Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff. I'm Os Voloscian. On this podcast,
Speaker 1: we cover emerging technologies and how they reflect but also
Speaker 1: shape the way we live. Artificial intelligence, robotics, energy batteries,
Speaker 1: space exploration. More often than not, though the conversation comes
Speaker 1: back to the same place, China. It's a topic and
Speaker 1: a country that everyone has an opinion about, but where
Speaker 1: few have true insight. Today's guest is different. According to
Speaker 1: a headline last year in Wired magazine, he has quote
Speaker 1: the American who waged a tech war on China. The
Speaker 1: article continues, China is racing to unseat the US as
Speaker 1: the world's technological superpower, not if Jake Sullivan can help it.
Speaker 1: As soon as I read the article, I know, I
Speaker 1: knew I wanted to have Jake Sullivan on the show.
Speaker 1: He served as National Security Advisor for the duration of
Speaker 1: Joe Biden's presidency, and according to my queries on groc
Speaker 1: Gemini and chat GPT, he spent more time with his
Speaker 1: Chinese counterparts, including Chi chimping, than any US national security
Speaker 1: advisor since Henry Kissinger. But today, a conversation about waging
Speaker 1: a tech war on China, Autonomous weapons on the battlefield
Speaker 1: of Ukraine and far beyond, and what comes next for
Speaker 1: a man dubbed a future potential president by Hillary Clinton.
Speaker 1: Jake Sullivan, Welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: I wanted to start by asking you this, which is
Speaker 1: you are known as a foreign policy person, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: working in the State Department, working on the Iran nuclear
Speaker 1: deal during the Obama administration, national Security advisor under Joe Biden,
Speaker 1: and yet more and more you seem to be a
Speaker 1: tech policy person. And I'm curious you know how that
Speaker 1: shift began and when you started to see tank as
Speaker 1: such a crucial lens for national security.
Speaker 2: It really began for me after twenty sixteen and I
Speaker 2: served as a senior policy advisor on Hillary Clinton's campaign,
Speaker 2: And it was over the course of that campaign that
Speaker 2: I came to recognize first the degree to which the
Speaker 2: intersection of domestic policy and foreign policy was where everything
Speaker 2: was happening. And second, at that intersection was technology, both
Speaker 2: what we were doing in the United States to invest
Speaker 2: at the cutting edge and what was happening in the
Speaker 2: US China tech competition. So I spent my years out
Speaker 2: of government really digging into a set of technology, economic
Speaker 2: and national security issues and when I came in as
Speaker 2: National Security Advisor for the first time ever the National
Speaker 2: Security Council, we stood up a Directorate on Technology and
Speaker 2: National Security so that we could really create an engine
Speaker 2: room for the kind of policy work I felt needed
Speaker 2: to be done to make sure that the United States
Speaker 2: was in the best possible position to make technology work
Speaker 2: for us rather than against US.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting when you when you leave off this,
Speaker 1: you know way you go for an exit interview, when
Speaker 1: you sat for the Wide magazine piece why there? And
Speaker 1: did you like the headline the American who waged a
Speaker 1: tech war against China?
Speaker 2: Great question on the headline. I can't say I love
Speaker 2: the headline because I personally you may have noticed, don't
Speaker 2: use the phrase tech war.
Speaker 1: No, it would be it would be ill advised for
Speaker 1: something in your position to use the word war, I
Speaker 1: guess when talking about China.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, And I don't think of it in those terms. Actually,
Speaker 2: I think of it as on a much more common
Speaker 2: sense basis, what do we need to do to promote
Speaker 2: the advancement of American technology and what do we need
Speaker 2: to do to protect American technology from being used against
Speaker 2: us by competitors like the People's Republic of China, and
Speaker 2: that was the strategy that we pursued. It was not
Speaker 2: a war, but it was hard nosed in the sense
Speaker 2: that we felt that for too long we had been
Speaker 2: sending our most advanced tool use technologies to China for
Speaker 2: them to turn back against us, and we weren't going
Speaker 2: to allow that to happen, particularly when it came to
Speaker 2: advanced semiconductors.
Speaker 1: When it comes to China specifically, I mean, what was
Speaker 1: your worst fear about China getting an edge and what
Speaker 1: was your mission to prevent that from happening.
Speaker 2: Well, Look, I've said since the start of my time,
Speaker 2: from when I came in as National Security Advisor, that
Speaker 2: China makes no bones about the fact that it seeks
Speaker 2: to become the world's leading economic, diplomatic, and technological power.
Speaker 2: And my view is that the United States is better off,
Speaker 2: and frankly, the world is better off if the United
Speaker 2: States sustains its position as the world's leading power, including
Speaker 2: the world's leading technology power. That is the way that
Speaker 2: we are most likely to be able to ensure that
Speaker 2: this technological revolution which you have spoken to so many
Speaker 2: different brilliant people about works more for us than it
Speaker 2: works against US, and so I worried that China was
Speaker 2: going to achieve supremacy or dominance in the key technologies
Speaker 2: of the future. And wasn't just my worry. I think
Speaker 2: a lot of people back in twenty twenty one were
Speaker 2: essentially saying, you know, the US is going to lose
Speaker 2: out to China when it comes to AI and other
Speaker 2: areas too. China has too many advantages. The United States
Speaker 2: is too disorganized. It's just not going to get its
Speaker 2: act together. And I was determined to make sure that
Speaker 2: we competed as effectively and vigorously as possible so that
Speaker 2: we could sustain the edge. But I also knew it
Speaker 2: was going to be a tough competition because China has
Speaker 2: a lot of capability to bring to bear in this
Speaker 2: area as well as in other areas, some of which
Speaker 2: you mentioned at the outset of the podcast, whether it's
Speaker 2: robotics or autonomy or you name it. So I can't
Speaker 2: say I went to sleep at night with a single
Speaker 2: fear other than I felt it was my job to
Speaker 2: help position the United States as best as possible in
Speaker 2: this really sustain competition with China over the future of
Speaker 2: key technologies that are going to find so much of
Speaker 2: national security, but also economics and society in the years ahead,
Speaker 2: and AI is essential to that as any.
