Review the latest events anytime at cspan. Org coronavirus. The u. S. Chief Technology Officer talked about Artificial Intelligence and competition from china. Hosted by the hudson institute, this is about 50 minutes. Okay. Well, welcome, everyone, to our meeting on ai and advances in Quantum Information Sciences or quantum computing, et cetera. Im pleased to have an opportunity to welcome michael, who has a thoroughly intimidating title of the chief Technology Officer of the United States. So its i think weve come to the right place to engage this this important subject. As as you know, the the administration has taken a very energetic position in trying to advance the stateoftheart and above the applications of Artificial Intelligence and the Quantum Information Sciences to our nondefense applications. Theres there is parallel efforts of substantial scale in the department of defense, through the Defense Advanced Research projects agency and other defense entities because these technologies are, indeed, of universal applications. So i like to take an opportunity to begin the discussion with michael to, perhaps, start with a bit of current news. Where europe has european union, in particular, has tabled some of their ideas about how to manage some of the particularly, the ethical issues relating to the use of Artificial Intelligence. Weve had, of course, quite a number of years of tension on a transatlantic basis about the application of advanced technologies to commercial, as well as governmental, application. So be interested in getting your take on this, michael. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you so much to hudson for having me. And thank you for this d this conversation. Yeah. So yesterday was was was a big day of news for the world of ai regulation. As you probably know, United States was kind of first out of the gate in january where we proposed the airegulatory principles and those are out for comment. And then since then, the eu, yesterday, has released their attempt to do what we did in january with providing some sort of structure around the way they are trying about regulations of aipowered technologies in the european union. So i think our kind of take is sort of twofold. I think, one, you know, were very encouraged to see a lot of focus in their document on the importance of fostering an Innovation Ecosystem that is friendly to Artificial Intelligence technologies. They talk about the importance of developing and working on research and developmenttype projects and helping drive startup squs sma startups or smes as they call it. And they also talk, very much, about a valuesbased approach. One that the United States expressed and we put out our principles in january. But the one thing i do think is important to flag and and and one thing where i think i think there could be some room for improvement and implementing it. What we found what they actually put out yesterday, really does in some ways sort of clumsily attempts to bucket aipowered technologies as either high risk or not high risk. So the proprososed way their sce is structured, there will be some sort of group in europe of some kind that will make some decision on whether a technology is high risk or not. If you are high risk, you have to go through a pretty extensive regulatory approach. If you are not high risk, you dont have to do anything. We believe this sort of allornothing approach is not necessarily the best way to approach regulating ai technologies. We think that ai regulation is best sort of serves on a spectrum of sorts. There is certain types of technologies, aipowered technologies, which will require heavy regulatory scrutiny and we, in the United States, are prepared to do that. But there are quite a few that need just a little or not at all. And i think creating the spectrum is important. So i think thats kind of where our biggest concern is. And ill be traveling to brussels next next march, next month, and speaking to folks over there and kind of sharing some of these concerns. I think there is a lot we have in common. But i think this approach of very sort of bluntly bifurcating the entire the entire ai tech ecosystem into two buckets is a little bit harsh. I think its a very good point. And as may know, i was also served on the dod defense science board. And we have done studies on the application of modern technology to the development of both ai and quantum. And one of the opportunities that may evolve as the technology improves, to facilitate better linement wialh our allies in europe, is an effort thats underway with in darpa to develop explainable ais. So the user of the outcome or output of an aibased bit of analysis is able to understand the coupling between the outcome and the the data that produced the outcome. And were, of course, not there yet. But that there may be some opportunities for Research Collaboration between the u. S. And and the eu to, perhaps, better solve this problem of of explainable ai. Yeah. I couldnt agree more. I think it sort of its sort of a its a good segue into sort of how the u. S. Approach, in some ways, differs a little bit to the to the european. I think when we put out our principles last january, they sort of focus on sort of three main themes. And i think one of them hits directly on this explainability question. On the first go around, i think the most important thing in the u. S. Model is public engagement. Whenever we attempt to pursue any kind of regulatory action of any kind, you know, we, as the, you know, federal government, have some experts. But the community is the people who know this best. They have scientists and technologists and experts who can help us think through that. So there is a lot of emphasis in our framework on public engagement. The second key is really around limited regulatory overreach. We believe we need to create a model that is risk based and use based and sector specific. So the types of regulations