By Ross Muscato
April 15, 2023 Updated: April 15, 2023
Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), House chairman of the Select
Committee on Strategic Competition, has called for the United States to
immediately cease funding companies in China that are developing artificial
intelligence (AI), the technology bringing about worldwide transformation and
disruption.
Gallagher, a U.S. Marine combat veteran, who has been out front in
publicizing and pushing legislation to nullify the threat China and its ruling
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) pose to America, is asking for this financial
pipeline to be shut down as some of the biggest and most powerful American
venture capital (VC) firms, either directly or indirectly, are making
significant investments in Chinese AI enterprises.
The representative also makes this request as global business and
thought leaders—among them technology moguls Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve
Wozniak, and Pinterest co-founder Evan Sharp—have publicly called for a pause
on AI development because of the risks and dangers it poses if not checked and
not controlled.
“In recent months, we have seen revolutionary advances in
artificial intelligence in America, but we are still neck and neck with the
Chinese Communist Party when it comes to this critical technology, which could
determine geopolitical dominance in the 21st century,” said Gallagher in a
statement he sent to The Epoch Times.
“While serious questions remain about the right guardrails to put
in place around AI in America, we know that the CCP will use this technology to
further repress their own citizens and export their model of
techno-totalitarian control around the world. The most obvious next step is to
immediately cut off the flow of American capital to Chinese AI companies.”
Prominent American-based VC firms with global reach and that are
funding companies in the Chinese AI sector include Tiger Global Management,
Silver Lake, and IDG Capital. Sequoia Capital China, an affiliate of Sequoia
Capital headquartered in Silicon Valley, backs Chinese AI companies. Money
originating in America helps fund the Chinese VCs, Qiming Venture Partner and
Matrix Partners China, that hold stakes in the China AI industry.
Referring to Sequoia Capital, Gallagher said: “Surely Sequoia can
find other ways to make money than financing freedom’s end.”
The
Threat of the CCP and AI
Members of Congress, from both parties, are sounding the alarm on
the danger of the United States funding AI development in a country ruled by
the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), a growing adversary to the United States,
and which is acting increasingly menacingly to its neighbors in the Pacific.
The CCP also uses AI to spy on and track its citizens.
China has set a national deadline of 2030 for it to lead the world
in AI.
The Biden administration has been working on an executive order it
may soon issue that will curb and tighten the regulations on U.S. investment in
Chinese technologies that can be weaponized.
Last October, the Biden administration imposed rules through the
Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security that cut off China’s
access to microchips used in weapons systems and technologies for civilian use.
From October 2021 through August 2022, the Special Competitive
Studies Project (SCSP), a private foundation located in Arlington, Virginia,
conducted interviews and discussions with “225 experts, including government
officials, technologists, academic leaders, and many others,” to produce a
research report, “Mid-Decade Challenges to National Competitiveness,” which focused on the U.S.–China faceoff and which gave
considerable attention to the competition between the two countries for AI
superiority.
“Two developments that are shaping the international security
environment today mirror the situation in which the Special Studies Project
conducted its work,” wrote Henry Kissinger in a letter that preceded the main
body of the report. “First, there is an intensifying competition for strategic
advantage between the United States and China, and, second, advances in
artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies promise to bring
tremendous impacts on both economic and military competitiveness, as well as
our society.”
An example of a new type of peril and assault on
freedom—microtargeting—that AI makes possible is described in the section of
the report that focuses on the national defense challenges the United States
faces.
“The proliferation of sensors, which collect the data exhaust that
individuals leave on the Internet through everyday search, reading, watching,
shopping, and dating habits, and the speed with which AI-enabled systems can
analyze vast amounts of harvested data can position militaries to be able to micro-target
individuals,” reads the report.
“This microtargeting is likely to entail, first and foremost,
denigration campaigns and psychological pressure, but under certain
circumstances could also entail targeting of key individuals with kinetic
attacks.”
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