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against chinese technology. my name is steven overly. i host the daily politico tech podcast. i talk about ai and its vast implications. i don't think the consequences, or potential consequences are more significant when we talk about national security, whether that is competition with china, the war with ukraine. fundamentally, whoever dominates a will wield significant geopolitical power so that is the backdrop of our conversation. i do want to start with some news this morning which many of you may have seen, the biden administration signed an executive order effectively directing the department of defense and the department of energy to identify government sites where ai data centers can be built. senator occurs, as someone who is very focused on ai energy and

infrastructure what's your reaction to this latest news? >> to put this in perspective, in utah, at my home state, two-thirds of that state is owned by the federal government so if you are not looking at federal land you are taking two-thirds of the mapped off the equation. think about trying to transmit energy. if you can't go across that part of the state. so this is good news. i am anxious to learn more about it. has i was thinking about this this morning, i can picture in my mind and a eye center hooking up to a fire hydrant and no water coming out. that is what i feel like it will be for power, right, at the current trajectory rate, we will be out of power and they will hook up and nothing will come out. >> chris, i want you to build on that. openai is another supporters of the imperative 2030 project. we have also argued that data

centers and energy are key ingredients the u.s. -- if the u.s. is going to beat china in ai. does this morning's executive order actually move the needle in a meaningful way, and what does that leave out. >> if you think about ai infrastructure, and am always reminded of a book that i may or may not have read in the late 1990's, "guns, germs, and steel." the book made the case that mason succeeded when they were able to marshal their natural resources to get a competitive advantage. if you think about it i like the electricity of our era. if we can prevail on a key for us to continue to lead the world, that will ultimately be an infrastructure exercise. it's good to be chips, data,

talent, it's going to be the energy piece. specifically to your question, i think what the biden administration has put out today sends an interesting signal in the following way -- we have identified that there is roughly $175 billion of dry capital out there globally, looking to invest in ai infrastructure. there is an understanding that there's going to be such a need for it, in part, driven by the geopolitics. that there is an interesting return model on it. the question for this country is, there are two countries that can build ai at scale. the u.s. and china. do we want that 175 within dollars, to invest in the u.s. to create jobs and economic activity, or do we want it to go into the prc? when we think about the economics of -- i don't think of these as data centers by the way,, i think of them as supercomputer laboratories, to

use a cliche like your parents' oldsmobile. the biggest challenge is you have to buy your energy at the front end and then you are ultimately going to sell your compute on the back end. for people investing their money, how long will it take the gulf between buying the electricity and then selling the computer? what you get with the biden administration today, at least on federal land, is trying to shorten the time in between when you get your project shovels in the ground and then going forward. so from that perspective, putting emphasis on the fact that we need to get to a place where we go from thinking big to acting big to ultimately building big. >> we are talking about the first 100 days of the next administration. if this is a signaling exercise, what is a tangible step that the next administration can take in the first one hundred days to

advance on that and actually make the real, tangible impact. >> the senator mentioned, what was it, two of utah is public land? that is fairly unique to utah but obviously there are public lands all over the country can we take this basic concept and figure out a way to work with states on non-public land, to be able to expedite the building process? i think that will require some kind of incentives to move forward. with the states benefit from this, they get some construction jobs, operations jobs, revenue. those are all good things. but can the state actually begin to think of the data centers as being larger ai ecosystems and economic development opportunities? something we at openai have suggested is, you look at the data center potentially needs one gigabyte of energy. that's a lot of energy.

