Joining us now, nate tibbitt, Senior Vice President of global government affairs. Hey, everybody. It is a genuine pleasure. I really want to think the i. T. Team for all the hard work it takes to produce another fantastic intersect event. It is clear that American Ingenuity drives us to new technological futures. And policies that promote r d and strong patent protections will assure American Companies maintain leadership. American companies will play a pivotal role in guiding the future of a high. Just as qualcomm played a pivotal role in creating Wireless Technology that fueled the digital revolution, we are now focused on democratizing the benefits the technology by putting access to a. I. In the palms of peoples hands by their connected devices. In 2023, the a. I. Discussions primarily centered around training and developing large language models. This year, the a. I. Conversation will shift towards the proliferation of generative a. I. Applications and a. I. Inference, making technology both easier to use and more useful. However, as a. I. Becomes more integrated in our daily lives, addressing responsible a. I. Becomes increasingly urgent. It is imperative that we work collaboratively to address risks and unintended consequences. Today, we are showcasing the worlds first chipset designed to resolve the complex challenges around transparency and authenticity in Digital Content across smart phones worldwide. In collaboration with our technology partner, we will soon enable devices that can add content credentials to any image output. Whether synthetic or authentic. Addressing these challenges necessitates strong collaboration between the private sector and public sectors, and really who better to guide us then administrator Ella Davidson of the National Telecom and information administration. Before we welcome him by way of introduction, lets take just a moment to applaud the administrations forward thinking investments. Notably, the b funding and the open Radio Access Network through the public wireless supplychain Innovation Fund driving american connectivity and innovation. This effort fueled a relentless cycle of innovation testing, deployment, and powering companies to leverage their R D Investments and unleash the power of market competition. Additionally, we command the work on the National Spectrum strategy which is a crucial blueprint for ensuring American Leadership in 5g advance and 60 technologies. The shift towards open deployment the shift towards the open deployment approach for 5g and beyond and the Government Support highlights the pivotal role of initiatives spearheaded by Ella Davidson in collaboration with teams in the u. S. To of commerce and across the u. S. Government. Now, with great excitement and anticipation, lets welcome david to the stage along with the ceo to share valuable insights on sharing the future of a. I. Technology. I appreciate the support from qualcomm, and, hello, again, everybody. Thank you. Alan davidson joins us as he did last year. And as he did in prior vents. I am thrilled to have you back. Welcome. I am excited to be back. It is a cold day inside and outside thank you for taking the time to talk to us. A lot on your plate. In fact, nothing on your plate is not of irrelevance. So lets start with a high. You were referenced in the executive order, and work is underway under a very tight timetable. Not given a lot of time. In fact, i think the first 90 day deadline expired on a sunday. Can you talk to us about what you have the team prioritizing and what you need from us in order to accomplish the lofty goals . Absolutely. And thank you. First of all, thanks for having me. It is great to be here. Having a former i. T. A board member in a past life, congratulations on what you have been doing. And i will say it is an exciting and interesting time to be working in this space and everyone has been hearing a lot about it already today. Responsible a. I. Innovation is going to transform our economy. It is hard to imagine a sector of the economy that would not be touched by all of this and it will bring a lot of benefits to people. That, i think, is the strong belief. We need to promote that innovation but we also know we are only going to succeed in this if we ensure that we are also addressing the serious risks that are out there. The risks that exist today. Not to speculative risks, but the risks about security, bisd, and n the systems. So you have seen, i think, with a sense of withurgency the way government is addressing this. I think we are early still in the lifecycle of all of this, but people are jumping in, i think, appropriately. You have seen the commitments we were getting from leading a. I. Companies this summer. The executive order which people talked about and now we are implementing. Very important. Very ambitious. The work we are doing internationally with the g7. We serve as the president s principal adviser on telecommunications policy. We are deeply engaged in this a. I. Policy to there are a couple of big projects. We are doing airport on a. I. Accountability and auditing that we started over a year ago. We have got a big homework assignment. I would love to tell you more about that. We are also doing a lot of work on the policy level internationally in coordination of all of this. There is a lot going on. That is great. I will give you the opportunity to talk about it if you address a rumor off the record. Right. That ntia is considering changing its name to ntai. Who is talking about a. I. These days . No. He is completely joking. I think it would require action by congress to change our name, but a guy can dream. We are doing a lot in this space. And on this issue around open model waives. Widely available model waives. Some people call it opensource a. I. It is a really hard problem and we have a homework assignment in the executive order to produce a report for the president by the end of july. So we are around the clock on what our approach to the model would be. To what these open a. I. Systems