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Chief Technology Officer Michael Kratsios (R) and Hudson Senior Fellow Bill Schneider (L).
From Artificial Intelligence to unmanned robotics, the development of powerful technology can carry great risks. At Hudson this week, two standout events explored the military-civil fusion strategy guiding China's development of technology, and how the US and its allies must guard against their technology being used for purposes of coercion, surveillance and repression by Beijing.
Chief Technology Officer of the United States Michael Kratsios joined Hudson to discuss the ethical and strategic considerations of new technology, while Hudson Senior Fellow John Lee examined how technology plays into the CCP's future plans with the launch of his new report, Ambition and Overreach: Countering One Belt One Road and Beijing’s Plans to Dominate Global Innovation.
Scroll down for highlights from these two timely discussions.
Chief Technology Officer Michael Kratsios on China's AI ambitions:
American companies have an obligation:
There is an obligation among technology companies to be a lot more open-eyed, less naïve, and more cognizant of the types of activities that they are engaging in China. It’s this idea of civil-military fusion.
Even if you are conducting what you believe is innocuous research in China, that type of research is being used in all sorts of ways that you cannot even imagine. We need to constantly remind folks, whether you are an investor or American company.
There was a very prominent American company selling medical devices used to do fire metric analysis, that was then used to track and create a database of ethnic minorities. This is very tragic and we should not have American companies implicit in this behavior.
The US government's new AI commitment:
We announced last Monday that we are committed to doubling the defense AI spending in the federal government in the next two years. That is moving two billion dollars of federally funded R&D into AI. This is a massive, incredible step forward in our commitment to American leadership in this domain.
The Commerce Department recently added a number of Chinese companies [to its entity list] that were complicit in enabling the suppression of ethnic minorities. This is a huge step for the country and something we need to bring more attention to.
Advice to reporters:
I challenge all of you to spend more time thinking about if you are attempting to report on an action taken by the Chinese government, is that actually happening? Are they actually spending billions of dollars? Can you compare that number to a number that Congress appropriates and is actually spent and put out the door by our agencies?
Quotes have been edited for length and clarity
How Policymakers Should Respond
Recommendations on how US policymakers can respond to China's military-civil fusion strategy, from Hudson Senior Fellow John Lee's new report, Ambition and Overreach: Countering One Belt One Road and Beijing’s Plans to Dominate Global Innovation
- Establish regulatory and legislative frameworks for Foreign Direct Investment that only permit Chinese investment in sensitive sectors if China permits foreign investment in its own sectors, such as sectors identified in Made In China 2025.
- Require reciprocity in agreements such as the US-China Science and Technology Cooperation Agreement. This also applies to issuing student visas that would enhance China’s national capabilities in critical technologies.
- Formalize agreements across global economic institutions to entrench preferred standards on issues like patents and trademarks, non-military cybersecurity protocols, automated sector standards, and 5G e-commerce.
Quotes have been edited for length and clarity
Go Deeper: Hudson on China
The head of Emerging Pathogens at the NIH and other medical industry leaders joined Hudson to discuss the lack of transparency by the CCP, implications for US national security, and how countries can better prepare for when the next pandemic strikes.
Should China Lead the World Intellectual Property Organization?
Despite a longstanding history of IP theft, China may become the next leader of the World Intellectual Property Organization via leadership elections in March. In a new article, Hudson Senior Fellow Tom Duesterberg explores China's increasingly aggressive efforts to gain leadership positions within international organizations.
Hudson Senior Fellow Robert Spalding joined Stratfor's Pen and Sword podcast to look at China's efforts to dominate the burgeoning data trade of the 21st century.
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