Guest reporter. Congressman, first off, why are you not running for reelection . I am not running for reelection because im looking forward to continuing to work on topics i care about. There is more than one way to preserve a country and everybody thought i was crazy when i left the cia, a job i loved and was good at in order to run for congress because i thought it could help the Intelligence Community in a different way but im looking forward to staying involved with the National Security, Public Policy and technology and to be able to continue talking about technology, whether that is through the media or working at a cuttingedge company that i am working on art of political intelligence and quantum is super exciting. I also dont believe these positions in congress were designed to be in for 30 years and i have always said that six, seven, eight years is likely the best thing and so i am hitting that time and decided to go off and do other things. Host in fact, you have written a paper for the Bipartisan Policy Center on Artificial Intelligence, cybersecurity and legislation so what is the crux of your paper . Guest it is a series of paper and ultimately it will turn into a legislation and a National Strategy and Artificial Intelligence. We have to go back a couple of years when republicans were in the majority and i was a chairman and we looked at a privacy and we looked at it procurement and looked at emerging technologies and robin kelly was of my partner, democrat from illinois and i am looking at these issues and we decided to have a series of hearings on Artificial Intelligence and was prompted on the cochair or try chair of the aspen Cybersecurity Initiative in this was a coalition of a number of former government officials, current government officials that are on the cutting edge of all these technologies and that gave me ideas of having these hearings and none of the takeaways from the hearing was the federal government had a lot of piecemeal things that were happening on ai in the Obama Administration and Current Administration but there needs to be an overarching strategy and also Congress Played a role whether it was in appropriations and oversight and so robin and after those hearings robin and i were talking about lets work on this we decided to partner with the Bipartisan Policy Center to again have a number of comedians with high feed load drag meetings with artificial and how should Congress Look at the federal government be looking at these issues when it comes to National Security and workforce development, ethics and research as well. What we have to remember is Artificial Intelligence is a tool and is coming. It will be disruptive and we will have to manage that but we are in a competition and in a competition with china and in a competition with russia. Vladimir putin famously said whoever masters ai will master the world and the future of Artificial Intelligence will be driven by autocratic countries who dont care about Civil Liberties or will it be developed with an ethics that is based in Democratic Values and so that was the impetus for this and we rolled out a couple of the papers and we have a few more papers coming out and then we will be introducing legislation as well. Host lets bring ashley gold into the conversation spirit hello, congressman. You brought up china and how the u. S. Needs to be more advanced than china and russia and other adversaries in Artificial Intelligence for many reasons but of course what is in the news is President Trump desire to either ban social media app tiktok or you know, arrange a sale the microsoft was purchasing tiktok with the blessing of the committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. What do you think of this . You spoken about the importance of cybersecurity and Artificial Intelligence but when it comes to these social media apps do you share the president s concern tiktok is a National Security concern and focused on social media and is that the right place for this concern and im very concerned about what you think. Guest sure, i start with the broader concern is the lack of reciprocity between the United States and china. If a Chinese Company or business or excuse me, let me step back. If u. S. Company or business cant do something in china then why is that Chinese Company or business being allowed to operate here . There is no question that tiktok is owned by a Chinese Company but what are the broader National Security medications on the social media platform . Most thing of National Security they think someone will be cracking in for the dod or nsa but this is an important conversation around Artificial Intelligence because it is data. It is the ability to have volumes and volumes of data where you can connect faces with names and locations and people being in certain locations and this is how you ultimately train algorithms and Artificial Intelligence is based on data and based on algorithms that make sense of that data and spit out a response. Whoever has the most data is going to win and so a Chinese Government that doesnt care about Civil Liberties is going to use data however and they will always have access to more data so the question around these companies is a broader debate that we should be having and is that if there needs to be reciprocity between us and china and if we dont have it there should be some consequences and that is why this review process of Foreign Investment was expanded the year and a half ago to look at other projects. I am currently dealing with a wind farm in west texas that is 130,000 acres and that is basically the size of city of tulsa and it is a wind farm and they will connect the grid but this project is owned by Chinese Company and should we allow a Chinese Company to connect to our grid and the head of these Chinese Companies is a former general in the Peoples Liberation on army of china. General mattis would not be allowed to go to outside of beijing and by 130,000 acres and put up