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Politico
13-06-2025
- Politics
- Politico
5 questions for Rep. John Moolenaar
With help from Aaron Mak Hello, and welcome to this week's installment of the Future in Five Questions. This week we interviewed Rep. John Moolenaar, the chair of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. That post puts the Michigan Republican at the center of some of the thorniest geopolitical issues, including winning the technological arms race with China. Moolenaar talks to us about artificial intelligence and his ideas for an 'America First AI Policy' that would keep the U.S. ahead, block China from accessing U.S. technology and expand international partnerships with appropriate guardrails. An edited and condensed version of the conversation follows: What's one underrated big idea in tech? AI can be used as a weapon. From helping cyber criminals to building autonomous systems to injecting Chinese Communist Party propaganda directly to the U.S. public, AI has immense power — and we need to treat it that way. And that starts with securing the chips that power it. And I co-sponsored The Chip Security Act, which is a bipartisan bill that would require location tracking for advanced American chips and mandate reporting if they're diverted or misused. Right now, American chips are being smuggled into China and used to train AI models that serve the CCP's military and surveillance state. And we can't allow that. When you think about it, in the Cold War we tracked nuclear material, and today we should be tracking advanced chips, because they're just as strategically important. That is a simple idea, but it could determine whether American innovation is used to protect freedom or to power authoritarian control. What's a technology that you think is overhyped? I think the idea that high-end compute is the only path to AI is overhyped, and the Chinese model DeepSeek proves it. Even though there are restrictions on advanced chips, the CCP found a workaround, and they built an AI system that censors, surveils and pushes propaganda using stolen AI models and likely smuggled chips. Our committee detailed all of this in our DeepSeek report, and what it shows is that the CCP is adapting fast, and they're not just chasing high-end hardware — they're trying to indigenize the entire tech stack: [Graphics processing units], cloud computing and the tools to manufacture chips themselves. So we need to think better, not just about cutting off chip exports, but about securing the entire ecosystem. The race is not just about who has the most powerful hardware, but it's about who controls the platform and protects the values built into it. What could the government be doing regarding technology that it isn't? We need to treat AI like the strategic asset it is, not just another tech trend. And I joined alongside ranking member [Rep. Raja] Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) in a bipartisan letter urging the Commerce Department to act — and act fast. We need clear standards for AI safety and transparency before these models are deployed, especially in critical sectors like defense, infrastructure and finance. That means safety testing, transparency requirements for new models and strong oversight of training data, so we don't end up with CCP-style systems like DeepSeek, which are hardwired for propaganda and control. We also need to build more capacity at home: More fabs, more data centers and more secure supply chains, and close the export loopholes. The CCP is trying to indigenize the full tech stack. If we don't control the whole program, we're giving them the tools to bypass our restrictions. With our values, we need to lead globally — and our allies need to adopt similar guardrails — so that we can prevent Beijing from their techno-authoritarianism. We still have the edge, but if we want to keep it, we have to act like we intend to win. What book most shaped your conception of the future? Recently, I read 'The Peacemaker' by William Inboden, and it shaped how I think about American leadership in the dangerous world that we have today. It was about Ronald Reagan and about how he faced Soviet aggression, nuclear brinksmanship and economic instability, but he stood firm with moral clarity, military strength and a deep belief in America and our values. It didn't happen overnight. When you think of the Soviets launching Sputnik, America didn't back down. We stepped up and invested in science, defense and education. And that wave of innovation allowed Reagan's strategy to dominate technologically — and our strong military defense — but we also won the war of ideas. That's the advantage that free societies grounded in faith and truth have over these authoritarian regimes. I believe the future is going to be shaped by those who lead in AI, semiconductors and quantum, but even more so by those who defend the values beneath them. And Reagan showed how to lead with strength and with faith and we need to work with other like-minded nations to work together to defeat this authoritarianism — and some of these partnerships that are emerging with China, Russia, North Korea and Iran. What has surprised you the most this year? What has shocked me the most when it comes to the work we're doing with our select committee is how much of our American-made technology — our investor dollars and even our taxpayer dollars — are benefiting the Chinese military and surveillance state, and despite our sanctions, our export controls and national security warnings, the CCP is still building AI-enabled weapons using our chips, our money, our cloud services, even our research. We need to get much more serious about our enforcement, and