Latest news with #HouseSelectCommittee
Asahi Shimbun
5 days ago
- Business
- Asahi Shimbun
Bipartisan bill aims to block Chinese AI from federal agencies
WASHINGTON--Legislation introduced Wednesday in Congress would block Chinese artificial intelligence systems from federal agencies as a bipartisan group of lawmakers pledged to ensure that the United States would prevail against China in the global competition over AI. 'We are in a new Cold War, and AI is the strategic technology at the center,' said Republican Rep. John Moolenaar of Michigan, chairman of the House Select Committee on China, as he opened a hearing on the matter. 'The future balance of power may very well be determined by who leads in AI.' About five months ago, a Chinese technology startup called DeepSeek introduced an AI model that rivaled platforms from OpenAI and Google in performance, but cost only a fraction to build. This raised concerns that China was catching up to U.S. despite restrictions on chips and other key technologies used to develop AI. That race is now a central part of the U.S.-China rivalry, and so much is at stake that the U.S. must win, witnesses told the committee. The two countries are 'in a long-term techno-security competition that will determine the shape of the global political order for the coming years,' said Thomas Mahnken, president and CEO of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. Jack Clark, co-founder and head of policy at Anthropic, said AI has built-in values. 'I know that AI systems are a reflection of the societies that are built from. AI built in democracies will lead to better technology for all of humanity. AI built in authoritarian nations will ... be inescapably intertwined and imbued with authoritarianism,' Clark said. 'We must take decisive action to ensure America prevails.' Earlier this year, Chris Lehane, OpenAI's head of global affairs, told reporters that the U.S. and China were the only two countries in the world that could build AI at scale. The competition, which he described as one between democratic AI and autocratic AI, is 'very real and very serious,' and the stakes are 'enormous,' he said, for 'the global rails of AI will be built by one of those two countries.' The 2025 AI Index Report by Stanford University's Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence center has the U.S. in the lead in producing top AI models. But the report noted China is rapidly closing the performance gap, reaching near parity in 2024 on several major benchmarks. It also showed that China leads in AI publications and patents. At the hearing, Clark urged the lawmakers to maintain and strengthen export controls of advanced chips to China. 'This competition fundamentally runs on compute,' he said. The U.S. must control the flow of powerful chips to China, Clark said, 'or else you're giving them the tools they will need to build powerful AI to harm American interests.' Mark Beall, Jr., president of government affairs at The AI Policy Network, said there are 'a number of very glaring gaps' in the U.S. export controls that have allowed China to obtain controlled chips. Lawmakers earlier this year introduced a bill to track such chips to ensure they would not be diverted to the wrong hands. The bill announced Wednesday would ban Chinese AI systems in the federal government. Sponsors are Reps. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y., and Darin LaHood, R-Ill., and Sens. Rick Scott, R-Fla., and Gary Peters, D-Mich. 'The U.S. must draw a hard line: hostile AI systems have no business operating inside our government,' Moolenaar said. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois, the committee's top Democrat, said AI controlled by foreign adversaries 'poses a direct threat to our national security, our data and our government operations.' Some federal agencies and several U.S. states have banned the use of DeepSeek on government devices, but the bill introduced Wednesday would seek to ban all AI systems controlled by foreign adversaries from federal use. How much of this technology is currently being used by federal agencies and offices is unknown, but the legislation would direct the Federal Acquisition Security Council to identify problematic AI systems. The proposal seeks to ban all use of the technology in the U.S. government, with exceptions for use in research and counterterrorism efforts.
Washington Post
5 days ago
- Politics
- Washington Post
Bipartisan bill seeks to ban Chinese AI from federal agencies, as U.S. vows to win the AI race
WASHINGTON — A bipartisan group of lawmakers on Wednesday vowed to keep Chinese artificial intelligence systems out of federal agencies while pledging to ensure the U.S. will prevail against China in the global AI competition. 'We are in a new Cold War, and AI is the strategic technology at the center,' Rep. John Moolenaar, the Republican chair of the House Select Committee on China, said as he opened a hearing on the matter. 'The future balance of power may very well be determined by who leads in AI.'
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@
Epoch Times
04-06-2025
- Business
- Epoch Times
House CCP Committee Chairman Inquires With Canadian Firm About Supply of Critical Metal
Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.) has sent a letter to Canada-based mining company Almonty Industries to inquire about a critical metal essential for U.S. defense technology that the United States relies on China to obtain. Moolenaar, chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP),
Bloomberg
30-05-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
China Hawk Blames Beijing for Trump Visa Bans, Urges Reset
One of Washington's most vocal China critics defended the Trump administration's plan to revoke visas for Chinese students and called for a reset in bilateral ties, citing national security concerns. John Moolenaar, chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, accused the Chinese government of manipulating its students overseas, including pressuring them into espionage, in an interview with Bloomberg TV on Thursday.