should be. There are real risks and benefits this year. There is real concern about safety. You know . If you open up models without the kind of safeguards that not built in, then what are the risks . At the same time, we know there can be benefits, too, to benefits. And we know competition can be concerned if there are only a small number of companies that control all the models. And openness can be part of all of it. I think the good news is that we have learned already that there is a sort of gradients of openness. That may provide us with a path on how to address this. Stay tuned good news is that we learned already there is a gradient of openness. Is not a binary thing. You are the principal telecom to the president. What we are going to talk about is the National Spectrum strategy. That was a comprehensive, almost overwhelming, effort to bring some direction to the future course of activity in this area. You have got i know how you have enough people to do all the work you have been assigned to do, but this is another one. Tell us where the latest area of activity is on that. This is a super interesting and important area for the country and one that doesnt always get the air time, no pun intended, sorry, not a lot of great spectrum jokes out there, that it has deserved. It is probably one of the most important resources in our nation, and also one of the most scarce resources. The demand for spectrum continue to increase. We need it for all of the connected devices we know and love. The federal government needs it for everything from aviation radars to defense missions. Satellites to monitor the climate. All that powered by spectrum. We need to do a good job of managing the scarce resources we have. The last two years we have been working on a National Spectrum strategy, which we have been overdue for in this country. Im so pleased we were able to release one at the white house this november. Thank you for joining us at that event. Thanks for the invitation. We to be there. It lays out a path for how we are going as a country to tackle this hard challenge in front of us while making sure we can feed the pipeline of spectrum needed for private sector use, and also make sure we have enough for federal initiatives. We laid out a fourpart strategy. Includes a pipeline of spectrum to study over the next couple of years. Work on new spectrum technologies, like dynamic spectrum sharing. New collaborations with the private sector. And a real attention to the workforce in the space. We need more rf engineers out there. All the kids today want to study machine learning, but there are good jobs in understanding the spectrum, and we need more people in the space. A lot of work to be done on the spectrum strategy. Of course, unfortunately, this is outside of your purview, but congress has an to move forward on a couple of issues that are relevant to ntias work, one is spectrum auctions, which many have expressed concern about auction authority, what is the reallife impact of that . What are your hopes . Again, recognizing you dont have a voice in congress, but what are your hopes for getting the issue resolved . It is kind of crazy we dont have spectrum longterm authority for the fcc. The chairwoman has spoken pretty eloquently about how important that is for their continued work in the space. If we are going to continue to have a smart spectrum strategy for this country, we need to have that authority reinstated. We are hopeful that there will be an opportunity to do that. A lot of people both sides of the aisle understand the importance. Lets talk about broadband for generally. This is another area where, somehow you have people on staff working on this issue. It is like a startup in government. I have been the chair for about two years, over one third, almost 40 of ntia is brand new since i started. We have had to a lot of this. It is fun to run a startup. It is hard to do this in government, but we have grown a lot. Lets talk about the broadband work. What is most important from your perspective with the work that is underway . It is a historic moment. We have this incredible opportunity. Weve been talking about the Digital Divide for over 25 years. The bipartisan interest structure look but we finally got resources to do something serious about it. The president has given a simple mission, connect everyone with reliable, affordable, high Speed Internet service. We are well on the way. I mean, it will be a years long project. It will take a ton of work. We have started. We have Grant Programs in flight , middle mile, 1 billion out the door, 2 billion in tribal funding, connectivity finding out the door. Now were doing Digital Equity plans with every state. Now the big money, the 42 billion state grant program, is in flight. This will your be a big year. Last year we got plans at the end of their from every state about how they would spend the money we are giving them. This year they implement those plans. All eyes turned to the states. They will start doing grantmaking. We need everybodys attention. This is an all hands on deck moment. I will say, even as we are looking ahead at money this coming, the truth is that money is being spent right now to connect people. The early programs we started implementing, like the broad brand broadband infrastructure program, we have now passed over 36,000 homes with the infrastructure we have built and funded through that. There are real people being connected right now. A lot more to come. We are not going to get tens of billions of dollars from congress to do this again, so we have got to get it right. Last question i want to ask you, because you touched on a lot of areas of activity relevant to the tech industry, some areas that you have been working on for decades at ntia, and some you have been working on this year for the first time. For industry, what do you need help with . Where are the areas, the gaps in knowledge, education, partnership, programs, inputs into all of these different areas, or perhaps areas you have not talked