that's precisely why we need an America irst AI policy to ensure America always retains a majority of global compute and leads the free world in this effort. Trump's tough talk on semiconductors The White House's plan to extract more investments from semiconductor manufacturers might actually be working — though the strategy may have its limits. On Thursday, chip fabricator Micron said it would invest an additional $30 billion to expand its Virginia plant, and construct a new facility in Idaho. This comes as President Donald Trump's Department of Commerce renegotiates manufacturing grants that the Biden administration had agreed to furnish under the 2022 CHIPS Act. Micron received $6 billion in CHIPS funding last year, and will now get an additional $275 million, as well as a 'white glove' service to loosen and expedite permitting. In May, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the administration would demand that companies ramp up their investments if they wanted to receive the CHIPs grants they'd been promised. Trump has also claimed he's been able induce extra investments by threatening companies with tariffs in renegotiations: He said in April that he raised the prospect of imposing 100 percent tariffs on the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, leading it to pitch in another $100 billion. (TSMC declined to comment on Trump's version of events when DFD asked earlier this week. Micron said it could not comment on whether tariffs were part of its renegotiations due to it being the quiet period before reporting quarterly results.) As Trump notches wins in his pressure campaign, Chris Miller, the Tufts University historian who wrote the widely influential book 'Chip War,' told DFD earlier this week that aggressive tactics can only take the White House so far. 'Companies are not going to do more than is economically rational,' he said. 'That will be a limiting factor in terms of what kinds of renegotiations we end up seeing.' It seems like Trump hasn't hit that limit quite yet. Deepfakes come for the LA protests The Los Angeles protests are reigniting the argument about misinformation during moments of tumult, especially since AI may be making the problem worse. As with other recent upheavals, like the George Floyd protests or Jan. 6, 2021, riot, misleading photos and videos taken out of context are circulating online — Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas)reposted a clip of a burning car that was actually from 2020. AI is now complicating the situation even further. For example, a fake AI-generated video of a National Guardsman talking about 'gassing' protestors gained hundreds of thousands of views this week. POLITICO's California Decoded team reported on Friday that at least three Democratic state lawmakers are monitoring the situation, which they say emphasizes the need for AI legislation. 'The AI-generated images are inflaming the situation,' state Sen. Josh Becker told Decoded, who added that the California AI Transparency Act will eventually be sufficient to counteract such deepfakes. The law requires watermarks to signal that a certain piece of media was AI-generated. The act was passed last year, but won't go into effect until January. However, the First Amendment has stifled AI content laws in the past. A federal judge in October blocked California from enforcing a ban on deceptive AI content. While watermarks may seem less extreme than a ban, they may still raise free speech issues. post of the day THE FUTURE IN 5 LINKS Stay in touch with the whole team: Aaron Mak (amak@ Mohar Chatterjee (mchatterjee@ Steve Heuser (sheuser@ Nate Robson (nrobson@ and Daniella Cheslow (dcheslow@
Politico
06-06-2025
- Business
- Politico
5 questions for Sree Ramaswamy
Presented by With help from Anthony Adragna and Aaron Mak Hello, and welcome to this week's installment of the Future in Five Questions. This week we interviewed Sree Ramaswamy, a former senior policy adviser to the Biden administration's Commerce Department, whose work included facilitating the CHIPS and Science Act. Ramaswamy is now the chief innovation officer for NobleReach, a recently launched nonprofit that works to set up private-public partnerships through programs focused on talent and innovation, including at universities. He spoke about the changes under the new administration as well as the importance of securing supply chains against adversarial rivals, especially for critical technologies. An edited and condensed version of the conversation follows: What's one underrated big idea? I'm going to come at this from a national security standpoint. One of the things we have struggled with as a country is how to deal with the presence of adversarial inputs in our technology. That manifests in different ways. It manifests in people concerned about their chips coming from China. It manifests in people concerned about the fact that your printed circuit boards and the software that's flashed on them are done in Vietnam or in Malaysia by some third-party contractor, and we're like: Is there a back door here? Is somebody putting in a Trojan horse? We worry about the capability of the stack as it becomes larger and larger. We worry about the fact that we may have blind spots, both in terms of where adversaries can gain capabilities but also where they can insert vulnerabilities. What's a technology that you think is overhyped? The last few years, we've seen various aspects of the government come up with a list of critical technologies. Before we had the CHIPS Act, there was this thing called the Endless Frontiers Act, which had a list of critical technologies. I would say almost every single one of those technologies you could argue is overhyped. Take