that you may have for an Autonomous Vehicle or for a drone is very different from the type you will have for a medical diagnostic. And rather than bucketing technologies, there has to be a bit of a spectrum and flexibility in the model so that you are able to actually regulate appropriately for the risks each of those technologies provide. And the third, which i think you bring up very astutely, is this idea of promoting trustworthy ai. This is something we deeply care about. And we need to engender trust in the American People and the technologies that they are using. And we need to create a regulatory model that allows that trust to be built. And having better r and d and Better Technology around issues like explainability, i think, will get us a lot closer to that place. One of the issues thats related to this thats coming fast upon us is the interaction between ai and the internet of things. Science board has been doing some work on the technologies of autonomy and counter autonomy. And obviously, Ai Technology is one of the things thats going to make iot work for the whole society. So there may also be some opportunities for collaboration with our eu colleagues on trying to understand how we will manage the introduction of iot. Because, like other applications where ai is involved, the range of applications is extraordinarily diverse. I couldnt agree more. And i think where that you know, where we have sort of manifested that type of thinking in our approach is actually through the first large white house summit we held on Artificial Intelligence was titled ai for american industry. And we were trying to express when we were hosting this event is that Artificial Intelligence is going to touch every industry in the United States. Whether you are doing Oil Extraction in texas, whether you are doing farming in iowa, whether you are doing biotech in boston, you will be using this technology to drive your business. And if the u. S. Wants to lead the world and win Artificial Intelligence, we need to make sure that all of those industries able to capture the benefits that Artificial Intelligence can provide. So being able to have that kind of very important dialogue with our allies around the world with how we can move all these Industries Forward is absolutely critical. Right. One of the, lets say, news items thats been a pretty constant drumbeat for the past half dozen years or so has been chinas alignment of its perception of its national and security interests with investments in advanced technology. They announced their made in china 25 initiative five years or so ago. Which identified about ten areas of technology that would be getting particularly high investment from china. And its often described in the terms of billions of dollars. And id be interested in your observations, michael, about how chinas efforts have been coupled to the administrations initiative and your perception of the chinese effort. Yeah. I think theres sort of two two threads there to pull on. I think the first, which i think, you know, needs to be said and i think, to me, is should be evidently apparent and probably communicated more often generally. Is that, you know, if a chinese companys party is using Artificial Intelligence to track people in their country, to imprison ethnic minorities, to push forward a complete surveillance state, to maintain a great chinese firewall and essentially restricting the content that Chinese People have access to, these are the use cases of Artificial Intelligence that are are deeply in conflict with western values. And this is something that we have tried to communicate, and continue to communicate, with our friends and allies in europe. And there has never been more of an imperative than now to ensure that the u. S. And our allies lead the world in Artificial Intelligence. We need to ensure that the next great Technological Breakthroughs are made here, in the west, and are underpinned by western values. And i think if we dont lead, we run the risk of these values that are diametrically opposed to everything we believe in, slowly permeating these new technologies and then being export abroad. So that is why the imperative is so great. That is why the president signed into signed an executive order launching the american i initiative. That is why we have pursued a whole of government approach the last three years. And that is why we made the big announcement last monday that many of you saw that we are committed to doubling nondefense ai spend by the federal government in the next two years. That is moving from about a billion dollars to 2 billion of federallyfunded r and d in ai in the course of only two years. This is a massive and incredible step forward in our commitment to American Leadership in this in this particular domain. And i think whats very important to remember and so thats point one. I think, point two, what you brought up, is sort of these commitments that have been sort of publicly asserted by the Chinese Government. You know, we believe that, you know, theres a lot of we have a lot of skepticism in the validity, voracity of those particular statistics. And i think i challenge we have a lot of brilliant thinktank people here. Lots of journalists here. I spend all to spend more time thinking about if you are attempting to report on an action taken by the Chinese Government to spend more money in ai, is that actually happening . Like, really, are they actually spending billions of dollars . Is that really a true statement . Can you compare that number to the number that Congress Appropriates and has actually spent and put out the door by our agencies . I think the short answer is no. And i think there needs to be a more and stronger and better and bigger conversation around validity of those numbers. I point you to two studies that came out. Georgetown. A great institution. A team put out a study last december that cast doubt on a lot of these numbers. And