Chairman Gallagher's Virtual Remarks on the Threat of the CCP's Critical Technology Dominance to the SCSP’s Global Emerging Technology Summit
Click HERE for full remarks.
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Good morning to all those attending SCSP’s Global Emerging Technology Summit. It is a pleasure to join you all, virtually, or perhaps artificially—but I guess you won’t have a way of determining whether or not this is really me or rather a deep fake of Jordan Love’s number one fan. I am always impressed by the Strategic Competitive Study Project’s work and the minds they can bring together to generate actionable concepts for maintaining and growing the United States’s military and technological advantages. I wish I could join you today, and as soon as we generate deep fake stunt doubles, I promise to be better at being in two places at once.
From nuclear-powered submarines to the phones in our pockets, Americans have been pioneers of each technological frontier. Artificial intelligence is the next, or rather, the present frontier, and pioneering advancements in this area are just as crucial to maintaining overmatch and peace in the face of our adversaries.
Xi Jinping understands the promise and power of AI all too well, which has led the Chinese Communist Party to declare that China will be the world’s leader in AI by 2030 -- around the same timeline Xi has set for the Chinese military to be capable of taking Taiwan by force. The CCP is a regime determined to weaponize AI to threaten global democracy and create the world’s largest techno-totalitarian surveillance state.
Xi warned that his government faces a, “Major test of high winds, choppy waters, and even dangerous storms,” when it came to Artificial Intelligence and ordered the Party to ensure the technology reflects, “Core socialist values.” Chinese censors have blocked ChatGPT and passed legislation requiring AI companies to comply with censorship on topics like Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and even the existence of Xi Jinping’s siblings.
The CCP are anything but luddites. They do not fear AI. They fear AI that they do not control.
That is why it is essential that emerging technologies are wielded in defense of freedom and flourishing around the globe—actively deterring adversaries even by their presence alone, and enabling excellence across our economic, security, and democratic interests. Coalitions of our allies and partners, from AUKUS to Five Eyes to NATO, provide unmatchable testbeds for co-developing, experimenting, and employing emerging technologies and artificial intelligence that strengthen their applications in the arsenals of democracies. Now, the US must step up to the plate—with American private sector innovation and responsible governance forging a powerful public-private partnership, with joint investments and combined efforts across the globe to do just that.
Do we want AI to be leveraged for good and the deterrence of conflict, or evil and the proliferation of it? If the former, we must continue developing this revolutionary technology to preserve US technological and moral leadership, and ensure artificial intelligence and emerging technologies at large, and their associated norms and guardrails, are defined by freedom and our ideals, not the CCP’s.