a look at those lists and ask yourself what technology is not on this list, and there's no answer to that question. Every single technology you can think of is on our list of the most critical technologies. It's sort of like saying I have 100 priorities — then you don't have any priorities. What I would like to see is a shift of attention away from the technologies themselves, and to the problems that the technologies can solve. What could the government be doing regarding technology that it isn't? What the government has traditionally done well is focus on the supply side of tech. It creates incentives, it builds infrastructure — the labs, test beds, it builds all of that stuff. It creates incentives that we've done with tax credits, subsidies and grant programs. What it is struggling to do is figure out how it can help on the demand side. It can tell you it needs warships, like right now. It needed them like a week ago, it needs them over the next year, or six months. It's also good at telling you in 15 years, this is how we think warfare is going to change. What it struggles to tell you is the in-between, because the in-between is where the tech stuff comes in. So when you say that you are trying to prioritize technology, what you're doing is you're prioritizing stuff that is in laboratories today. They're in university labs, they're in federal labs. They're going through proof of concept. They're going through early-stage validation. What that cohort needs to develop is what problem do you need to solve in like six years, seven years. It takes somewhere between five to eight years on average for some of these hard technologies to come to market. What you need is a demand signal sitting there saying, 'I don't need this warship now, but in seven years, I need my warships to have this capability.' And that's the missing piece. If we could get our government to start articulating that sort of demand, that could go a long way in helping develop technologies, de-risking them, and you'll be signaling that there's a customer for these things, which means that a bunch of VC guys will start crowding, because that's what VCs care about. They care about, do you have a path to get a customer? What book most shaped your conception of the future? [Laughs] I've forgotten how to read — my attention span is now three-minute-long YouTube videos. (Note: He later said the book that shaped his concept of the future was 'The Long Game' by Rush Doshi.) What has surprised you the most this year? I think what has surprised me the most this year is how easily and quickly things that we thought could not be changed are changing. And you know, you can take that both in a positive spirit and a negative spirit. When I was in the private sector, there were certain things that you feel are sort of off limits, both good and bad. There's a certain way of doing things, and if you stray beyond that, it's either illegal or it's immoral, or you're gonna get jeered by your peers. I definitely felt that in the government as well. There are certain things — even with something like CHIPS, these big investment programs — there were still spoken and unspoken things that you could do, things that you could not do, and I ran up against many of them. What I find surprising is how quickly many of those things are falling by the wayside. Changing the way federal agencies work, changing the way our allied relationships work, changing the way the trade regime works. In a broad sense, it's good, because it tells us that this country is capable of moving quickly. It does show you that if we need to, we can move. What I'm looking forward to, now that we've shown that you can move in big ways, including companies, can now add an end state to it and say, OK, we really need to be able to move in a big way to solve this problem: completely diversify our supply chains away from adversaries, completely have a clean AI tech stack in the next three years. I left government thinking about our inability to move quickly. So I'm glad to see it — I'm not happy with all of it — but I'm glad to see we can. Tech's heavy emissions footprint Carbon emissions for the world's leading tech company operations surged 150 percent between 2020 and 2023, according to a report from the United Nations' digital agency. Compared to a 2020 baseline, operational emissions for Amazon grew 182 percent in 2023 against 2020 levels, Microsoft's grew 155 percent, Meta's increased 145 percent, and Alphabet's grew 138 percent. This was all for 2023, the last year for which complete data is available. Demand for energy-intensive artificial intelligence and data centers has only surged since then. Just 10 tech companies accounted for half of the industry's electricity demand in 2023, according to the report. Those are China Mobile, Amazon, Samsung Electronics, China Telecom, Alphabet, Microsoft, TSMC, China Unicom, SK Hynix and Meta. Overall, however, the tech sector is a relatively small player in global emissions. The 166 companies covered in the report accounted for 0.8 percent of all global energy-related emissions in 2023, it concluded. Anthropic opposes AI moratorium Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei took what looked like a bold, independent stance on federal AI laws yesterday — but was it really so bold? In a New York Times op-ed, Amodei came out against the 10-year moratorium on state AI laws that Congress is proposing. He argued the moratorium is 'far too blunt an instrument,' and instead recommended that Congress first pass a federal transparency law. A tech CEO calling for federal regulation of his own industry? It's almost like 2023 again. But several critics have pointed out that this wasn't quite such a disinterested stance. The federal law he's looking for would — in his proposal — pre-empt all those inconvenient state laws. 