Speaker 1: There is this theory called the Fucidity's trap, which has
Speaker 1: been popularized by Graham Allison, who I know is a
Speaker 1: colleague at at Harvard now and kind of a mentor,
Speaker 1: which essentially says that you know, if you look at
Speaker 1: the history of a declining great power and a rising
Speaker 1: great power in should we say in our ten cases,
Speaker 1: that will necessarily lead to war? And I think that's
Speaker 1: been kind of like a bipartisan framework for thinking about
Speaker 1: US and China. Is that a framework that you believe
Speaker 1: to be true that there is a about fifty percent
Speaker 1: chance that there's inevitability of a capital w war? Like,
Speaker 1: how do you apply that framework to you're thinking about
Speaker 1: China and then in turn your policy on tech.
Speaker 2: I think Graham Alison's book is excellent. It deserves to
Speaker 2: be read by everybody. I have it here in my
Speaker 2: office at Harvard, and not just because he's my colleague
Speaker 2: down the hall. But I do not believe that it
Speaker 2: is excellent because it is describing an inevitable conflict between
Speaker 2: the US and China. That this is some kind of
Speaker 2: law of nature. In fact, he points out in the
Speaker 2: book that there are cases where a rising power and
Speaker 2: established power didn't go to war. And my view is
Speaker 2: that the US and China are going to be in
Speaker 2: a sustained competition. It will be intense, it will be challenging,
Speaker 2: but it is critical, it is vital that we manage
Speaker 2: that competition so that it does not spill over into
Speaker 2: conflict or confrontation. And my view is we can do that,
Speaker 2: and I actually think the blueprint for that was laid
Speaker 2: out over the four years of the Biden administration. We
Speaker 2: were able to enhance America's competitive position, take tough actions,
Speaker 2: and also engage in sustained diplomacy so that we didn't
Speaker 2: move in the direction of war with China, which would
Speaker 2: be a catastrophe not just for the US and China,
Speaker 2: but for the entire world.
Speaker 1: He let's talk about some of the tough measures. You
Speaker 1: mentioned two countries, Holland and Japan. That this kind of
Speaker 1: fascinating secret meeting that you convene with your adoption Japanese counterparts.
Speaker 1: What are you trying to achieve?
Speaker 2: So I'll be advised in what I say, because having
Speaker 2: some discretion in the diplomatic relationships with Japan and the
Speaker 2: Netherlands was critical to being able to achieve the kind
Speaker 2: of consensus we were able to achieve on semiconductor manufacturing
Speaker 2: equipment export controls. So, for your listeners, there's two types
Speaker 2: of export controls. There's the controls on very high end ships,
Speaker 2: I think H one hundred Nvidia chips or the Blackwells,
Speaker 2: and then there are controls on the manufacturing equipment used
Speaker 2: to make the highest end AI chips and other high
Speaker 2: end ships. And that equipment is primarily produced by three countries,
Speaker 2: the United States, the Netherlands, and Japan, and so having
Speaker 2: all three of us come together around a common understanding
Speaker 2: of what components and what machines necessary for the manufacture
Speaker 2: of semiconductors would be controlled was essential for such controls
Speaker 2: to be effective, and that required persuasion, consultation, really laying
Speaker 2: out the challenge as we saw it, and it also
Speaker 2: required a deep level of technical detail, which is why
Speaker 2: this really was not just about the diplomats or the
Speaker 2: national security advisors being in the room. It was about
Speaker 2: technical experts from each of the three countries really working
Speaker 2: through the reality of this so that it wasn't just
Speaker 2: a fly by night effort.
Speaker 1: One policy goal was to prevent China from buying advanced
Speaker 1: chips from companies like Nvidia, and the other was to
Speaker 1: prevent China from developing the technology to produce them domestically,
Speaker 1: which was more what the Japanese Dutch diplomatic effort was.
Speaker 1: Around January twentieth, literally the day you leave office, Deep Seek,
Speaker 1: the Chinese AI Company announces a new you reasoning model
Speaker 1: that performs on par with the best American models and
Speaker 1: was able to be developed in spite of the export controls. Now,
Speaker 1: some people say they claim it's because they actually were
Speaker 1: able to develop such as sophisticated technology, they didn't need
Speaker 1: as many chips. Others say they just got around the
Speaker 1: export controls. I don't know if you know which of
Speaker 1: those you have more of a hypothesis to be true.
Speaker 1: But either way, what was your reaction to this moment?
Speaker 1: I mean, someone said this was basically the moment that
Speaker 1: everything you were working on was designed to prevent.
