Top tech and government leaders will huddle in Washington next week to formulate plans to ensure the U.S. maintains the lead in the global artificial intelligence race and shapes emerging tech developments.
Officials from defense tech companies such as Palantir and Anduril plan to meet Wednesday with officials from the CIA, the Department of Homeland Security and congressional leaders, including Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, at the Hill & Valley Forum that promises to give a rare glimpse into how Silicon Valley and government decision-makers are preparing for an AI makeover.
A panel on “America’s Readiness for an AI Pearl Harbor” will feature the CIA’s chief technology officer, a top DHS policy official and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, the Arizona independent who caucuses with Democrats, according to National Security Tech Correspondent Ryan Lovelace.
Jacob Helberg, a top Palantir adviser who sits on the congressionally chartered U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, is an organizer of the 200-plus person gathering. He says Americans need to recognize that the U.S. is in an AI race with China and can no longer afford to treat national security as an afterthought in the competition.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi says the “China-U.S. relationship is beginning to stabilize,” even as “negative factors in the relationship are still increasing.”
Mr. Wang made the comments ahead of a five-hour summit Friday with the U.S. secretary of state who has spent recent days in China pursuing the Biden administration’s goal of easing tensions with Beijing following more than a year of friction that included the U.S. shoot-down of an alleged Chinese spy balloon last year.
Mr. Blinken separately met Friday with Chinese President Xi Jinping, who said China and the U.S. must seek common ground “rather than engage in vicious competition.” The secretary of state also sounded a positive note on recent progress made in bilateral cooperation, including in military communications, counternarcotics and artificial intelligence.
Democracies across the Indo-Pacific are aligned with U.S. efforts to counter China’s territorial claims in the region, according to Washington Times Asia Editor Andrew Salmon, who discusses security dynamics emanating from recent China-Philippines naval tensions in an appearance on The Washington Times’ “History As It Happens” podcast.
“If you look at regional democratic capitals from Tokyo to Seoul to Taipei to Manila, through to New Delhi, they’ve all got similar issues with China, territorial disputes over fishing areas, reefs, islands, islets, and of course in India, up in the high Himalayas on the line of actual control,” says Mr. Salmon. “China is right now in a place where it’s really not making too many friends around the region, and these capitals are all pretty well aligned with the U.S. on pushing back against China.”
The podcast also features an interview with U.S. Institute of Peace senior expert Brian Harding, who delves into the importance of keeping the South China Sea from becoming a China-dominated lake.
China is rapidly building up military space capabilities that will likely be strengthened following recent structural reforms by the People’s Liberation Army, according to Air Force Gen. Stephen Whiting, commander of the U.S. Space Command.
Gen. Whiting told reporters during a visit to South Korea and Japan this week that Beijing has tripled the number of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance satellites it has in orbit over the past six years.
“Frankly, the People’s Republic of China is moving at breathtaking speed in space, and they are rapidly developing a range of counter-space weapons to hold at risk our space capabilities,” the U.S. general said. “They’re also using space to make their terrestrial forces, their army, their navy, the marine corps, their air force, more precise, more lethal and more far-ranging. … And so that, obviously, is a cause for concern and something that we are watching very, very closely.”
The U.S. Coast Guard has fired its senior military chaplain, Capt. Daniel Mode, only months after praising him as “instrumental in the upliftment of the U.S. Coast Guard’s spiritual and moral framework.”
The number of chaplains in the Coast Guard grew by more than 25% since April 2022 when Capt. Mode became its senior spiritual leader. But in a brief statement this week, the Coast Guard said it has “permanently removed” Capt. Mode due to a “loss of confidence.” The service did not offer specifics.
The Navy provides military chaplains for the Coast Guard, and Capt. Mode, a Roman Catholic priest from the Diocese of Arlington, Virginia, will be reassigned to duties outside the Coast Guard, officials said. Capt. Richard Ryan, the Coast Guard’s Atlantic Area chaplain, will assume chaplain duties in the interim.
The reauthorization of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Section 702 means the United States in 2024 will soon resemble East Germany in the late 1980s, where nearly everyone was a spy and no one could talk about it, according to former Superior Court of New Jersey Judge Andrew P. Napolitano.
“The new 702 requires that any person in the U.S. who installs, maintains or repairs any fiber-optic system must assist the feds in using that system to spy on the person’s own customers,” he writes. “It also prohibits that person from speaking about this. What happened to freedom of speech?”
“It gets worse: The new Section 702 exempts members of Congress from the “thou shalt not tell.” So, if you or I or a member of the Supreme Court is spied upon by our cable installer, he cannot tell anyone,” Mr. Napolitano writes, adding: “Why do we permit Congress with a whimper to legislate away the freedom of speech and the right to privacy?”
• April 30 — The Trajectory of India-Russia Ties Amid the War in Ukraine, U.S. Institute of Peace.
• April 30 — Northern Europe, NATO, and the War in Ukraine: A Conversation with Lithuanian Minister of Defense Laurynas Kasciunas, The Hudson Institute.
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