a wind farm. These are some of the broader questions that we should be having and this type of debate. I would like to see what the review process of tiktok has but these are conversations we should be having and should be putting pressure on the chinese to open up their economy for competition. Following up on that, are you thinking that if microsoft was able to purchase tiktok and ensure that all the user data of people that are here in the u. S. Is based in the u. S. With that alleviate your fears that tiktok could be existing in the u. S. If it didnt have an american buyer . Guest so, i think it is, it would be restricting peoples access to the data in the tools. Right . Some would say it could there be a back door and a code and that would be able to let data go to some server somewhere and you would probably be able to see that large volumes and let say you dont have that but you could have people common to her that data is stored and downloaded so there is a whole number of checks that you would want to have if this became a American Company that did not have financial ties and the other thing we have to remember, the Chinese Government passed a law or called it a National Security law that basically said Tiny Companies has or must cooperate with the Chinese Government. You have these kind of laws where these Chinese Government is putting pressure on their capitalist class in order to cooperate in with their goals and it is not like getting a National Security letter from the department of justice because in that apartment of justice sends a social media comedy request for information it is gone through a Legal Process and the judge has looked at it and that is not the same process that you are having in china so the lack of Chinese Investment or ownership of a company that has a lot of data on an american [inaudible] would lower my Blood Pressure a little bit but you would there is still a lot of by Going Forward its probably going to be better but you have to look back at previous activities. Host congressman, do you feel the same way about huawei . Guest huawei is a little different. It is already banned in the United States and why does huawei matter . Basically, it is one of the largest providers of equipment for 5g and why does 5g matter . We all know 4g and it has a little thing that says 4g in the corner but 5g allows us and it will be awesome to download the latest movie on my phone and i can download a paid video within three seconds but with 5g we are allowed to do what is called improving latency. Meaning i do something on my phone that goes into the cloud and then something responds back and that trip is called latency and 5g will allow you to do that within eight nano seconds why is eight nanoseconds important . We think in like six or seven nanoseconds so we will have the entire internet at our fingertips and at the speed of thoughts. What will that allow us to do . It will further empower Artificial Intelligence apps on our phones and so the chinese and huawei specifically own 30 of the worlds market on 5g infrastructure so that means all that data that is moving over that infrastructure could potentially be captured by the Chinese Government and there are only three other competitors in the world that can compete with huawei. While way, this has been, there have been a number of reports that the Chinese Government supported huawei in its growth and its development and so yes, i dont think huaweis infrastructure should be allowed in the United States of america because now all the data will be going across or some would say you can encrypt that data but you know, i dont want that infrastructure owned by the Chinese Government so that is why this is important and the chinese made it very clear that this is not former cia officer will hurd collecting intelligence on the chinese or meat pining about the chinese have made it very clear that by 2049 they want to surpass the United States of america as the sole superpower in the world. Why 2049 . Thats 100 years of communist rule in Mainland China and the way they will surpass the United States is by being a leader in Teacher Technology and 5g and that is why theyve been streaming intellectual property and why they have been bullying other countries in order to buy their products and that is why theyre trying to be a leader in the technology so it is a race but it is, get it because i would say that the economy of the United States and china are more integrated then the economys role in the u. S. And russia so some talk about this being a new cold war but there is a level of cooperation that already exists which is why a go back to my first statement reciprocity, that should be fair and everyone should have the same opportunities and we will let the best when and if i would take entrepreneurship and freedom and Free Enterprise any day over the week over authoritarianism. That brings me to my next question. You talk about the economy of china and the u. S. Been so integrated and that brings me to this idea that should any Chinese Company, you know, be worried that they can no longer do business in the u. S. . Huawei and tiktok are not by far the only Chinese Companies that do business or have a user based in the u. S. But have we reached a point where because we cant take any risks to have these companies functioning in the u. S. How do you go forward with that . You have to start with what is the national secured indication to the u. S. Economy and you can start there but this goes back and you would not have to have that today if there were or if there was free access. If American Companies were able to operate in china the way chinese comedies are able to operate here then i use allie baba in the United States but amazon is not treated like an Chinese Company in china. The Chinese Government would accept that and accept that level of competition then we wouldnt be having these confrontations here in america and so it it is a food product and i can say