Speaker 2: Well, keep in mind, this is a I'm glad you
Speaker 2: used the word moment because it was a moment. It
Speaker 2: was a moment in time in an ongoing competition, and
Speaker 2: of course since then, open Ai has come out with three.
Speaker 2: Deep Seek has come out with yet another version of
Speaker 2: its R one model, and we'll see more models coming
Speaker 2: out as we go. For me, deep Seek sort of
Speaker 2: showed me number one the power of a concerted pr
Speaker 2: campaign by China to effectively say resistance is futile. These
Speaker 2: export controls have failed. Give up America. I would just
Speaker 2: point out that it was the number one issue they
Speaker 2: raised with me in every meeting, which suggests to me
Speaker 2: they didn't think the export controls were totally useless.
Speaker 1: The number one issue is why you try to prevent
Speaker 1: us from buying chips?
Speaker 2: Right? Why have you imposed these semiconductor export controls on us?
Speaker 2: And you know, I spent a lot of time explaining
Speaker 2: our theory of small yard high fence, and what we
Speaker 2: saw is the difference between a national security logic to
Speaker 2: export controls in some kind of economic or technology blockade,
Speaker 2: which I do not believe that we are engaged in
Speaker 2: with China.
Speaker 1: They've responded just to your small yard high fence metaphor
Speaker 1: with big yard iron cut in right correct.
Speaker 2: That that is what they said, And I said, well,
Speaker 2: we see it very differently. I see it as a
Speaker 2: small yard and a high fence. And part of the
Speaker 2: reason I know it's small is I know in the
Speaker 2: meetings that I'm conducting how much we're keeping out of it,
Speaker 2: how much continuing technology trade there is between the US
Speaker 2: and China. So but the other thing about deep Seat
Speaker 2: that I think is really important for people to recognize
Speaker 2: is the big breakthrough was really an open AI breakthrough
Speaker 2: that then Deep Seek more or less replicated and then
Speaker 2: improved upon. And I don't actually know exactly I'm not
Speaker 2: inside Deep Seek, so I can't say, but it seems
Speaker 2: on the balance of the evidence that the deep Seek
Speaker 2: story is the story that involves them having access to
Speaker 2: a range of Western chips, some of which they got
Speaker 2: before the export controls ever went into place, and some
Speaker 2: they got between the first set in twenty two and
Speaker 2: the second set in twenty three when in video basically
Speaker 2: designed around the controls what they call the H eight hundred,
Speaker 2: So there was an H one hundred, which was at
Speaker 2: one point the most elite chip. In Vidia basically reduced
Speaker 2: the interconnect speed to get around the control created the
Speaker 2: H eight hundred for the Chinese market that got fixed
Speaker 2: in twenty three. And so I think the right way
Speaker 2: to think about the export control story is it started
Speaker 2: in twenty two. The first draft of those export controls
Speaker 2: in twenty two we learned lessons from because this was
Speaker 2: a new undertaking, and one of those lessons involved how
Speaker 2: to make sure that there couldn't be this easy design around,
Speaker 2: this easy workaround, and that's why we updated them in
Speaker 2: twenty three and updated them again in twenty four. So
Speaker 2: these are not going to be one hundred percent foolproof.
Speaker 2: What they are designed to do is, to the maximum
Speaker 2: extent possible, make sure that the highest end national security
Speaker 2: related technology, these very high end AI chips are not
Speaker 2: going to China to be used against America currents allies.
Speaker 2: And you know, I can't guarantee zero leakage, that it's
Speaker 2: not a dynamic scenario where China and others are working
Speaker 2: to get around them. We just have to keep at
Speaker 2: it and continue to learn and continue to update.
Speaker 1: So just to play a bank to you, you'll view
Speaker 1: as far from controls on exports of advanced chips being futile.
Speaker 1: And even if deep Seat were able to distill knowledge
Speaker 1: from open AI's models, there is a value in these
Speaker 1: export controls. And maybe deep Seak's success was because the
Speaker 1: export controls weren't effective until let's say twenty three, and
Speaker 1: really your legacy will be making sure the next Deep
Speaker 1: Seat moment doesn't happen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think realistically time will tell. What
Speaker 2: I would just argue is I believe it's already had
Speaker 2: an impact, because I think it has placed quite a
Speaker 2: limit on China's access to an incredibly important resource for
Speaker 2: frontier AI development, Compute, and that we can expect that
Speaker 2: impact to be seen over the course of the rest
Speaker 2: of twenty five, twenty six, twenty seven. You know, if
Speaker 2: you look at public statements from Deep Seek CEO, one
Speaker 2: of the things he talks about is access to Compute
Speaker 2: being a challenge for him, something the Chinese government doesn't
Speaker 2: like to acknowledge, but it something he's sort of very
Speaker 2: publicly talked about. The China's effort to have its own
Speaker 2: ship has not met with the kind of success that
Speaker 2: the Chinese propagandas want to suggest it has, either in
Speaker 2: terms of their performance or in terms of the scale
Speaker 2: of what they're capable of producing. They cannot produce in
Speaker 2: a year anything remotely resembling what, for example, in video
Speaker 2: can produce. Not to mention the Google TPUs or Trainium
Speaker 2: or other American design silicon. So I think those core
Speaker 2: observations are intact sitting here today in June of twenty
Speaker 2: twenty five, and now let's see how things play out.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about video for a moment. I mean, obviously,
Speaker 1: Jensen Whang, the SEO of and Video, has been out
Speaker 1: there loudly and publicly castigating in effect your policy and
Speaker 1: also saying, you know, necessity is the mother of invention
Speaker 1: and in fact us export controls. And we've heard this
Speaker 1: argument before, spurred this great development in Chinese domestic developments
Speaker 1: and technology. How do yours boned?