about that industry can be helpful and be of service to you as you endeavor to accomplish these goals . That is a great invitation. I would say that the list is long. You heard a lot about a. I. , but the truth is, it is worthy of attention right now. I think getting smarter, understanding i talked about the open model weights project. It is a big deal to figure this out. Cases of first impression. We need to be smart with industry. We have a lot going on in the old Internet Policy Issues of privacy. Im cochairing a big task force on kids safety right now. Coming up with good best practices. Were doing a big workshop out at stanford. We announced on march 13 to get Industry Input on this. That is another area. Broadband, you know, we need acp funding. That is another thing that is important out there. You heard about that earlier today. Just making sure it is all hands on deck and paying attention. We just need more, i will say, people have dual competency in government, who understand technology and can talk about the policy implications and to this crossover. We really appreciate the partnership with folks in industry, folks in nonprofits who help us understand these issues better. Thank you for your leadership in the space. Thanks to everybody here for being part of the conversation. Thank you. Talking about the intersection between the technical knowhow and policy chops, you described yourself, we are very lucky to have you. That is what we are all about. Please join me for thanking him and sharing his thoughts today. [ applause ] please welcome neuberger, Deputy Assistant tome the president and w National Security advisor, cyber and emerging technology at the National Security council, and barbara please welcome Deputy Assistant to the president and deputy National Security advisor, cyber and emerging tech at the National Security council, and president and ceo of siemens usa. [ applause ] i am so glad we are together. Actually, i am so glad that jason has given siemens the chance to be your interviewer for this last segment of the day. I love our conversations that we get to have. For those of you dont know, siemens is a company that has been working in the field of infrastructure our whole history. If the last couple decades have been about creating the internet of people, the way we entertain ourselves, the way we engage as a consumer, now the world is recognizing that we are introducing the internet of things. It is an order of magnitude larger than the internet of people. And so, the key questions of cybersecurity and the use of a. I. Are coming to infrastructure everywhere. And here you are smack dab in the middle of all that. Anne, i would love to start, i know we have questions about the executive order, but you are in a role where it would be tempting to focus solely on race, but you also focus on opportunity. Tell me about the balance you are working to achieve. Absolutely. First, it is great to be here with all of you. One of the great things about iti, thank you to our hosts, is it really connects companies and government as we map policy, because as a country, to your question, we are a leading, we are the leading innovator on the global stage. The American Economy is the largest in the world because we encourage innovation, and we really want to be a leader in, not only technology, but technology involving many fields. Barbara and i have had many conversations about cybersecurity, telecom policy, as part of that goal. To your question, when we think about the promise and peril of a. I. , i know this is the end of the day, you have had many discussions here, so i thought i would answer in the context of a few examples of where we see both. To give us a think about how we bring that together. In the area of promise and peril, to your first question on cybersecurity, two areas. The same models that can help us really analyze, help a coder analyze code to find vulnerabilities, to find holes that a malicious attacker would exploit, to improve the code and make it stronger and harder to exploit, in the hands of a malicious attacker, those same models help them find vulnerabilities that have been unpatched and not secured and to use those to build more focused malware for a particular product. That is an example of what we want to do. We want to ensure that cyber defenders use those models first. That we are improving products as we build them before we deploy them, as well as using those to find vulnerabilities in the most important products deployed across our Water Systems, power systems, to patch them first. One example. I think a second one, which always touches my heart, is my husband and i have been involved in a charity that deals with individuals with als. People with als essentially you lose the ability to communicate, lose their ability to move. Their minds are fully intact. Their bodies slowly disintegrate. There are various efforts to do , essentially take their voices and save them so that, as the individual is only communicating via blinking, that is translated to words so they can actually still communicate. Clearly, we know the downsides of voice coding. We saw in the reporting of president biden, and we have seen the risks of somebody sounding like a grandchild calling the grandparents say they are in trouble. In the hands of fraudsters, it is a real concern. To wrap up, with the promise and peril in a number of areas of a. I. The goal is to ensure that on the promise side we are moving ahead at speed while thinking from the outset how to do this responsibly to manage the risks. Fascinating. We are living in a world where that promise and peril go hand inhand. Lets pull the thread a little bit more about, in the world of infrastructure, in the past, people used to say, thanks heaven it is not connected. We recognize there are threats to infrastructure connected or not. In fact, it might be that connecting and actually using the tools available to us today could strengthen our infrastructure. Your thoughts. I could not agree more. Just abou