could you potentially have a certain segment of that computer allocated for that stated purpose? if it is one gigawatts, may be 250 megawatts go to compute. that state can lead to stand up its own ai ecosystem so they are not just getting the job from the building, they are building on a sustainable economic model for themselves. in return for the state expediting the building process. we do need to address the timelines to get this built particularly given the imperatives on china, but as we think about the federal level, and we have a senator in congressperson who are here who can talk about this, you do get a sense that there is maybe an emerging interest in doing a big infrastructure-type administration, may be one bill or several bills, to create incentives for states. >> representative bera, in the executive order this morning, notably one of the requirements input and companies that build

these data centers is that they have to be built using clean energy. to me, it is sort of a prime example when i talk about ai and national security of some of the trade-offs and considerations, right, do you do you rush to develop this technology even at the expense of of climate goals or labor goals? we have seen this administration trying to balance of those. from your perspective, is it a fair trade? if you get government land to build a data center, you have to use clean energy? >> i think it is. there is a bipartisan opportunity. if we think about modular nuclear energy, it is going to be easier to do that under a republican administration and it would be under a democratic administration. very bill gates has invested a lot in this area. first refined by part agreements that mark energy needs of these

data centers will be huge, it's not going to be wind or solar. it's going to be a new source of energy. that is an area where we could find some bipartisan agreements to move forward. and another of the biden administration was advanced manufacturing centers. i think there is one coming to sunnyvale. i think that is a real smart investment to put federal resources into that next generation of chips, to make sure we continue to keep the lead. again, modular energy is an area we can work on. >> this been a big week for last minute ai policy pushes with days left in this administration. yesterday the commerce department also announced new export controls it effectively restricting the sale of microchips used to develop artificial intelligence and that included country caps, not just on rivals like china, but even some u.s. allies.

zach, this is your wheelhouse, from the first trump administration, yu oversaw export controls. will these new restrictions actually hamper u.s. adversaries in the way that they have been promised? and with this new administration coming in, do you expect them to follow through on this? >> that's a good question. but before that, i wanted to talk about the china competition generally, because that is probably one of their reasons why were talking about ai nationally. when evaluating china competition, i see a lot of things in the news about how the u.s. is leading china, but i have seen this story before, for the last 25 years. every time we have gotten arrogant and thought -- in chips, and batteries -- and thought we were far ahead of china, china catches up and then gaetz us. so we have to remain vigilant -- and then lease us --beats us.

so we have to remain vigilant. think about the data, the energy, the money that goes into it, china will invest about one trillion to $2 trillion in the next 10 years in ai. regulations, infrastructure and workforce, we have to think about all of those elements in terms of competition. one or two aren't enough. which then brings us to the chip controls. i 100% think that the trump administration is going to -- they will agree with the imperatives, that the execution was enormously flawed, right? we are putting arbitrary caps on countries on compute power, rather than using chip diplomacy. if we are the preeminent ai chip designers, we have to use diplomacy to get countries to work with us for the move to china.

, yes, movie china's ai chips are a bit behind, but they can put more together to get the same compute power. we export the chips, give american businesses the opportunity to get in those markets. but then there would be china market restrictions, and user restrictions. if these data centers will be helping adversaries, then that is a limitation on export controls. so, yes, we are moving in the right direction, execution is horribly flawed and i am hopeful that trump administration will fix it. >> senator kurtis, is this a rush job, or is this good policy? >> i have this problem, i want to answer all their questions. [laughter] let me just say it feels a bit like someone is going to say the emperor has no clothes. if you say we will let you do these on public lands, but they have to be clean energy, it is good to take five years at the fastest, probably like 10 years to do that with nuclear.

where are the minerals going to come from? are the solar panels going to be built here in the united states? i think we are fooling ourselves, in many respects, in not only what she said but on the energy side of this. it's great to say, ok, we are opening these lands to do this. but where is energy going to come from? if you put restrictions on that, it's just not going to happen. we have to be more realistic with the volume of energy that we are talking about to do what needs to be done, it's going to be natural gas. and long-term, it can be nuclear. denver nobles can layer on top of that, but i don't think anybody -- renewables can layer on top of that. but let's talk about how to make natural gas clean?