'If a federal transparency standard is adopted,' Amodei wrote, 'it could then supersede state laws, creating a unified national framework.' Former OpenAI researcher Steven Adler critiqued the idea in an X post: 'Anthropic's CEO only says he wants regulation so he seems responsible. He knows there's no risk he'll actually get regulated.' And there's an argument that the law wouldn't change much. As Amodei himself notes, major AI companies like Google and OpenAI already have self-imposed transparency requirements. So does Anthropic – the company recently disclosed that its model tried to blackmail a user in a test run. DFD asked Anthropic about the criticisms. The company responded by clarifying that the transparency standard would mainly supersede state laws mitigating catastrophic AI risks, like cyberattacks. Amodei cautions that companies may abandon their transparency measures as their models get more complex, so the federal law might be necessary. Even so, current state AI laws have more teeth and specificity than the federal transparency standard that Amodei is proposing. South Dakota imposes civil and criminal liabilities on election deepfakes. Tennessee law prevents AI from impersonating musicians. New Hampshire prohibits state agencies from using AI to surveil the public. Alondra Nelson, a key architect of federal AI policy under President Joe Biden, wrote to DFD: '[A] federal requirement for industry to provide more information is a good foundation for states' laws to build upon, but it cannot replace them.' Amodei frames his proposal as a compromise between the goals of states and the federal government. In such a bargain, the big winner could be an industry that is already used to sliding through those gaps. post of the day THE FUTURE IN 5 LINKS Stay in touch with the whole team: Mohar Chatterjee (mchatterjee@ Steve Heuser (sheuser@ Nate Robson (nrobson@ and Daniella Cheslow (dcheslow@
Politico
30-05-2025
- Politics
- Politico
5 questions for Sen. Todd Young
Hello, and welcome to this week's installment of the Future in Five Questions. This week we interviewed Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.), one of the Senate's leading voices on tech policy and a key architect of 2022's CHIPS and Science Act. Young, who earlier this year published an essay in The National Interest proposing a 'Tech Power Playbook for Donald Trump 2.0,' discusses his skepticism about the value of social media, the insight of Alvin Toffler's 'Future Shock' and why America risks falling behind China on biotech. An edited and condensed version of the conversation follows: What's one underrated big idea? Using our tech diplomats at the State Department to accrue more geopolitical power as a country. We saw in the CHIPS and Science Act that this group of individuals, which I characterized as our special teams — it was football season when I put this together — they can help shape norms of use, develop standards and even help us gain market share. To the extent we advance our tech in different geographies, we're advancing our values, because our values around privacy, consumer protection, transparency and many other things are embedded within the standards of our different technologies. If the Trump administration and others adopt this approach, I think we can force our adversaries, most obviously the People's Republic of China, to have to produce in a bifurcated way. They produce one set of standards and embedded technologies for their domestic economy, where they'd spy on their own people, and then they'd have to produce for another set of standards for export. Because they have an export oriented economy, they couldn't sustain two different streams of production and they'd have to choose. What's a technology that you think is overhyped? Social media, without any question. I'm the father of four young children, and I don't think it is meaningfully, or on balance constructively, enhancing their lives. Actual social connection in person with people, or even by phone, is preferable to the sort of clickbait culture and abbreviated means of communication that we've all become accustomed to. I think it has diminished our attention span, I think it has coarsened our culture and I think it's made us dumber collectively than we would have thought in a universe in which we have instant access to all kinds of information. As I talk about this topic with regular citizens — that is, those who don't own major social media companies or work at Washington, D.C., think tanks — there is an appetite for certain smart regulatory approaches. However, in the last few years I think there's been a heightened awareness of the potential when you regulate to constrain speech, and a general skepticism of regulators' intentions and ideologies and good faith in trying to intermediate conversations. When I entered the public fray, I think there was an appetite — or maybe a missed window of opportunity — to come up with a better model through law. It's really challenging right now, because we've become, in many ways, a nation of distinct tribes not just in terms of our political identification but our belief system. There's a distrust of efforts to sort out fact from fiction and to referee the public square, and private actors have seized control of the public square through these social media outlets. We haven't figured out how to address that in a pluralistic, highly populous and dynamic democracy, and we're going to have to come up with answers at some point. What could the government be doing regarding technology that it isn't? Unleashing the