Speaker 2: Well? First, it's an interesting statement is the suggestion that
Speaker 2: if deep Seak had more Nvidia chips, it would not
Speaker 2: have invented R one. I mean, that is a to me,
Speaker 2: a kind of bizarre statement. But the argument that I
Speaker 2: frequently encounter in this area is, aha, Look, China's motivated
Speaker 2: when it comes to AI and motivated when it comes
Speaker 2: to semiconductor production. Because you are placing limits on the
Speaker 2: chips and the manufacturing equipment they can access, You've motivated them.
Speaker 2: And this is really Jensen's argument, and I think that
Speaker 2: this misses just the facts and the sequence of what's
Speaker 2: unfolded over the last decade. It was China who came
Speaker 2: out years before these export controls were ever in place
Speaker 2: and announced to the world that they were going to
Speaker 2: be the world leader in ai by twenty thirty. And
Speaker 2: that one of the areas that made in China twenty
Speaker 2: twenty five, by the way, a policy that was put
Speaker 2: in place more than a decade ago was going to
Speaker 2: focus on, was chips. And so the semiconductor export controls
Speaker 2: did not create this big push by China. The semiconductor
Speaker 2: export controls responded to this big push by China. And
Speaker 2: so I think that this narrative of necessity as the
Speaker 2: mother of invention kind of gets the sequence exactly backwards.
Speaker 2: It suggests that the big Chinese push all happened post
Speaker 2: export controls, when in fact it long predated the export controls,
Speaker 2: and the export controls were in part motivated by saying, well,
Speaker 2: wait a second, China's kind of come out to the
Speaker 2: world and said this is what we want to do.
Speaker 2: We're telling all of you as saying, well, we're not
Speaker 2: going to make it easier for you, because you know,
Speaker 2: we want to sustain our advantages.
Speaker 1: Just to play devil's advocate, though. I mean, obviously, any
Speaker 1: economy has a demand side and a supply side, right,
Speaker 1: and clearly you know you're right. The demand side from
Speaker 1: the Chinese Communist Party and the government was there get
Speaker 1: to ANI supremacy by twenty thirty on shore chip manufacturing.
Speaker 1: But there's a lot of demand site mandates from the
Speaker 1: Chinese Communist Party which don't translate into enormous successes. The
Speaker 1: supply side issue, which was US policy is saying well,
Speaker 1: you can't have this from US, may have ultimately been
Speaker 1: a much more powerful and motivating signal to Chinese technology
Speaker 1: companies than the dictates of their own government.
Speaker 2: Well, I would make a couple points in response to that.
Speaker 2: The first is that in a bunch of the other
Speaker 2: key areas that China also identified mid and China twenty
Speaker 2: twenty five, you've seen huge progress in China, huge progress, right.
Speaker 2: So somehow the demand and supply sides lined up when
Speaker 2: it came to things like robotics or electric vehicles, or
Speaker 2: you go down the list of what they identified as
Speaker 2: their sectors. It's not like AI stands out as something
Speaker 2: that all of a sudden blipped off the map because
Speaker 2: of our export control. So I find it a little
Speaker 2: hard to square with what has been a very distinctive
Speaker 2: presidentially dictated policy, of which there are are not many
Speaker 2: that look like made in China twenty twenty five, or
Speaker 2: where they have put as much energy as they have
Speaker 2: in this area.
Speaker 1: I know that your Chinese counterpart often like to ask
Speaker 1: you this kind of rhetorical question, where's the line between
Speaker 1: economic policy and national security? Physical question? And I'm curious,
Speaker 1: you know, did you and President Biden look with envy
Speaker 1: at President She's ability to onboard massive new energy onto
Speaker 1: the grid to dictate the decision making at the top
Speaker 1: Chinese tech firms in a way that the US government
Speaker 1: and the tech firms are increasingly or often intention I mean,
Speaker 1: was there something about the Chinese model in terms of
Speaker 1: preparing for this new industrial and AI revolution that you
Speaker 1: wish you could have borrowed?
Speaker 2: Well, look, anytime you're working at the White House and
Speaker 2: you're dealing with bureaucracy, red tape regulation, the thought is
Speaker 2: never far from your mind. Hey, if I was just
Speaker 2: all powerful and President Biden was all powerful, we could
Speaker 2: just not have to waste time with any of this.
Speaker 2: But then you pause and you say, hey, wait a second, Actually,
Speaker 2: democracy is a pretty good form of government one. And
Speaker 2: two the American technology model, which is messier, which is
Speaker 2: more decentralized, which is in many ways more maddening, also
Speaker 2: really works. And it's a good thing to bet on.
