits in terms of what we should be doing with trading partners and on the digital side, at the very traditional

trade background, litigating the case export restraints or materials, critical minerals, this digital conversation is where our money alongside everybody else and policymakers as well. as we think about data and what you're generating and what i'm generating, 24/7 created for somebody else possesses else is monetizing and creating and manipulating people who gather data including across borders,

it is this existence and thinking about what the rules and how the data is handled from who has rights and then trade and national security. >> the issue of data has gone beyond trading goods sometime and among other things and 3 million lines of code so how you make sure you deal with these concerns about national security and selling of personal data without diminishing capacity and workers to be competitive and in this digital economy. >> is created a lot and for all

of you negotiated, you know it is a textbased exercise and flexing muscles you're always going in in the same and it will be in the middle depending on where it's going to land. with that said, we did and last year in this provision, and say united states trade language so

in the text and it has said this is where we are putting hours took these provisions and will be said of the time; are these are very important issues all that are better related to current national debate so in terms of what we have done, we have not taken anything away from anyone, this world is operating the way it has always, always looking out for the equities of the american economy and our workers in small businesses and farmers and

ranchers but it's deliberate action taken to allow for deliberative engagement on these issues that will reflect better. you begin to appreciate and it means we have different superpowers. you look at the european, a very complex institution that european superpower, one is regulation, they are able to see the rest of the world through their ability to coalesce around regulations and extraterritorial. if you look at our system, you could call it a superpower, our superpower is not regulating and

in the area of technology where technology is creating digital existence, is an area where we know we have to take forward whether it competition, legislation, those possibility of stakeholders and how technology interacts with our institutions and it's important to be connected to the rest of the conversation and beyond to ensure what we are doing. bringing about a world that respects freedom and promotes

economic vitality but also isn't blind to the implications on these aspects of government and economy. >> focusing on trade-offs and policy issues but each one has trade-off. this on china for basic goods and we also hate inflation and higher costs. the actors deal the first one and likely exacerbate the second one. in this economy and deploy solar panels from china until we

impose tariffs on those how you talk about a trade-off with communities across the country? >> i think you've made your points in the thing i love is that it will prepare and there will be a discussion inside so you always have to think about the trade-offs. >> the supply chain resilience, the clean transition, i think we

can break down a little bit of the trade-off, the zero-sum dynamic looking at this very moment, you make a conversation about each of these areas what we are dealing with in this transition that we know we have critical abilities in their from the national security and for every specter we feel we are vulnerable in particular, it creates a sense of security. ...