power of biomanufacturing, which is something I've been deeply immersed in for the last couple of years as chairman of a national security commission on emerging biotechnology. Other countries have invested heavily in this. Notably, China is more advanced than the United States in some of these areas. The epicenter of this biomanufacturing revolution could be in heartland states like Indiana, using agricultural feedstocks to put into tanks and manufacture many of the components and products that are made through conventional manufacturing right now. McKinsey estimates that today, the technological capabilities exist to biomanufacture 60 percent of items that are conventionally manufactured. What we need is scale in order to make these things cost-competitive, and we offer recommendations for Congress to achieve this sort of scale. What book most shaped your conception of the future? Alvin Toffler's 'Future Shock' had a big impact on me. It talked about something that is now familiar to every American: the disjunction between technological change and human adaptation to those changes. We are essentially living the anxieties that Alvin Toffler predicted from a world upended by increasingly rapid technological change. It impacts our psyche. It impacts our relationships. It impacts our professions; it profoundly impacts every facet of our lives and is therefore unsettling and disorienting. Toffler labeled this whole gamut of effects and emotions 'future shock,' and I don't believe he gets frequent enough mention or credit for identifying this profound change that was underway. The other one is Alexis de Tocqueville. In 'Democracy in America' he talks about how democracy shapes our way of thinking about ourselves in such profound ways, and how it permeates everything in our culture. In this time of tectonic political shifts we are — unless we discipline ourselves against it — inclined to ascertain what is right and true based on what our neighbors think rather than conviction, or trenchant analysis. If any person who lives in a small-'d' democratic culture thinks that they're not susceptible to this, they're wrong. That cultural milieu is put on steroids in an era of social media and, more generally, a fractured media environment in which people live in tribal echo chambers. We all are hardwired in our DNA to want to be part of the crowd. None of us wants to be lonely, and we look to others for guidance about what is right. So you can think again about how in this populist political age, members of the different parties have fundamentally changed their views over the past few years on some pretty foundational political issues. Setting aside some calculation from politicians here and there, there is a sincerity to it because people are persuaded by the popular opinions of people within their tribe. So you've seen a swapping of policy positions across parties on some really foundational things, and some have genuinely arrived at those new positions through analysism but others are more impacted by democratic culture than is typically realized. What has surprised you the most this year? Well, if we're going 365 days back, it would be Indiana University football's No. 5 ranking in the College Football Playoff era. But in this year, it's the Pacers' deep run in the playoffs, and it ain't over. doge rolls on Although Elon Musk is personally stepping back from government, DOGE remains at furious work. POLITICO's Robin Bravender, Danny Nguyen and Sophia Cai reported Thursday on how Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought is quietly directing lasting changes to the federal bureaucracy, which one anonymous White House official described as the 'true DNA of DOGE': The staffers made political appointees at various agencies who can remain at their posts indefinitely. DOGE staffers are also taking a quieter approach to cutting programs and staff by going to lesser-known departments and agencies, even as courts often stymie their changes. During the last two weeks, DOGE has tried to access the Government Publishing Office, the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights, and sent teams to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the Government Accountability Office. 'Everyone's more nervous about [Vought] than Elon actually, especially because he knows government a little bit better,' an anonymous federal worker told POLITICO. 'While people are excited that Elon is gone, this doesn't change much.' a new berkeley supercomputer The Department of Energy announced a new supercomputer project, teaming with Nvidia and Dell on a system to support physics, artificial intelligence and other types of research. POLITICO's Chase DiFeliciantonio reported for Pro subscribers Thursday on the announcement of a computer based at Berkeley, California's National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, which has around 11,000 researchers. Scheduled for completion in 2026, the computer will be named after Nobel Prize-winning CRISPR scientist Jennifer Doudna. 'AI is the Manhattan Project of our time, and Doudna will help ensure America's scientists have the tools they need to win the global race for AI dominance,' said Energy Secretary Chris Wright in a statement. In response to a question from reporters, Wright defended the administration's broader science cuts. 'Politics and bureaucracy are the antithesis of science,' he said, adding that 'this administration is 100 percent aligned with speeding up and energizing American science, removing the shackles, removing the bureaucracy, cleaning out the politics, and focused on science and progress.' post of the day THE FUTURE IN 5 LINKS Stay in touch with the whole team: Derek Robertson (drobertson@ Mohar Chatterjee (mchatterjee@ Steve Heuser (sheuser@ Nate Robson (nrobson@ and Daniella Cheslow (dcheslow@