said that, in reality, theyre definitely not spending tens of billions and spending a lot less than that. And thats the type of narrative that we need to make clear. Because when we are trying to make comparisons around what the west is spending and how we are approaching our r and d ecosystem, we actually need to be comparing apples to apples. Its a good point. And one of the things i think, ironically, is going to render chinas investment less successful is that, that parallel with the their made in china 2025 initiative, they also have emphasized what they call Civil Military fusion, which is an effort to extract the military applications of these advanced technologies. Both the Quantum Sciences and ai are technologies that will have universal applicability and trying to force feed the scientific effort into producing military advantage will have the more likely outcome that will produce neither military advantage, nor advance the underlying science. So it it is something of limitation. And so i think were were likely to be more successful with this approach. And i was very reassured by your observations about the scale of the increase. And having previously served in the office of management and budget as an official there a number of years ago, one of the questions i always ask about Public Sector investment, which is easy to measure, is what are your expectations for the outcomes of this investment . And are there pertinent metrics . Are there formed expectations that might help shape public expectations about the scale of the investment . Absolutely. And i think the way the best way to answer that is to kind of give a little bit of a description of the type of Innovation Ecosystem we have here in the United States and the role that the federal government and its agencies plays in driving innovation broad broad broadly in the United States. So whats very different than almost any country in the world and particularly in china is the way the federal government spends research and development dollars. We dont have a ministry of science that has dolled out x number of dollars. We have research happening across all our federal agencies. Darpa, for example, is doing incredible work. You have National Science foundation which is appropriated roughly 8 billion a year to invest in earlystage, basic Research Done by at at a lot of our universities. There is department of energy that has billions of dollars that are spent through there. Incredible national Lab Infrastructure with National Institutes of health which does a lot of our biohealth related research as well. Each have their sort of own aspirational goals and pieces of the puzzle they play. In some ways, were incentivizing, creating free market of ideas around innovation. And the part that the federal government plays in the larger spectrum is that generally speaking, the federal government is investing in early stage, precompetitive, basic research and development. And thats very different than what the private sector does. And thats thats by design. So the the types of research that the federal government, generally, approaches is the type of research that the private sector is not incentivized to do on their own. That is a gap we try to fill and do it in a way where these ideas can come to life and taken to the sector and brought to fruition and ultimately to commercialization. And i think a great example to show how our system is unique is this breakthrough that happened last year on quantum supremacy. So there is no doubt in my mind that someone in beijing had sort of, you know, called upon someone someone else in china to achieve quantum supremacy before before United States did. You know, we didnt make that call here in washington to our kmunl community. Yet, the United States made that breakthrough first. The federal government in this early stage basic research. We made a commitment years ago to investing in a quantum lab at uc santa barbara. Its doing incredible work and we continue to fund their ear early, basicstage research. Some breakthroughs were made. Google saw this. Said, wow, this is a great team. We could bring them on board. We could equip them with more resources we have. More compute time. Whatever. They acquired essentially the group. Brought them in house. And that group was able to achieve what they believed was quantum supremacy. Now, they had to prove that their device could actually be faster than a traditional computer. So who has the Fastest Group of computers in the world . The federal government does at our national lab. So then they took their, you know, their breakthrough and they went to the fastest computer in the world thats run by the d. O. E. And they ran the test to prove they had actually done it. So here you can see this incredible sort of Virtuous Cycle of all pieces of the ecosystem working together to federal government doing basic funding work at academic institutions, moving into the private sector, then having to go back to the federal government ult mayimately for t final check. Its a very good observation. Having done some work with the National Labs, one one of the things that they have been able to do, successfully, that i think interacts with a particularly constructive way with the this initiative, which is basically in the foundational science of Artificial Intelligence and Quantum Sciences. Is they have extraordinary modeling and simulation capabilities. So the application of Artificial Intelligence or, say, quantum sensing, for example, can be put through a synergistic suite of modeling and simulation. That contributes to the advance of the foundational science. And its the foundational science that, of course, creates the the the technology. And on that particular point, id be interested in any of your observations about how u. S. Ai and Quantum SciencesTechnology Stacks up internationally. Yeah. I mean, our take is we continue to lead the world in both in both domains. And