agriculture is a National Security issue and having a secure food supply is important but this is a major debate where the conversations need to go and this will impact our way of life impact the American Economy and we are in a position where the english and the dollar might not be dominant in the world of mandarin so there is, the world can exist with both the United States and china but the rules should be fair for both sides and open. That is what i would be pushing and until that happens i think there will be pressure points in many different industries, many different areas and when it comes to that relationship with china. Do you think President Trumps rhetoric and posture on china and obviously hes a quite a china hawk has been made these conversations easier or more difficult . Guest i think the rhetoric has made people realize the impact that china to our country and i would say the threat of china to our economy is a bipartisan issue in washington dc and one of the things i learned when i was an undercover officer was being nice with nice guys and tough with tough guys and if someone doesnt play by the rules, guess what, there are consequences to that. I think there is a whole number of ways that we be doing it in the chair for at the beginning of this term is unnecessary and has longterm impacts on the American Economy because once you have changed Global Supply chains, Global Supply chains arent going to pop back and if countries were able to buy sorghum rather than brazil rather than the United States and out the tariffs are gone people keep buying sorghum from brazil so like with a lot of things i agree with psalm and disagree with others but global, china is a global threat to our economy. The other thing we should be doing is how we can be bringing Global Supply chains to our friendlier nations but the passage of nasa twopoint oh or usmca we should look at how we strengthen the north american supply chains in order to compete with china so why arent we doing more in Central America in order to move some of those things away from china and compete with them economically and one of the things that matters in the weight we will deal with this is to increase our cooperation with our allies and have more allies and that is why engagement with other countries is good. Host congressman heard, could you talk about Artificial Intelligence with the National Defense issue. Guest sure, the future of cybersecurity and the Digital Infrastructure will be all about ai and all about good ai versus bad aia. How are we going to be using information to protect us in the future and this is when it comes to the world war on terrorism and the amount of video we have of bad guys and if we review all the video we have potential tariffs or terrorists in the zone specifically it would require 2 million more analysts but we cannot hire that many analysts so we need to have these tools to help us in order to defend our borders and you could also make sure we have not putting men and women in the military in harms way and imagine the ability to send a drone into a conflict region or if you are going house to house to find enemy combatants youre able to have drone do that and process the information in real time. Artificial intelligence will enable that kind of activity and so that is important and then i believe you can make the case that if you have a more Efficient Government so that helps us when it comes to National Security and so how are you using ai to understand waste, fraud and abuse within our various systems and ai will help us in things like agriculture the food supply if it is secure and stable food supply is a National Security issue so we can go grow more crops on less land with less water and these are all things that we should be doing but we will have to make sure that these algorithms are following the law and that is why ethics is such an important part of this issue. We have rules against jusco nation already on the books and so we cant have these algorithms that demonstrate bias or discover nation as well just like you would not allow that foreign individuals so when should you use Artificial Intelligence . Should a robot be able to kill a robot on the battlefield . Should a robot be able to kill a human . These are the ethical conversations that come up now. And these are the conversations that we need to have spirit congressman, you were talking about competition and using ai for defense and that makes me think of the Big Technology companies and the fact that they are under scrutiny in dc but also the fact that a lot of their employees rebel against the fact that they would take contracts with the dod or military so what do you think of that employee unrest that a company like google should not be working with dod and how companies sort of have to tow that lined with wanting to keep a Good Relationship with the military but listening to the concerns of their employees . Guest i think we are not going to be able to win this generation defining conflict without a partnership between the private and partner private and public sector. That level of cooperation needs to happen and you know, i came out and it was unbelievably disappointing in the project maven debacle with google because i think this was a level of cooperation that needs to happen and is important and why the decisions were made within the company to do that, i still dont know what that is or why that was in there are other companies that are working with us and so instead of, we should always be looking at regulation and evaluating whether there is a monopolistic competition or lack thereof but we should be thinking about how to increase competition and not disassemble great American Companies that will be needed in this battle that we have with the Chinese Government but if the u. S. And if the federal government can do this by themselves for the private sector can do this by themselves it is the equivalent of the french thinking the maginot