We are joined by will h urd. Why arent you running for reelection . Rep. Hurd i am looking forward to staying involved at the intersection of National Security, education, and technology. And to continue to talk about technology. Or working with Cutting Edge Companies that are working on Artificial Intelligence, quantum. It is super exciting. These dont believe that positions in congress were designed to be for 30 years. Ive always said that 6, 7, or eight years is likely the best thing. I am going to try to go off and do other things. You have written a paper for the Bipartisan Policy Center on Artificial Intelligence, cybersecurity, and legislation. Whats the crux of your paper . Its a seriesl, of papers and ultimately will turn into legislation. Is a National Strategy on Artificial Intelligence. We have to go back a couple of years. When republicans were in the majority, i was the chairman of the subcommittee on information technology. We looked at privacy, i. T. Procurement, emerging technology. Robin kelly was my partner, a democrat from illinois, in looking at these issues. We decided to have a series of hearings on Artificial Intelligence. I am thempted cochair of the aspen cybersecurity initiative, a coalition of a number of former government officials, current government officials, businesses that are on the cuttingedge of all these technologies. That gave me the idea of having these hearings. One of the takeaways from the hearing was that the federal government had a lot of piecemeal things that were and the obamai administration and current administration, but there needed to be an overarching strategy. Congress played a role, whether it is in appropriations or oversight. After those hearings, robin and i were talking about, lets work on this. We decided to partner with the to havean policy center a number of committees with individuals that are involved in Artificial Intelligence. They come up with, how should congress be looking at these issues . How should the federal government be looking at these issues when it comes to National Security, workforce development, ethics, and research as well . What we have to remember is, Artificial Intelligence is a tool and its coming. Its going to be disruptive and we are going to have to manage that. We are in a competition. We are in a competition with china. We are in a competition with russia. ,ladimir putin famously said however masters ai is going to master the world whoever masters ai is going to master the world. As a going to be driven by countries that Civil Liberties . Or is it going to be developed with the attics that is based in Democratic Values . The. Was kind of impetus for this we rolled out a couple of the papers. We have a few more papers coming out and then we will be introducing legislation as well. Lets bring ashley gold into this conversation. Ashley hi, 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. Of course, within the news this week is president trumps desire to either ban the social media sale,ktok or arrange a that microsoft would purchase tiktok with the blessing of the committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. What do you think about this . You have spoken a lot about the importance of cybersecurity and Artificial Intelligence. When it comes to these social media apps, do you share the president s concern that tiktok is a National Security concern. Is focusing on social media the right move . Rep. Hurd sure. I would start with the grider the broader concern, the lack of reciprocity between the United States and china. If a Chinese Company or business excuse me, let me step back. If a 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 Chinese Company. Whether the broader National Security ramifications what are the broader National Security ramifications of a social media platforms . Important conversation to have 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. This is how you ultimately train algorithms. Albert Artificial Intelligence is based on data and its based on algorithms that make sense of that data and spit out a response. So whoever has the most data is going to win. So a Chinese Government that doesnt care about Civil Liberties is going to use data however they see fit, and they will always have access to more data, right. So the question around these companies is a broader debate. Hat we should be having if we dont have reciprocity between us and china, there should be consequences. Thats why this review review born of process was expanded. I am currently dealing with a wind farm in west texas that is 130,000 acres. That is basically the size of the city of tulsa, and its a wind farm and they are going to connect to the grid. This project is owned by Chinese Company. Should we allow a Chinese Company to connect into the grid . The head of this Chinese Company is a former general in the Peoples Liberation army of china. General mattis would not be allowed to go to the outside of 30,000 d buy 130,000 acres and put up a wind farm, right . These are some of the broader questions that we should be having in this type of debate. I would like to see what the review process tiktok has. These are conversations we should be having and it should be putting pressure on the chinese to open up their economy for competition. Ashley just following up on that, are you thinking that if microsoft was able to purchase ktok and ensure that the user data of the people in the u. S. Is based in the u. S. , would that alleviate your fears . That tiktok could keep existing in the u. S. If it had an american buyer . Rep. Hurd i think we would be restricting peoples access to the data and the tools. Somewhat say, could there be a backdoor in the source code . That would let data go to some server somewhere. You would probably be able to see that, large volumes. Lets say you dont have that. You can have people come into where that data is stored and just download it and transfer it. There is a whole number of checks that you would want to have if this became a full American Company that did not have financial ties to china. The other thing we have to remember, the Chinese Government passed a law, they called it National Security law, that basically said Chinese Companies have to, they must cooperate with the Chinese Government. You have these kinds of laws, where the Chinese Government is putting pressure on their capital class in order to cooperate with their goals. Its not like getting a National Security letter from the department of justice, because when the department of justice sends a social Media Company a request for information, it has gone through a legal process, a judge has looked at it. Thats not the same process you are having in china. The lack of a Chinese Investment or ownership of a company that has a lot of data on american btizens would lower my lood pressure a little bit. Going forward, its probably going to be better but you would have to look back at previous activities. Congressman, do you feel the same way about huawei . Rep. Hurd huawei is a little bit different. Its already banned in the United States. Huawei is basically one of the largest providers of equipment for 5g. Why does 5g matter . We all know 4g, thats what our phones are. To its going to be awesome to download the latest movie on my phone and i can download a 4k video within three seconds. Thats going to be awesome. What 5g allows us to do is improve the latency. Latency means, i do something on my phone, that goes into the cloud and then something responds back. That trip is called latency. 