there is a whole number of metric there is quite a number ever metrics you could use to kind of come to this analysis. But, you know, generally speaking, we have the best institutions in the world. We have the most highlycited papers in the world. We have the most vibrant venture ecosystem in the world. We have the most private sector dollars invested in these domains in the world. And the list goes on and on. So i think in all the metrics, we continue to lead the world. Question is less about where we stack up today but how do we maintain that leadership . And if you look at the the the president , very intentionally, again titled his executive order on Artificial Intelligence maintaining American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence. And this is what were doing through through our national strategies. And generally speaking, whether it is in quantum and Information Science or in ai, we generally follow sort of a strategic approach that has four primary lines of effort. So the first line of effort is all around research and development leadership. So back to this question of the federal government spends neighborhood of 150 billion a year on research and development. How do we coordinate those efforts in a way that will allow us to maximize the output of those of those dollars . And we do that through coordinating mechanisms, through prioritization. We have done a lot of effort on increasing r and d spending at the federal level to really historic levels with this 2 billion announcement last week. And and the list goes on. Pillar two is around our regulatory approach. We want to remove barriers to Ai Innovation and to innovation, broadly, in these domains. And create a regulatory environment, which fosters and actually drives further and more innovation in these in these domains than otherwise possible. And we believe that, you know, our sort of, you know, product to allow that to happen was our regulatory principles that came out last last january. And thats able to balance sort of the core important values of the United States with the necessity to for some oversight of these of these technologies. The third line of effort is always around workforce. We deeply believe in the power of the American Worker to help sustain and drive these technologies. So, one, we need to create a pipeline for better talent so we can have the greatest quantum scientists and artificialintelligence experts here in the United States. And we have done that. And a great example of that is in our ai, the president directed our agencies to prioritize Artificial Intelligence in their grants and fellowship. So whether you are at the department of energy giving out grants to grad students, whether youre National Science foundation, you will be prioritizing ai in a way that you werent before President Trump took that action. The second piece is around of workforce is around preparing the American Worker for the 21st century economy. How do we rescale and restrain americans to be prepared and take advantage of these technologies in the workplace . Especially, in an environment where there will be some displacement as these technologies take hold. And pillar number four, which i think goes back to the very early part of our conversation, is around international engagement. We deeply believe that there must be strong ties between the u. S. And its allies on driving leadership in these particular technologies. If the west does not lead, we are essentially seeding this ce to others who have direct conflict with ours. So we have done so at places like the oedc, an administration that generally is very thoughtful around approaching those are something we signed in may of last year. And that showed that we as, you know, western democracies can come together and say these are the types of principles that need to underpin the way that ai is developed. From those principles, you can see countries manifesting those into regulation. Thats i think very relevant and it ties to a question that often comes up with new technologies where the government is a major player in the investment and the foundational science. How do you see the ability of the government to enable a transfer of this technology to the civil sector users that would be able to evolve from the foundational science that the Technology Applications . Absolutely. So i think this is something that the federal government has, i think, you know, in some ways struggled with for decades. This idea of Technology Transfer. If basic Research Discovery is made at one of our National Labs, how do entrepreneurial scientists and businessmen out in the private sector know this exists, is able to identify this breakthrough has happened, bring it into their own domain. Find private capital and spur it into something bigger. We had a strong effort around Technology Transfer and we continue to prioritize that. I think the key is for us to be able to provide better and more clarity of the private sector in the inventory of the types of work were doing. I think that has been a big effort, especially department of energy to making their labs more open and more open to the community to share the incredible work that is being done. So we continue to think its a priority and we are ready and willing to work with all private sector folks to get to that point. Thats a very useful development, because the government laboratories tend to lack a lot of the channels for propagating the technology into the civil sector. And now with the your work in the implementation of the quantum legislation, be interesting to see how youre getting on with it. I think youre bringing a good point. As many of you know, the president signed the National QuantumInitiative Act in december of 2018. And that actually created the National Quantum initiative in the United States. And i think were extraordinarily proud of that. That is the whole of government effort to achieve American Leadership in quantum Information Science. I think were very excited about the funding levels weve been able to achieve there. Congress appropriated or, sorry, authorized 1. 