Speaker 2: And that's why I think we're in such a disturbing
Speaker 2: moment right now, because, look, some of the advantages of
Speaker 2: the US has. One is the ability to attract talent
Speaker 2: from all over the world. Another is this ecosystem a
Speaker 2: basic research funding supplied by the government, research universities, and
Speaker 2: the private sector. And two of those three pillars are
Speaker 2: being knocked out by this administration. It strikes me that
Speaker 2: the most recent announcement saying basically, we're going to try
Speaker 2: to really dramatically reduce the number of Chinese grad students
Speaker 2: and undergraduate students and researchers in the United States, all
Speaker 2: of these are self harming moves because all of them
Speaker 2: take away from this unique model. The US is built
Speaker 2: to build and sustain an innovation edge over time. So
Speaker 2: the Chinese have their way of doing it. We have
Speaker 2: to look at that and say, that's a formidable competitor.
Speaker 2: But it is precisely that observation that we are dealing
Speaker 2: with the formidable competitor. That motivated us to say, what
Speaker 2: do we need to do on the promote side, what
Speaker 2: do we need to do to push the boundaries, and
Speaker 2: then what do we need to do on the protect
Speaker 2: side to make sure that our most advanced technologies aren't
Speaker 2: being used against us? So that's it was that sense
Speaker 2: of real understanding that this was going to be a
Speaker 2: hard race in many of these different technology areas that
Speaker 2: motivated us to take the policy steps that we took.
Speaker 1: After the break, Jake Sullivan on how the Biden administration
Speaker 1: was preparing for the possibility of agi I, a system
Speaker 1: that is superior to humans and effectively old COCA tasks,
Speaker 1: and also Jake talks about the role of autonomous weapons
Speaker 1: in current conflicts from Ukraine to Gaza. I want to
Speaker 1: zoom out a bit, Jake. One of the most interesting
Speaker 1: conversations I've seen this year was between as reclined ere
Speaker 1: I say it and Ben Buchanan, the White House Special
Speaker 1: Advisor on a AI for the Biden administration. Essentially that
Speaker 1: they had a conversation where Ben Buchanan said it was
Speaker 1: the belief of the Biden administration that artificial general intelligence
Speaker 1: is going to come within the next four years, i e.
Speaker 1: Not just AI that helps humans do tasks, but a
Speaker 1: system that is superior to humans in effectively all cognitive tasks.
Speaker 1: Was that your view, with those conversations you were part of.
Speaker 2: I would amend it slightly to say that a premise
Speaker 2: of our approach, both on the national security side and
Speaker 2: the writ large in the process that Ben and Bruce
Speaker 2: reed led, was that that was a distinct possibility, and
Speaker 2: therefore we had to plan and prepare for it. Not
Speaker 2: a bold prediction that it would certainly arrive, but that
Speaker 2: it was and remains a distinct possibility.
Speaker 1: Where did you fail a debate about how proble this is.
Speaker 2: My own personal view has always been I'm not sure
Speaker 2: because and the reason I'm definitely not sure about this
Speaker 2: one is that incredibly smart people have incredibly different timetables
Speaker 2: for when AGI will arrive. And what I have to
Speaker 2: do as National Security advisor is take that spectrum of
Speaker 2: opinion and say, Okay, is there a sufficient degree of
Speaker 2: credibility we would assign to the proposition that it could
Speaker 2: come in the next four years. The answer is yes,
Speaker 2: then we need to operate against that assumption because it
Speaker 2: means we don't have much time to get prepared for
Speaker 2: what that will mean from a national security perspective, and
Speaker 2: economic perspective, a social perspective, you know, the impact on
Speaker 2: every facet of human life. And so we were operating
Speaker 2: under the premise that this was a distinct possibility, but
Speaker 2: not that it was a certainty, because we couldn't be certain.
Speaker 2: And I remain fascinated by the AGI debate today because
Speaker 2: a lot of the content I consume in the debate
Speaker 2: over AI is about these really quite wildly different perceptions
Speaker 2: of both where we are and when the next breakthroughs
Speaker 2: are going to come and how. And I find that
Speaker 2: just so interesting. It reminds me a little bit of
Speaker 2: the very intense debates over the future of the Chinese economy,
Speaker 2: where you can find people saying it's going to be
Speaker 2: an unstoppable juggernaut, you can find people who are saying,
Speaker 2: basically it has it's hobbled by intractable problems, and everywhere
Speaker 2: in between. I again in that area, I get asked,
Speaker 2: where did you fall on that debate of whether the
Speaker 2: Chinese economy? I said, similarly, I didn't take a fixed,
Speaker 2: determined view because I had to prepare for a range
Speaker 2: of different contingencies.
Speaker 1: I'm curious what probably is as a percentage you would assign.
Speaker 1: How on Earth do you respond to this transformative hypothetical
Speaker 1: in terms of creating policy.
Speaker 2: Well, in a number of ways. I mean, for starters,
Speaker 2: a lot of the work around alignment as safety and
Speaker 2: security was work that was really stimulated by our administration
Speaker 2: in concert and coordination with countries around the world. You know,
Speaker 2: the Bletchley Park meeting in the UK, followed by successive summits. Obviously,
Speaker 2: this administration takes a different view on the question of
Speaker 2: safety and alignment than we did.
Speaker 1: Vance was in Europe basically saying that god rails are
Speaker 1: off innovating in evading at.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly exactly. The second thing was actually how we
Speaker 2: would deal with China directly on the issue of AI risk.
Speaker 2: So not only what's it going to take for the
Speaker 2: US to remain in the lead at the frontier, but also,
Speaker 2: you know, how do we have a real dialogue for
Speaker 2: a joint interest in managing risks to all of humanity,
Speaker 2: including all Americans and all Chinese. And President Biden and
Speaker 2: President She agreed to launch that dialogue when they met
Speaker 2: at the summit in San Francisco in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2: We had a first session of it in twenty four.