those are questions that are far better questions if we really think that we are going to build these type of ai facilities and if we don't, guess what, they will be built overseas and they will use coal. >> we should also tease out semiconductor manufacturing, it relies on critical minerals. it relies on industrial diamonds, cutting tools that china controls the dominant share, china controls critical minerals processing, super abrasives, et cetera. those supply are exclusively in china. we have no hope of leading china unless we get our act together and we re-shore or friend-shore, but make sure we have long-term, secure, stable supply chains if we will even be in this race. everybody gets so excited about the applications, and we should, but we should also think about how do we do this? what are the inputs? those are really important. i appreciate you flogging that as well. >> i want to come to senator

curtis with that question. when i talked to members of congress about their priorities, national security or otherwise, i start to hear the sound of my head, ka-ching -- it all sounds expensive. candidly, we have a republican-controlled congress that has talked a lot about putting checks on spending. so i guess my question on each of you, how do you convince lawmakers? do you need to convince lawmakers to actually spend on ai priorities? >> well, i would like to use ai in my office, let's start with that. right? that bargains put on us ourselves to use it are outstanding. first of all, -- the burdens put on us ourselves to use it are outstanding. i tend to think, to answer your question, our job is to put the guardrails on this thing, and

the free market is ready to roll. the only thing holding this thing back is not money, it's the guardrails. when we don't put guardrails out, everybody is scared. if you don't know what you can expect and what the rules are going to be, hard to make those investments. my guess is if we put the guardrails out, the free market would go crazy. >> i will agree with the senator, if there is a priority in the first 100 days, it is, what the guardrails look like? in my home state of california, the state legislator tried to put guardrails up, but our delegation pushed back a bit because we can't have 50 different regulatory regimes. . we should try to figure out how to get that right so we don't stifle innovation, but we also protect the public as well. we didn't do it around social media and now we are trying to do it and it is too late, really hard to do. ai is moving really fast. i think there is a priority.

spending aside, there is a priority for us to figure that out in a nonpartisan way that allows us to have this innovative ecosystem but also set guardrails in the right place? >> can i connect the dots here a little bit, your point earlier on where the competition really stands is incredibly important. for those not in ai, the prc released a model in december called deep seeks. it competes with the best models in the u.s.. this idea that we are way ahead on this is not the case. the stakes couldn't be higher. i wouldn't typically quote putin but he got this right when he says whoever wins the ai race queen of the world -- witness -- whoever wins the ai race wins the world. they are authoritarian stakes, they control all the data, the

data goes into these. we are ahead in the chips, but they can through massive resources at these. a specific idea, one of the things that both have talked about it, the u.s. government will have to buy compute for u.s. government purposes. 175 billion dollars out there to, invest they need to make sure the economics work from a return model. if the u.s. can basically do a backstop by at least committing to buying that compute, it unlocks that capital to come into this country to invest into these data centers. that's how you can really get an interesting potential avenue for interesting public-private approach. government will have to do it anyhow. if you make those commitments you bring them the capital in globally to then expedite the buildout of the data centers that we need.

those data centers, in turn, become infrastructure as destiny, effectively our ai arsenal democracy as we go forward to ensure that we beat china. >> and i want to stress, where america has fallen behind in competition with china, is because we haven't had a serious, whole of government strategies. we are completely fragmented. one agency is doing one thing another is doing another. the term administration is to break -- i know the term moonshot is overused, that for lack of a better term, we need a moonshot and chips. we need a moonshot in ai, and that starts with the whole of government strategy. >> and we have done it before. the u.s. is great at doing these big things. it's our superpower? >> how, should come, and set up a department of ai?

>> that is exactly what the national security council is therefore. they have to make a key and imperative. i don't know if you all have seen the chinese robots, they are incredible. they will approve or insulate the world in a few years and china will potentially win the ai race. we are at the cusp of winning or losing everything because if you will really be everything. so the national security council needs to bring technical experts from the outside and agency experts to figure out how does each agency reads together its authority into a comprehensive, expedient ai strategy? >> congressman vera, we are talking about the first 100 days of the trump administration. one thing the president has promised to do is the executive order which set up the u.s. ai institute that had directives for agencies to cultivate a key-focused policies. if that is scrapped, as soon as a week from now, what are the implications for national security?