25 billion over five years in the legislation. The president in his budget last week proposed 500 million alone in year 2021. Were proposing to spend a clip higher than where were authorized and were thrilled. Were thrilled about that. Whats unique about that legislation, it goes back to what youre talking about. Specifically called for the creation of quantum consortia around the United States. By design that the places where a lot of this Early Stage Research around quantum Information Science will happen, it must happen in an environment that includes the private sector and acidemia all sitting together at one institution. So bids are i request information from the department of energy is out that theyre going to be funding over the next year. And theyve pledged over 600 million over five years to building out those consortia. Thats great. Because the ability of the technology to be transferred really depends on a mechanism like that. And one of the interesting things i noticed on the fact sheet on the initiative was also proposed investing 25 million in the quantum internet and be keen to see what your expectations are given that the internet as we know it with binary bits is was a product of innovation. And the predecessor of darpa almost 50 years ago. Absolutely. Yes, so the first funding of what ultimately became the internet was arpa net. This was a really big deal for the country. And it shows how sort of the creating a network that sort of connected Government Entities together could be something that was built into something bigger. Thats something the department of energy is exploring now. This idea of being able to create a backbone for the future quantum internet that essentially begins with connecting a lot of our Core National labs as department of energy. And use that as a backbone. And private Sector Companies can plug into it and expand. D. O. E. Is running full steam ahead on this. Theyre doing the critical r d to lay the foundations for it. Theres a meeting actually in manhattan a few weeks ago where we brought together industry representatives, academics, and national lab representatives architecting what it would look like. Kind of put out some of our first thoughts on our website where you can see sort of a two pager we put together on what the future will hold for that. And i think were very excited for what could happen. But i think there you can see in an environment where we deeply believe in a private sector approach to innovation, we think theres an important and Critical Role the federal government can play. And being able to help sort of build that initial backbone between some of our National Labs is an Important Role we can step into. Thats good. And i think the idea of developing the backbone in some way when the arpa net first became visible and it attracted users who were able to overlay their agencies or even Offices Mission on that infrastructure to facilitate its more rapid propagation. And sure it sort of follows this general sort of theory of the case where the federal government should be focused on the types of activities which other parts of the innovation e ecosystem are not incentivized to do on their own. Whether its building the initial backbone for quantum internet. Whether its building and sustaining and maintaining the infrastructure. No company is going to create their own infrastructure. But its a Critical Role the federal government can play to build that infrastructure, allow users to pay for run time, and you create a National Asset which keeps giving to the community. One of the unintended but perhaps most important consequence of arpa net apart from its existence is the threat of human capital. To be able to develop, expand, and exploit the technology. So its really a useful thing. Just occurred to me i am remiss in reminding you of the notice on the display that if you have any questions, you can get them via the at least at this stage, the binary internet. Perhaps we can do better soon. Just one final line of question. May be interested in what the reaction has been to the administrations initiative to the scientific community. Over the years ive seen these governmentled campaigns, lets say, have very early response. I think our response has generally been pretty positive. You know, we went through a fairly extensive policy process to sort of shape and ultimately create and launch the american initiative. In the private sector, whether youre in acidemia in the federal government all have an Important Role to play. And the challenge we had was how do we identify what are the different pieces or roles that each of those what role do each of those pieces play in building those into the initiative . So for us, we were very sort of ma nighicly how do we make more of our hpc infrastructure available for ai compute time . Thats something only we can control, but it benefits the rest of the community. And we have actually showed a commitment towards increasing r d dollars associated with Artificial Intelligence. Thats something that was an initial announcement last week. During the response, its been positive. I think we continue to look for more commitment similar to us. We have shown that were willing to make the leap and in an environment where we want to be fiscally responsible. Were able to find a way to prioritize these areas. And our call is to the rest of the community to step up as well. The both the Quantum Sciences and ai are ultimately things that deal with data. And be one of the questions we receive from particularly energetic member of the panel who didnt the audience who didnt need instruction from the chair. Submitted a very interesting dimension of this which is your take on the statement. That comes from data activity of nonresident firms. The position