Politico
23-05-2025
- Science
- Politico
5 questions for Quilty Space's Caleb Henry
Presented by Hello, and welcome to this week's installment of the Future in Five Questions. This week we're featuring Caleb Henry, director of research at Quilty Space, a financial research and consulting firm focused on the space industry. Henry is the author of a forthcoming book for Columbia University Press titled 'Web of Ambitions,' chronicling the history of an early satellite constellation called OneWeb. Henry discussed why weather satellites are a crucial, yet underappreciated part of the space ecosystem, why he thinks the Federal Communications Commission made a mistake in withdrawing funding from Starlink under former President Joe Biden, and his surprise at a massive discovery of new moons around Saturn. An edited and condensed version of the conversation follows: What's one underrated big idea? Large numbers of satellites, but for weather. The idea of proliferated low Earth orbit (pLEO) constellations has been embraced for satellite internet through companies like Starlink and Amazon, and for imagery via Planet Labs and Iceye. The Space Force is studying large LEO GPS networks with companies through the Resilient GPS program, and is developing a large constellation of missile warning satellites (the Proliferated Space Warfighter Architecture). Weather feels like the one area that was left behind in the constellation wave. At Quilty Space, we track more than 400 announced constellations, ranging in size from less than 10 satellites to tens of thousands. Use cases span the gamut, but conspicuously few are for weather constellations. There are lots of reasons why weather hasn't gotten the same love. Leading weather agencies in the U.S., Europe and Asia have their own exquisite satellites and offer the data for free. Predictably, very few commercial companies have ever attempted to build a commercial weather satellite business. Also, weather sensors can be expensive, and the data processing requirements are enormous. But as a society, we depend on weather every day, and pLEO constellations assure safety in numbers for important space-based capabilities. What's a technology that you think is overhyped? Small launch vehicles are by far the most overhyped part of the space industry. The raison d'être for most of the 100-plus small launch vehicle initiatives that sprung up around the world in the late 2010s was anticipated demand from mega-constellations like Starlink and OneWeb. Unfortunately for those entrepreneurs, mega-constellations are most affordably launched on large rockets, which is why very little of that business went to small launch vehicle startups. Today, this class of company is dying down. Rocket Lab emerged as the leader, and there's a growing understanding that the market will only support a tiny number of such players. The remaining startups have increased the size of their rockets, or pivoted to missile defense applications. What could the government be doing regarding technology that it isn't? Having a technology-neutral policy for broadband, which would let satellite communications players compete more directly for subsidized deployments versus cable companies. In the past, satellite companies Hughes and Viasat had to fight hard to compete in the FCC's Connect America Fund programs, which initially proposed low latency requirements that favored cable companies. I also found it preposterous that the FCC in 2022 rescinded an $885.5 million award to Starlink from the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund. If the goal was to connect the unconnected, keeping that award in place would have done so. Perhaps Starlink could have even filled in after two terrestrial companies, Cable One and Mercury Broadband, defaulted on their RDOF obligations. What book most shaped your conception of the future? George Orwell's '1984' was a profound read for me. For some reason, I was never required to read it in school, so I purchased a copy in my early 20s. The book impressed upon me the value of free press and free speech. To me, the best future to live in is one with the freedom to question, to learn, and to find the truth. Orwell painted a true dystopia in '1984,' one that we as a civilization prevent by means of healthy democracies underpinned by free press and educated people. What has surprised you the most this year? Astronomers discovered 128 new moons around Saturn in March. Most of the new ones are small, just a few kilometers in size, but that's still a heck of a lot of celestial neighbors. It blows my mind that Saturn has a cumulative 274 moons — more than every other planet in our solar system combined. Regardless, Jupiter remains my favorite planet. It's the biggest planet in the solar system (with an impressive set of moons too — thanks, Galileo), and you can't beat those stunning clouds. caution on gulf chips deals Some Republicans are encouraging scrutiny of the Trump administration's artificial intelligence deals in the Gulf. POLITICO's Anthony Adragna reported Thursday on Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) calling for a review of the high-profile partnerships on AI that Trump announced with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, citing the possibility that powerful chips could end up in China's hands. 'We want to make sure that our commercial partners are not wittingly or unwittingly leaking technology to our chief commercial and national security competitor,' Young told Anthony. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) concurred, saying 'There's certainly an oversight role' for Congress and, 'The truth is we know that China is going to try to develop a domestic capability if they can't get access to our chips.' Democrats are even more strident about the deals: 'We should be prioritizing American leadership in AI, making sure American technology prioritizes the buildout of this critical industry here at home, not abroad, and certainly not without any guardrails to protect our national security,' read a letter from eight Democratic senators including Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. skirting sanctions A company based in Germany sent restricted tech to Russia despite export controls. POLITICO's Mason Boycott-Owen reported on the deal between Kontron, which has operations across the EU, Britain and America and used a Slovenian subsidiary to export over €3.5 million in sensitive telecommunications tech to its Russian arm in late 2023, despite repeated rounds of EU sanctions and trade restrictions. The exports included a product known as the SI3000 that can monitor and intercept communications. A Kontron spokesperson said that 'After 2022, [subsidiary] Iskra Technologies, including the merged company AO RT Soft, does not have any contracts and cooperation with the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.' Olof Gill, a European Commission spokesperson for financial services, said: 'We cannot comment on individual cases of sanctions application … EU Member States are responsible for the implementation of EU sanctions as well as identifying breaches and imposing penalties through their national competent authorities.' post of the day THE FUTURE IN 5 LINKS Stay in touch with the whole team: Mohar Chatterjee (mchatterjee@ Steve Heuser (sheuser@ Nate Robson (nrobson@ and Daniella Cheslow (dcheslow@
Politico
16-05-2025
- Business
- Politico
5 questions for the Data Center Coalition's Josh Levi
Presented by Hello, and welcome to this week's installment of the Future in Five Questions. This week I spoke with Josh Levi, president of the Data Center Coalition, the primary trade group for one of the fastest-growing industries in the United States. Levi, a former vice president of the Northern Virginia Technology Council, discussed why he thinks government needs to do more to boost U.S. energy generation and capacity, the influence of science historian James Burke's 'Connections,' and the astonishing rate of growth and spending in his own industry. An edited and condensed version of the conversation follows: What's one underrated big idea? How digital infrastructure has become foundational for everything we do. Data is the lifeblood of our daily lives and the 21st-century economy. All the convenience we often associate with the cloud, whether it's streaming a movie, participating in a Zoom call, having a telehealth appointment with your doctor, or participating in online learning is facilitated by data transferred and stored in physical locations, the servers located in data centers. In fact, the average American household now has 21 connected devices. I'm slightly embarrassed to admit my family has over 50. The world is expected to generate as much data in the next five years as it did over the previous 10, especially as an additional 2 billion people start connecting to the internet. We're seeing a massive increase in demand for the data that fuels economic growth. Ninety-five percent of Fortune 500 companies now leverage cloud-based tools and apps in their daily operations, and business sectors of all types, like manufacturing, healthcare, cybersecurity and finance, among many others rely on cloud-based data processing. With the increasing deployment of AI applications, these trends will continue and accelerate. What's a technology that you think is overhyped? I think there's too much attention paid to technologies potentially being overhyped, to the extent that we may instead risk underhyping the potential for significant advancements. I've been proven wrong multiple times in the past by technologies I thought were overhyped. Some that were literally science fiction when I was growing up are now accepted facets of our daily lives. I remember reading an article in the late 1990s that introduced the concept of a single device that would replace your watch, phone, electronic communications, beeper, camera, and even your wallet. This was in the flip-phone era, and the idea of using a phone for payments and credentials was hard to fathom. By being too cautious or moving too slowly, we may miss the tremendous positive upside of new technologies rather than leaning in to help support their creation and adoption. What could the government be doing regarding technology that it isn't? Access to reliable electricity has become the pacing challenge to building out America's digital infrastructure. After 20 years of relatively flat electricity load growth, today nearly all new investment and growth throughout the 21st century economy fundamentally relies on the availability of power. Previously, data center companies have been able to construct and power facilities in 18 to 24 months. Now in some markets, power will not be available to support major projects for four to seven years or longer. An overly cautious view bears risks for our entire economy. The federal government has an important leadership role to play, and while efforts are underway, more can be done and speed is important. Load forecasting processes should be standardized and improved to build greater confidence and right-size investments. Permitting reform for needed transmission investments and projects should be expedited. New grid configurations, including co-located load arrangements, should be permissible with reasonable parameters in place. Energy supply chains, particularly for transformers, breakers and turbines, should be prioritized and secured. The Trump administration recognizes the essential role of data centers and has been a strong leader in helping to accelerate additional investments that support our national security and economic competitiveness today and into the future. The data center industry will continue engaging with the White House, Congress, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and various agencies to help inform how the federal government can ensure we have the power needed to meet this moment. What book most shaped your conception of the future? I read a book in middle school by James Burke called 'Connections,' which was a companion to a related documentary series. 