On Tuesday, near the back of the cavernous Washington Convention Center, past booth after colorful booth of federal agencies looking for AI solutions and a dizzying array of tech companies trying to pitch them, a Defense Department official had a message for startup founders, venture capitalists and the assembled national security crowd: Let’s bet on some winners. Doug Beck, Director of the Defense Innovation Unit, was speaking at a two-day AI expo that drew more than 7000 people to talk about technology, defense and China — and sell ideas to each other. The Pentagon wants higher-tech tools, he said, and it needs an ecosystem of companies to provide it. But for that ecosystem to exist, those companies need to convince investors to fund them, said Beck. And to do that, he said, the Pentagon’s “critical” unsolved problem is showing enough success stories to show investors the business model works. That would “make it much easier for founders to make those bets on us with their technology and their funders to say, ‘Yeah, make that bet. And by the way, I’ll give you much more investment to get there,’” said Beck. Beck was there, along with the companies and policymakers and federal agencies, because of Eric Schmidt. The ex-Google CEO runs the Special Competitive Studies Project, a nearly three-year-old nonprofit that now serves as a key liaison between the military and the tech sector. This week’s AI Expo, a combination policy forum and trade show, was a victory lap of sorts for Schmidt, who was also one of the earliest and eventually most influential voices to galvanize U.S. public sector investment in AI to compete with China. In many ways, Schmidt paved the way for Silicon Valley hawks to come roost in DC. The tech veteran entered the Washington defense firmament when Obama-era Defense Secretary Ash Carter invited Schmidt to chair the DOD’s Defense Innovation Board in 2016. Later, Schmidt chaired an independent commission to advise Congress and the President on AI; once that shut its doors, he launched the SCSP with much of the same staff. The nonprofit’s agenda is modeled after the late U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s industrial policies during the Cold War, which aimed to establish U.S. tech supremacy amid tense geopolitical conditions, shrouded in a culture of secrecy. Schmidt himself has been warning Congress and the English-speaking world for years now about the U.S. falling behind in the AI race against China. As a cause, getting the government to get smarter about and to buy more AI tech has been a winner. President Joe Biden’s October AI executive order has pushed dozens of government offices to create responsible AI procurement and use policies. Bipartisan House and Senate leaders on AI have repeatedly pushed for more public investment in AI innovation, particularly in the name of national security, sometimes at Schmidt’s direct urging. Some of the biggest beneficiaries of that rhetoric have been defense tech company founders and funders, including ones Schmidt himself has invested in. Those networks have since found their footing in Washington. Some of Silicon Valley’s biggest defense investors are now openly funding political candidates who favor fewer AI regulations: “If they want to choke off important technologies, we are against them,” wrote Andreessen Horowitz general partner Ben Horowitz in a pro-AI innovation manifesto. Washington is lending its ear to the cohort. At an invite-only Capitol Hill tech forum organized by Palantir senior policy advisor Jacob Helberg only the week before the AI Expo, senators from both parties — including Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) — mingled with defense tech investors and founders like Lux Capital’s Josh Wolfe and Palantir’s Alex Karp to talk opportunities for government investment in AI. The event also featured condemnations from Karp about anti-Israel protests among college students and a virtual appearance from Republican Presidential hopeful Donald Trump. The gap between Silicon Valley and DC is shrinking, in no small part due to Schmidt’s matchmaking efforts in the name of an international AI dogfight. But the culture that Schmidt helped seed is a new beast in itself, resisting clear partisan lines yet driven by a hawkish rhetoric that wants federal funds for innovation — and few rules otherwise.
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