Speaker 2: I don't know if that's going to continue in this
Speaker 2: administration or not.
Speaker 1: What did they talk about was the framework to step
Speaker 1: beyond national borders and consider a threat to humanity as
Speaker 1: the presidents of the two most powerful countries in the world,
Speaker 1: And what were those conversations like.
Speaker 2: Well, first, I don't want to overstate how far the
Speaker 2: first one got. These kinds of diplomatic engagements, especially between
Speaker 2: two countries that are at once having dialogue and competing,
Speaker 2: are always a bit tentative, and both sides come with
Speaker 2: their cards a little close to their best. But that
Speaker 2: meeting did begin to expose and a common understanding of
Speaker 2: some of the big risks, including the risk at the
Speaker 2: convergence of biology or biotech and artificial intelligence, the risk
Speaker 2: of misalignment misaligned AI causing all manner of harm, and
Speaker 2: the risk of proliferation AI getting into the hands of
Speaker 2: bad actors who would choose to threaten both the US
Speaker 2: and China or other nation states for that matter, or
Speaker 2: just seek generally to destabilize. So that first session, I
Speaker 2: would say, was a warm up and it still remains
Speaker 2: a task for the US and China to have a
Speaker 2: much deeper, sustained dialogue on this, something that I very
Speaker 2: much support, even as I support the United States continuing
Speaker 2: to do the work to stay in the lead. I
Speaker 2: think it is not the essence of JD Vance's message
Speaker 2: in Paris earlier this year, which was we're in for
Speaker 2: a race, so you know, nothing that will slow us down.
Speaker 2: Elation of any kind. I think we need to race
Speaker 2: as fast as we can, but we also do need
Speaker 2: guard rails to ensure safety and alignment. I guess the
Speaker 2: word safety is a bit out of vogue with this
Speaker 2: administration to call it security and alignment. We do need
Speaker 2: those now. At the same time, we have to pay
Speaker 2: attention to the fact that if we're pursuing a bunch
Speaker 2: of guardrails, maybe alongside other like minded states, and China's
Speaker 2: choosing the no guardrail approach, you know, that could give
Speaker 2: them an advantage in the race and the competition as
Speaker 2: we go forward. So one of the things I draw
Speaker 2: upon as a partial analogy, because it is completely imperfect,
Speaker 2: is the fact that we were, you know, simultaneously building
Speaker 2: up our nuclear arsenals with the Soviet Union and also
Speaker 2: beginning to think about both proliferation and the US and
Speaker 2: the Soviets work together on the Non Proliferation Treaty and
Speaker 2: on control, and over the series of agreements from the
Speaker 2: seventies onward, we came to understandings about arms control and
Speaker 2: even arms reduction, even as we were developing more sophisticated weapons,
Speaker 2: more sophisticated targeting, more sophisticated intelligence the same way. So
Speaker 2: I think there are some lessons to be learned from that,
Speaker 2: But basically the answer is that we have to essentially
Speaker 2: feel our way across the river on the stones, and
Speaker 2: there isn't like a map or a guidebook that will
Speaker 2: tell you how to strike this balance. That is a
Speaker 2: matter that is more art than science, that requires steady
Speaker 2: and determined leadership from the President and the White House,
Speaker 2: and also requires a lot of technical expertise being brought
Speaker 2: in house. I think the current administration's attitude is just
Speaker 2: let a rip, and that concerns me, and I think
Speaker 2: it puts more inputus frankly on the private sector to
Speaker 2: begin thinking through how it deals with the guardrails question,
Speaker 2: because it cannot just punt the question to the White House.
Speaker 2: Since the White House is kind of said, We're not
Speaker 2: going to deal.
Speaker 1: With that, pivoting away from HgI but towards something which
Speaker 1: is frankly no less terrifying autonomous weapons systems. A few
Speaker 1: days before we recorded this interview, Russia experience, you know
Speaker 1: what some are calling its Pearl Harbor, Ukrainian fleet of
Speaker 1: Ukrainian drones way away inside Russian borders knocking out some
Speaker 1: of their nuclear aircraft. Were you surprised by this and
Speaker 1: how did you contend with the theory of swarming autonomous
Speaker 1: weapons becoming a reality within your term?
Speaker 2: Well, to take the second question first, I mean there's
Speaker 2: the nation state challenge and then there's the non state
Speaker 2: actor challenge, the nation and state challenge. You know, the
Speaker 2: Pentagon has quite sophisticated, quite adaptable planning processes for new
Speaker 2: weapons systems, new types of technology, and new tactics coming on,
Speaker 2: and they do it tremendous amount of war gaming and
Speaker 2: testing around that. One of the things that I was
Speaker 2: very focused on as National Security Advisor was ensuring that
Speaker 2: our entire national security enterprise, the Defense Department, the intelligence community,
Speaker 2: and then on the financial sanction size, the Treasury Department
Speaker 2: or the Export Control side of the Commerce Department was
Speaker 2: thinking about applications of both offense and defense when it
Speaker 2: comes to AI. So towards the end of twenty twenty four,
Speaker 2: President Biden issued a National Security Memorandum on artificial intelligence.