'Connections' significantly influenced how I think about the future and the present. In the book, Burke identifies a series of inventions that are important in our modern lives, such as airplanes, TVs and the industrial production line. He then looks back at previous technologies, inventions and discoveries over centuries that influenced and contributed to the development of that modern-day technology. These connections and chains of events were not immediately obvious, and Burke's skill is in identifying and weaving them together. 'Connections' provided an extraordinary view of everything that had to come together to inform many of our modern technologies. It expanded my awareness of all the innovations we know today and the certainty I have that many will come together in the future to create extraordinary new innovations we cannot anticipate. 'Connections' influenced my decision to focus my career in the technology industry. What has surprised you the most this year? The size and scale of investments made by data center companies in continuing to build out digital infrastructure. How quickly these announcements and investments have grown from hundreds of millions of dollars, to billions of dollars, to more than $100 billion in some cases, has been extraordinary. Meanwhile, the number of jobs and economic opportunities associated with those investments has continued to increase; the industry now supports 4.7 million jobs and $727 billion in annual GDP as of 2023. Companies are investing to meet this unprecedented moment and responding to the growing demand signals for more data and digital infrastructure across all facets of our society and economy. grok-splaining xAI offered a measured explanation for its chatbot Grok's sudden obsession with 'white genocide.' In a post on X Thursday evening, the company said 'an unauthorized modification was made to the Grok response bot's prompt on X … This change, which directed Grok to provide a specific response on a political topic, violated xAI's internal policies and core values.' The message did not disclose who made the change. xAI continued to say, 'We have conducted a thorough investigation and are implementing measures to enhance Grok's transparency and reliability.' The company outlined steps it's taking to increase transparency for Grok's output, including publishing system prompts on GitHub, adding 'additional checks and measures to ensure that xAI employees can't modify the prompt without review,' and starting a '24/7 monitoring team' to catch future incidents. openai tries to clear the air OpenAI is trying to convince California's attorney general that it's complying with the legal obligations of being a nonprofit. POLITICO's Christine Mui reported for Pro subscribers today on a letter from the company to California AG Rob Bonta, pushing back on criticism from figures like Elon Musk and other nonprofits that OpenAI is not meeting its requirements as a nonprofit. Critics accuse OpenAI of breaching its charitable trust by abandoning its original nonprofit mission and allowing its assets to be diverted for private gain. 'Despite (and likely because) of OpenAI's achievements, its most powerful detractors — many of whom, including Elon Musk, stand to massively profit if OpenAI falters — have sponsored a false narrative about OpenAI to advance their own commercial interests,' wrote two lawyers hired by OpenAI, Gov. Gavin Newsom's former chief of staff Ann O'Leary and William Savitt. Bonta has been investigating OpenAI's compliance as a nonprofit since 2024. Amid the company's abortive attempt to put its for-profit portion in control of the nonprofit last month, nonprofits, labor groups and philanthropists signed a letter asking Bonta to 'transfer OpenAI's charitable assets to a truly independent nonprofit or nonprofits.' ai in albania European Union leaders visiting Albania today received a deeply weird AI-powered welcome. POLITICO's Clea Calcutt reported from the opening ceremony of the European Political Community in Tirana, where EU leaders were greeted by a short film showing each of them … as an AI-generated baby, saying 'Welcome to Albania' in their native language. Clea writes that the video could have been dreamt up by Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, a former painter in France with a reputation for playful quirkiness. (He was reelected by a wide margin this week.) Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni laughed heartily at the strange welcome, while Clea writes that Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen smiled incredulously. Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was 'stony,' but he 'let a slight smile slip when his version came up, a small baby with a mustache.' post of the day THE FUTURE IN 5 LINKS Stay in touch with the whole team: Mohar Chatterjee (mchatterjee@ Steve Heuser (sheuser@ Nate Robson (nrobson@ and Daniella Cheslow (dcheslow@