5g is going to allow you to do that within eight nanoseconds. Why is that important . We think in like six or seven nanoseconds. So we are going to have the entire internet at our fingertips at the speed of thought. What is that going to allow us to do . Its going to further empower Artificial Intelligence toola and apps on her phone. Huawei owns 30 of the worlds market on 5g infrastructure. That means all the data moving over that infrastructure could potentially be captured by the Chinese Government. There is only three other competitors in the world that can compete with huawei. Huawei, there has been a number of reports, International Organizations have found out that the Chinese Government supported huawei in its growth and its development. And so yes, i dont think huawei s infrastructure should be allowed in the United States of america because now all of the data would be going across some would say you can encrypt that data, but i dont want that infrastructure owned by the Chinese Government. So thats why this is important. The chinese have made it very clear. This is not former c. I. A. Officer will hurd collecting Artificial Intelligence on the chinese. The chinese have made it clear that by 2049, they want to surpass the United States of america as the sole superpower in the world. Why 2049 . That is 100 years of communist rule in mainland china. The way they are going to surpass the United States as the sole hegemony of the world is by being a leader in future 5g, andgy, ai, quantum, thats why they have been stealing intellectual property. Thats why they have been bullying other countries in order to buy their products. Thats why they are trying to be a leader in these technologies. Its a risk, but its complicated because i would say, you know, the economies of the United States and china are more ofegrated than the economies u. S. And russia. There is a level of cooperation that already exists, which is why i go back to my first statement, reciprocity. It should be fair. Everybody should have the same opportunities. And then let the best institute win. I would say, entrepreneurship and freedom and Free Enterprise any day of the week over authoritarianism. Brings me to my next question. You talk about the economies of china and the u. S. Being so integrated. That brings me to this idea that, should any Chinese Company be worried that they can no longer do business in the u. S. . Huawei and tiktok are by far not the only Chinese Companies that do business or have a user base in the u. S. Have we reached a point where you simply cant take any risk to have these companies functioning in the u. S. . How do you go forward with that . Rep. Hurd i think you have to start with, what is the National Security implication to the u. S. Economy on that . Usually, you start there. We would not have to have that access,f there was free right, if American Companies were able to operate in china the way Chinese Companies are able to operate here. On the bubba in the United States is treated like an alibaba in the United States is treated like an American Company but amazon is not treated like a Chinese Company. We would not be having these conversations here in america if they accepted that level of competition. Can say that agriculture is a National Security issue, because having a secure food supply is important for National Security. This is a major debate. This is where some of the conversations need to go, because this is going to impact our way of life. This is going to impact the American Economy. There in a position where dollar may not be dominant in the world. It could be the yuan and mandarin. The world can exist with both the United States and china, but the rules should be fair for both sides and open. Thats what i would be pushing. Untill that happens that happens, i think there is going to be pressure points in many different industries, many different areas when it comes to that relationship with china. Ashley do you think president trumps rhetoric and posture on thesehas made conversations easier or more difficult . Rep. Hurd i think the rhetoric has made people realize the impact that china is to our country. I would say the threat of china to our economy is actually a bipartisan issue in washington, d. C. One of the things i learned when i was undercover officer in the if somebody is not playing by the rules, guess what . Their need to be consequences for that. I think the terra for at the beginning tariff war at the beginning of this term was unnecessary and had longterm impacts on the American Economy. Because once you have change some Global Supply chains, those Global Supply chains arent going to pop back. If countries were able to buy sorghum from brazil rather than the United States and now those tariffs are gone, they are still going to continue buying sorghum from brazil. Like a lot of things, i agree with some, disagree with others. But china is definitely a global threat and a threat to our economy. Ive got to make sure the American Economy stays the most important coming. The other thing we should be doing is figuring out how we can be bringing Global Supply chains to our friendly nations. The passage of nafta 2. 0 or usmca, we should be looking at how we shrink north american supply chains in order to compete with china. Why arent we doing more in Central America in order to move some of those things away from china and compete with them economically . One of the things that matters is the way in the way we are going to deal with this is to increase cooperation with allies and have more allies. Thats why engagement with other countries is important. Rd, couldssman hu you talk about Artificial Intelligence as a National Defense issue . Rep. Hurd sure. So the future of cybersecurity, right. Protecting Digital Infrastructure from attackers is going to be all about ai. Its going to be about good ai versus bad ai. How are we going to be using information to protect us in the future . When it comes to the global war on terrorism and the amount of video that we have of bad guys, if we wanted to review all the video that we have of potential terrorist in conflict zones specifically, it would require like 2 million more analysts. We are not going to be able to hire that many analysts. We need to have these tools to help us in order to defend our borders. It could also make sure that we are not putting our men and women in the military and harms way. Imagine the ability to send a drone into a conflict region or instead of going house to house to find enemy combatants, you are able to have a drone do that and process the information in realtime. Artificial intelligence is going to enable that kind of activity. So thats important. I can even make the case that if we have a more efficient government, that helps us when it comes to National Security. How are we using ai to fraud and abuse within our very systems . Ai is going to help us in things like agriculture, as i said, and stable, secure food supply is a National Security issue. We are going to be able to grow more crops on less land with less water with less energy. These are all things that we should be doing. But we are going to have to make sure that these algorithms are following along. Thats why at the is ethics is such an important part of this issue. We have