Speaker 2: Part of that was around how do we ensure we're
Speaker 2: capable of defending against this type of thing a drone, swarm,
Speaker 2: AI enabled autonomous weapons of various kinds, and that worries
Speaker 2: me greatly, But I feel like, Okay, we have a
Speaker 2: lane for that. We can work to be in a
Speaker 2: position to deter or defend against that or counteract that.
Speaker 2: The thing that keeps me up at night is that
Speaker 2: decization of lethal technology. It's the extent to which an individual,
Speaker 2: a group, a highly motivated organization, whether criminal or terrorists
Speaker 2: or otherwise, can get its hands on highly precise and
Speaker 2: capable and lethal systems that they can pinpoint target very
Speaker 2: far away. And what the Ukraine case shows us is,
Speaker 2: with some degree of resourcefulness and inventiveness, very far away
Speaker 2: can really mean very far away from one's borders, including
Speaker 2: in quite protected parts of a big country like Russia.
Speaker 2: That's a pretty scary thought, even for the homeland of
Speaker 2: the United States and that's something that if I were
Speaker 2: sitting as National Security advisor today, I'd be diving deep
Speaker 2: into the Ukraine case to say, what exactly does this
Speaker 2: tell us about the vulnerability and risk fear in the
Speaker 2: United States. Was I surprised by what the Ukrainians did? Guess?
Speaker 2: And no, no, I'm not surprised. That they're constantly adaptive
Speaker 2: and capable, and frankly, I'm quite proud of the work
Speaker 2: that we played in helping to fund and see their
Speaker 2: drone program over the years. But they deserve the credit
Speaker 2: for really taking that drone program to an incredible level
Speaker 2: and then coming up with an operation as sophisticated and
Speaker 2: complex as this. So yes, like the actual iteration was
Speaker 2: surprising in a kind of you know, holy cow, I'm
Speaker 2: really impressed by that way. But the fact that they
Speaker 2: are doing this kind of thing is just a credit
Speaker 2: to their to their bravery and skill.
Speaker 1: Gaza reports that autonomous weapons being used by Israel making
Speaker 1: their own kill decisions, including kill decisions that include civilian debts.
Speaker 1: Do you know that to be true? I do not
Speaker 1: know that to be true. The Israeli Defense Forces indicated
Speaker 1: in conversations with their counterparts in the Pentagon and the
Speaker 1: State Department that they have a human in the decision
Speaker 1: making mode when strikes are taken. So I can't speak
Speaker 1: to the reports which I've also seen, and I don't
Speaker 1: know about every individual case, but that's the communication that
Speaker 1: occurred between the US and the IDEA. When I talked
Speaker 1: to you around the world. I mean, there are two
Speaker 1: things that come up. One is with the world from Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: and the other is the failure to constrain Israel's response
Speaker 1: to the Hamas attacks on October seventh in terms of
Speaker 1: civilian casualties in Gaza. How much did that frustrate your
Speaker 1: ability to bring together a coalition? But I think your
Speaker 1: mission was and is, which is that democratic values infuse
Speaker 1: tech leadership.
Speaker 2: Well, I think about these cases quite differently, you know,
Speaker 2: sitting here today in twenty twenty five, I think the
Speaker 2: United States is much better off that we're not entering
Speaker 2: our twenty fifth year or more in Afghanistan sending American
Speaker 2: men and women to fight and die there. So I
Speaker 2: think President Biden got the big call right, and the
Speaker 2: withdrawal itself was challenging and it was tragic. But when
Speaker 2: you end in war after twenty years with all of
Speaker 2: the decisions and the pathologies that are piled up is
Speaker 2: not going to be easy. It was never going to
Speaker 2: be easy. And anyone who would suggest otherwise, I think,
Speaker 2: you know, you know, does not have credibility. So I
Speaker 2: think that you know, I would do things differently. And
Speaker 2: I've said this repeatedly publicly in terms of that actual
Speaker 2: draw down, and we learned a lot of lessons from it.
Speaker 2: But fundamentally it is a good thing the United States
Speaker 2: is not in Afghanistan now. When it comes to Gaza,
Speaker 2: it's just an absolute damn tragedy in every respect. Just
Speaker 2: the gut wrenching images to this day, innocent people dying,
Speaker 2: innocent people going without food, the tragedy going back to
Speaker 2: the seventh itself of October, and the largest massacre of
Speaker 2: Jews since the Holocaust, the tragedy of the hostages and
Speaker 2: their families. All of these are just awful. And I
Speaker 2: spent from October seventh of twenty three to January twentieth
Speaker 2: of twenty twenty five living with the burden that we
Speaker 2: couldn't stop it until the very end when we had
Speaker 2: a cease fire and hostage deal in place. As President
Speaker 2: Biden left office and I wrestle with that. I wrestle
Speaker 2: with that every day.
Speaker 1: When to an Oscar was then more the administration could
Speaker 1: have done to prevent some of that Cornasian tragedy.
Speaker 2: Look, that's a question I will keep asking myself and
Speaker 2: keep asking others. You know, the main argument people make is,
Speaker 2: you know, just cut off weapons to Israel. And I
Speaker 2: think one thing we were very much contending with over
Speaker 2: the course of twenty twenty four is Israel wasn't just
Speaker 2: facing Hamas, they were facing Hisbella, the Syrian militias, the
Speaker 2: Iraqi militias, the Huthis, and even around itself. So they
Speaker 2: were being attacked on multiple fronts. And it's it's hard
Speaker 2: to walk away from an ally and a circumstance like that.