of government has been pushing back against efforts by Foreign Countries to pursue data localization rules. And its something that we believe is actually a way that you can hinder innovation and is not something thats able to help innovation. So for us, we continue to believe that having a free flow of data is absolutely critical. Authoritarian regimes that want to repress their people will use rules as excuses for pursuing those types of policies. And we dont need to give them an excuse to do so by doing it ourselves. Another question that had come in is more of a projection of what your expectations might be if china is successful in taking the lead in the application of Quantum Sciences or ai. What do you think might be the consequences. Im confident that the u. S. Will maintain its leadership at ai, so theres no reason to engage in that hypothetical. Okay, well, the New York Times in particular has been running a series of interesting reporting on how the chinese have applied their technologies which use ai in particular. They are using their involvement in the communications in a way that is enabling them to propagate the their Surveillance System to elsewhere, not just in china, but in africa and other parts of the world. So i think weve got a pretty compelling warning that it seems its most ma neff lent applications are those i think at this stage i would like to also see if there are any questions from the floor that didnt make it into the form. Do we have a mic . Michael, thanks for your great work. So we are really good at Cutting Edge Research and higher education. What role does it play to lift the standards of basic education in a nation . In your work. Thank you. It could not be more critical. Creating a pipeline of american talent in these domains is absolutely imperative. One of the first actions that President Trump took in 2017 was a president ial memorandum that prioritized Stem Education at the department of education committing over 200 million towards at least 200 million to improved stem ed programs. We continue to look for ways to create an environment where the next great ai researchers and quantum scientists are mhere in the United States. And its something we think we can continue to move the ball forward on. What weve seen is a lot of interest in the private sector. It was paired the next day with the 300 million commitment from some of the Largest Technology companies in the u. S. To support Stem Education in a way they can through their own types of programming and in kind donations. Thats the kind of energy we want to see and we want to continue to build that. Were sort of in the implementation phase. This is the second strategy since the law was passed. And this again looks at a whole government approach. Whats very unique about our innovation our r d structure in the federal government, if you will, is that lots of agencies do it. And the same goes for stem ed. Its not just the department of education or nasa. Its pervasive around all of our agencies. And where the white house can play a role is bringing a lot of those folks together and making sure that the programs are working in alignment and making the best decision possible. Weve had a couple of additional questions that have been submitted in electronic form. So first one, expand on chinas use of ai to commit gross human rights abuses. What can the u. S. Do to hold accountable the u. S. Companies and universities that work along aside Chinese Companies that fuel the abuse . The action taken by the Commerce Department by adding to the entity list a number of Chinese Companies which were complicit in enabling the suppression of ethnic minority in china was a huge step for the country. Its something we need to continue to point to and bring more attention to. 3 there are a number of companies in china that are being utilized to sort of pursue these human rights atrocitieatr. They need to be called out for what they are. Now, the question of u. S. Engagement in some ways here i think is a little bit tricky and one that i care about deeply. There is an obligation along many in the u. S. To be more open eyed and less naive and more cognizant of the types of s that are happening when theyre engaging in china. And this idea, you talked about it a lot was this civil fusion. This idea that, you know, even if youre conducting what you believe is sort of inok wous research in china, that type of research is being used for all sorts of reasons in ways that you often cant even imagine. So for us as we need to constantly remind folks whether youre investors deciding to invest in chinese startups, whether youre American Companies that are trying to do business in china, theres very prominent American Company that was, you know, selling medical devices that was used to do sort of biometric analysis. It was actually being used to track a data base of certain ethnic minorities. This is very tragic and we shouldnt have american Companies Complicit in this type of behavior. Since the problem is so pervasi pervasive, i think well probably need some more detailed federal attention to it. One of the issues that always comes up when discussion of resources are engaged, funding of did the allocation of those resources result from an investment in some other part of Science Research that might be considered lower priority or whatever reason came out of second to ai and quantum . Yeah. Generally speaking, our budget for Budget Proposal for 2021 was a 6 increase overall. Enriched development from the proposed 2020 budget. So the pie increased and we spent a lot of that excess plus up in the areas that the president has prioritized. Good. Well, well take some more questions from the floor. Intelligence analysts and a former floemt. Your spectrum, there are times in which are dual use. Flaws in the signatures of american submarines transiting the south china sea. So you need two spectrum. You need one spectrum in which its