>> i don't think it's a great idea. or if it is scrapped, what replaces it. you have national security but then you have ai that will be part of our everyday life, transportation systems, it in health care, that is already moving. how do we make sure that is safe and eckley geishas and folks are protected. if it does get replaced, i would be curious what the trump administration puts in place for your safety is a big concern of those guardrails. the interesting thing we will be watching is, the president will be surrounded by a lot of tech talent. if you look at some of his nominees, not sure what elon musk is going to do. they don't all agree on how we should approach a key -- ai. there will be some, hopefully, it is creative tension in the administration, but i think there will be a lot of tech talent in this administration. >> do you want to an?

>> yeah, i can't help hearing ronald reagan in my head. i am here from the federal government and i want to help, does that scare anybody? [laughter] i will give my home state of utah a shout out. they have done some creative legislation on this. >> leading the country in a lot of stuff. >> yeah, they call it sandbox where you can experiment on ideas. i have heard the term we don't want to stifle this. it's so true. if we aren't careful in our good intentions, we will stifle this. the other thing is if you look at how we have regulated on technology in the past, we tend to pick a point in time and pass legislation based upon what we know. now we are trying to run the internet based on legislation decades and decades and decades ago. we have to somehow legislate in a way that moves with this,

event is adaptive to what we learn as we go forward with ai. that is not easy to do and the reason why we haven't done it yet but it is incredibly important that we figure this out. >> a follow-up question that i can on my mind, as much as ai is a race, it's not one the u.s. is running alone. a big difference between the trump administration and the biden administration have been their rhetoric towards u.s. allies. i have even seen obviously, donald trump talk about tariffs. we have seen threats to annex canada. is there a risk that his style, his approach, undermines the global relationships that the u.s. needs here when it comes to ai and national security? >> all i can tell you is, we have four years of prior experience and there is lots of fear, but i don't think any of that actually played out. i'll bet on the u.s. all day

long. in my opinion, as long as we don't ruin it, this will happen here in the united states. the most important thing is the house on the senate don't get in the way of this we put the appropriate guardrails out, and i will bet on the u.s. leadership and innovation every day, all day long, as long as we don't ruin it. >> we are running out of time. i want to get one more question, and i will start with you on this because i want the industry perspective. there is an expectation that the trump administration will defend american tech companies on the global stage perhaps more than the biden administration has, whether that is regulations coming out of europe for instance on digital markets and ai. i am curious if that is in fact your expectation. and as you at the first 100 days, is there some sort of stance that you would like to see this new administration takes from big-tech? >> i think we're looking at it

from the tech perspective specifically, ai, is something that i think has sort of been touched on almost by everyone on this panel. which is, an overarching what i would call coherent or holistic theory of the case strategy. i will touch on something as heck earlier,. deepseek model is the equivalent of a sputnik moment moment in ai. in this country reacted to sputnik in the 1950's by putting his foot on the gas pedal and winning. we absolutely have to play to win. this is an administration, in, that has made very clear that when he thinks about ai, there is one thing that is looking at, one, national security, two, economic competitiveness, two sides of the same coin.

so my hope or aspiration, is that you will get an overarching strategy that is going to come at it to deliver on those two outputs, and with the urgency of this moment demands. because this is a zero-sum game. the u.s. absolutely has to win this because when i will dictate whether the world is built on free democratic ai rails or built on authoritarian, autocratic ai rails. >> that is unfortunately all the time we have. i could go on and on about this, but i want to thank the panelists for their great insights. i would like to thank all of you for being here. [applause] ♪ announcer: c-span's "washington journal," our life form involving you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics and public

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