Speaker 2: But you know, I spent a lot of time personally,
Speaker 2: day in day out in my office working on the
Speaker 2: issue of humanitarian assistance and getting food and medicine into Gaza,
Speaker 2: and we didn't get enough in. But I think we
Speaker 2: did get a sufficient quantity in, not enough for what
Speaker 2: people needed.
Speaker 1: I mean, the real question is how much is mortal
Speaker 1: authority the United States mortal authority required to exercise a
Speaker 1: kind of self power that is critical to prevail in
Speaker 1: if we don't inque to tech war tech competition with China.
Speaker 2: Look, I think that our ability to work closely with
Speaker 2: like minded democracies who share our values, who have a
Speaker 2: vision for the world that is positive, that is consistent
Speaker 2: with the vision we have for ourselves as a country,
Speaker 2: this is a critical part of the long term competition
Speaker 2: with China. And I actually believe that one of the
Speaker 2: things that has been painful to watch is the extent
Speaker 2: to which the President Trump, in approaching the competition to China,
Speaker 2: has chosen basically to go to war with all of
Speaker 2: our allies at the same time, rather than try to
Speaker 2: work with them to try to come up with a
Speaker 2: common and united strategy for lack of a better term,
Speaker 2: the free world to prevail in this competition.
Speaker 1: You know, obviously you've been asked recently by political on stage.
Speaker 1: Were you surprised by President Biden's debate performance? You know
Speaker 1: what did you know? You said, Yes, I was surprised
Speaker 1: and know he was always shot when I interacted with him.
Speaker 1: So I don't want to ask you to rehearse that again.
Speaker 1: But I guess, as somebody who's been a kind of
Speaker 1: leader in the Democrat Party, for you know, fifteen plus years,
Speaker 1: how does the party get over this? Who knew what when?
Speaker 1: A series of questions.
Speaker 2: Look, obviously, I've been involved in political campaigns in the past,
Speaker 2: so you know I have personal opinions on lots of
Speaker 2: things about politics. But in the Biden administration, I served
Speaker 2: as National Security Advisor and my job was to focus
Speaker 2: on the national security issues. So I haven't weighed in
Speaker 2: on the big political doing and throwing around all this.
Speaker 2: All I've been able to do is relate my experience
Speaker 2: with the president in the oval, in the situation room,
Speaker 2: and that's where I will continue to be in this
Speaker 2: conversation let other people hash out where the party goes
Speaker 2: from here.
Speaker 1: Just to close, kind of coming back to the kind
Speaker 1: of widest sweep of technology and history and the role
Speaker 1: of the US you've talked, I think about how tech
Speaker 1: history has had these two waves to date, the first
Speaker 1: one being the onset of the Internet, the hope it
Speaker 1: carried democrazation, and the second one being how some repressive
Speaker 1: governments were able to harness this technology for spying, for harassment,
Speaker 1: for repression. What do you hope the third wave will
Speaker 1: be and how do we get there well.
Speaker 2: I hope the first the third wave will avoid the
Speaker 2: to my view, a certain blind optimism of the first wave,
Speaker 2: where we thought, hey, this is so great, it's going
Speaker 2: to mean that freedom and democracy reign everywhere, but also
Speaker 2: avoid a sense of doom and dread from the second
Speaker 2: wave that you know, we're all screwed. I think that
Speaker 2: the third wave, if it goes right, will mean that
Speaker 2: we are able to harness the most exciting opportunities of art,
Speaker 2: if you're so intelligence for human health, for human well being,
Speaker 2: you know, for advancing the capacity of people to communicate
Speaker 2: better as supposed to worse, and that we will mitigate
Speaker 2: the downside risks. We're not going to eliminate them. We're
Speaker 2: going to have to live with them. They're going to
Speaker 2: be real and acute, but that we mitigate them, and
Speaker 2: that the opportunities end up creating a circumstance where AI
Speaker 2: is working much more for us than against us. Can
Speaker 2: we achieve that? I don't know. I think this is
Speaker 2: going to be a close front of thing, because I'm
Speaker 2: definitely not a doomer, but I am certainly nervous about
Speaker 2: whether we have the tools and the capacity and the
Speaker 2: foresight right now to build the kind of guardrails necessary
Speaker 2: that will both allow AI to flourish for the positive
Speaker 2: but also you know, guard against the downside. I don't
Speaker 2: think that we're right now on track, and I think
Speaker 2: that if this administration isn't going to step up to
Speaker 2: take leadership in this, it's going to require others, many
Speaker 2: outside of government, to take leadership in this, because it
Speaker 2: is a project that we cannot dally on given the
Speaker 2: possibility that this is coming at us very very fast.
Speaker 1: Jakesonlan, thank you so much for joining UK Stuff today.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: For tech Stuff. I'm os Valoshin. This episode was produced
Speaker 1: by Eliza Dennis and Adriana Tapia. It was executive produced
Speaker 1: by me caraen Price and Kate Osborne for Kaleidoscope and
Speaker 1: Katrina norvelve iHeart Podcasts. Jack Insley mixed this episode and
Speaker 1: Kyle Murdoch wrote our theme song. Join us on Friday
Speaker 1: for the week Tech when we'll run through the tech
Speaker 1: headlines you may have missed and please rate, review and
Speaker 1: reach out to us at tech Stuff podcast at gmail
Speaker 1: dot com.