line will defend them from the germans. This is competition that needs to happen but we need more people in congress whether its elected officials or staff but understand as technologies and can better appreciate how you can ultimately regulate. I think we all laughed at many of the hearings that happened about people like is this work, is this the cloud or is this on and we need folks that understand these technologies so we know how to take advantage of them before they take advantage of us. Congressman, you no, you said you are in support of looking into whether theres monopolistic behavior but just in general what you think of the house judiciary investigation with the doj and sec and state attorney general investigation. Are they focusing on the right things . Is competition a problem among u. S. Tech companies . Cant say i have a detailed nuance understanding of the individual investigations and the nuances they are but i think one of the conversations we should be having as how are we crating an environment to increase competition and i dont know if those entities are focused on that and how are we making sure and again this is not within judiciary or doj behavior but how do we produce more American Students that are conversant in ai and quantum and how do we improve that workforce so we have people that can then be drawn upon in order to be beat competitors. My tactic would be how do you create an environment to increase competition and again, you know, the focus of those investigations are, i have been briefed on the latest guidance with them. Host congressman heard, he talked about the need for a moral holistic approach when it comes to cybersecurity and knowing some of the bad actors in this arena where does Election Security fit into this . Guest sure, look, Election Security is something that i have been following prior to the 2016 election. I held the first hearing about russian involvement in our elections prior to that election completing and the russians were trying to influence our election and trying to ever since but the stats that were taken since then to defend the Digital Infrastructure in voting counting machines in the amount of money that has been given to the secretaries of state and the secretary of states focused on making sure the right machines are there in order so there are over 100,000 different elections divisions and so hardening that infrastructure is something that they have focused on for years and in 2018 we do not see any anomalies but the broader concern is this issue of disinformation and that is foreign actor sharing information that is patently false and trying to increase an outcome. Every Intelligence Agency has been focused on this and the social Media Companies where a lot of these disinformation payloads or propaganda has been propagated and have been cooperative but one of the things i would like to see and how you change his behavior is when twitter or facebook takes down an account because it was seen as being involved in issuing disinformation other users arent notified and so i think if we got to a point where you were notified that hey, you followed a russian troll who was spreading disinformation may be that changes behavior. When i was in the cybersecurity business and one of the things that you could protect yourself from Cyber Attacks is dont click on links from an email that you dont know where the email came from and so we would send out a test and then people would still click on it and we would go in and talk to those individuals and say you clicked on that and you clicked on that link and that change their behavior. May be seen that in the social Media Companies, you shared a tweet from somebody may be that may change folks behavior and when we were kids we learned dont get into the car with the stranger but now its google or lift but why are we sharing information from people that we dont know anything about so it is a broader disinformation issue with something that is impacting across the world and is a broader, i think, concern. Host we have time for a 32nd question and a 32nd answer. Ashley. What is your greatest compliment in congress . Is there anything you are hoping to do before you leave . Guest i will take that last one. What i am hoping to do is to get this National Strategy arm ai across the finishing line and i am proud of my efforts to make our country a stronger place, whether that is being able to better defend digital input structure or making sure that we are creating the next Cyber Workforce and these are the big pieces of legislation i was able to be involved in and im glad i was able to. Host congressman will hurd republican of texas joining us from san antonio, ashley gold of axials in washington dc, thank you both for being on the commune caters. Thank you. Guest thank you. You are watching booktv on cspan2. Every weekend with the latest nonfiction books and authors. Cspan2, created by americas Cable Television companies as a Public Service and brought to today by your television provider. Weeknights this month we are featuring book tv programs as a preview of what is available every weekend on cspan2. Tuesday night beginning at 8 00 p. M. Eastern we look at writing and publishing. First, in this professor Donna Harrington luker looks at the concept of Summer Reading that was popularized in the 19th century. Then laura miller, priscilla payton and Brandon Hensley talk about the future of books and Book Publishing in a technological and social change. Later author and essayist Roger Rosenblatt discussing the importance of documenting every day life during times of crisis. Enjoy book tv on cspan2. On tuesday treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin testifies before the Coronavirus Crisis subcommittee on the state of the u. S. Economy in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Watch live at 1 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan, online cspan. Org or listen live with free cspan radio app