pretty much single use and you can measure the good evil potential of that single use. And the other spectrum is this complex mix of good uses and bad uses. Dual uses. And are you going to stop the proliferation of the arrhythmia detector so the chinese dont get their hands on the screw signature flaw detector . Cant you establish two spectrum to better get a handle on this problem . Its a very complicated topic. I think the best manifestation of it is the work that commerce is doing on some of export controls relating to some of the emerging technologies. They were on the hook by congress to look at export controls for emerging tech. They had a very sort of arduous and long process in trying to get Stakeholder Feedback on things like export controls on ai. What does that mean . How do get your hands on the types of issues you bring up . It continues to be tricky. Its not something we shouldnt think about, but it certainly is tricky. Taiwan is in the full front of the penetration or inference. To cooperate with taiwan. The other question is the kai wan Semiconductor Manufacturing company is the world leader in Semiconductor Manufacturing. Not being contemplated to not benefit of the use of those chips. Thank you. To work on kind of making sure that they are the homes for the next great discoveriediscov. Well, i think weve hit our sell by date on this. I know you have to get back to your day job. But we really appreciated your opportunities wish you well. Thank you for your time. Thank you. [ applause ] John Charles Fremont brought the specific coast into the United States. At the begin og the story, the United States didnt have a pacific coast. There was territory in oregon that was sfut edisputed with br. Fremont encouraged the settlement of oregon and took part in the american conquest of california just in time for the gold rush. So he did play a real role in pl changing the map of the United States. Steve inskeep on his book imperfect union. Sunday night at 8 00 eastern on cspans q a. This winners are in for this years student cam documentary. We asked what is the issue you want the candidates to address in the 2020 campaign . We received more than 2,500 entries from 44 states with more than 5,000 students participating. With our winners saying the most important issues are climate change, gun violence, college affordability, the opioid crisis, mental health, and immigration. Now its time to announce all of our first prize winners. Our first Prize Middle School winners are eighth graders from Eastern Middle School in silver spring, maryland. Where cspan is provided by comcast. Their winning documentary is titled blackout misinformation in the age of social media. It doesnt matter which party you associate with. It doesnt matter for whom you end up voting. If you have access to the internet, social media is going to influence your vote. We have to exercise Critical Thinking and keep an eye on the sources we choose to follow. Otherwise the United States will just be the next of social medias victims. Our first prize High School East goes to senior from mckenna homeschool. His winning documentary is titled overreach from the oval office. Everybody wants action, but nobody wants a dictator. By reining in executive power, we can ensure the control wielded in washington remains balanced among the three branches of government. And so i ask the 2020 candidates, how will you put a halt to the runaway train of executive overreach . The first prize High School Central winners are 11th graders from Jenks High School in jenks, oklahoma where cspan is available through cox. Theirs is titled 200,000 about the opioid crisis. Johnson johnson through misleading marketing overprescribed opioids and that as a result oklahomans became addicted creating this nuisance, this opioid epidemic. The first prize High School West goes to tenth graders from long beach polytech nick high school located in long beach, california. Their winning documentary is titled vision 2020 restoring the integrity of american democracy. The more you get money from certain types of sources, the more youre beholden to those sources. And what you want to be is to be free enough to make decisions based upon what you think is in the best interest of your district and the nation. And now its time to announce our 5,000 grand prize winners. They are 11th graders from the Harker School in san jose, california, where cspan is provided by comcast. They won the top prize for their documentary called command delete technologys damaging effect on democracy in 2020. In 2016 Cambridge Analytica collected data to influence the 2016 election from 87 million facebook users of which only 270,000 had consented. This time were not faced with music piracy. Were faced with personal information piracy. Congratulations to our grand prize winners. None of us has taken formal Video Production classes and we all just got together as friends. We didnt do this as part of a class. So were at the Harker School right now. And this is one of the top stem schools in the country. Everyone around us is doing ai projects and everyone is thinking about working for tech companies. But we were thinking that sometimes there are evident issues for tech companies. Day breaches, all of that stuff. And we thought bringing a voice to the concerns of many, data and privacy breaches would be important. Wier in the center of all this tech change. Our student cam video documentary competition has awarded more than a Million Dollars in total prizes since 2004. The top 21 winning entries will air on cspan starting april 1st. You can watch all student cam documentaries online at studentcam. Org. Up next, a discussion on Security Issues in the persian gulf including ongoing problems with iran, russia, and terrorism held by the center for strategic and international studies. This is about an hour. Welcome back. Cliff, happy birthday. Youre welcome. Its all for you. Im really delighted