Understanding the Effects of Technology on Economics and Governance

Stanford Emerging Technology Review Launches in Washington, DC
 
January 25 and 26 marked the Washington, DC, launch of the Stanford Emerging Technology Review, a university-wide collaboration dedicated to analyzing how frontier technologies are shaping the global landscape.
 
Copresented by the Hoover Institution and the Stanford School of Engineering, the initiative aims to guide policymakers on the policy implications of frontier technologies including space, semiconductors, materials science, sustainable energy technologies, cryptography, biotechnology, artificial intelligence (AI), and more.
 
During the events at the nation’s capital, SETR’s contributing scholars engaged with policymakers, national security officials, and journalists, emphasizing the need for American laws and institutions to keep pace with technological advancements.

On January 25, SETR contributors shared insights on frontier technologies including synthetic biology and AI, as well the as how developments in these and other technologies impact one another. The event also included keynote remarks by senators Mark Warner (Virginia) and Todd Young (Indiana)

On January 26, US secretary of commerce Gina Raimondo joined in for a discussion on actions that should be taken to harness the potential of—as well as build guardrails for—artificial intelligence.

Axios Report on the Stanford Emerging Technology Review
 
Just prior to beginning of 2024, the news outlet Axios attended a meeting hosted by SETR for journalists. The publication characterized the events as “a mix of theoretical discussions and visits to labs and conversations with professors across campus designed to show the types of issues that are likely to demand attention from regulators.”
 
In its coverage of the proceedings, Axios pointed to the intersections of frontier technologies raised by scholars: “For example, AI could fuel advances in fields such as material science, which in turn could help give AI the faster chips and computers it needs to move forward.”

The Intersection Between National Security and Technology

In December, Hoover Institution director and SETR cochair Condoleezza Rice joined Fox News Sunday to discuss how the revolutionary emergence of AI and its applications are having transformative effects for democracy, national security, and education.

She urged US policymakers to “run hard and fast” to allow American firms to continue to lead on AI. “We simply have to win what is now the most important technological arms race in maybe human history,” Rice told Fox host Shannon Bream. They discussed the downstream effects of the rise of generative AI, including the enormous power demands of data centers and the implications for future immigration given the need to recruit the best AI talent.

In a July essay at RealClearDefense, Admiral Gary Roughead, distinguished military fellow, wrote that although AI is the topic de jour, “it’s time to return quantum computing to the spotlight.” We are only in “the early phase of realizing quantum computing's promise,” he asserted, and continued public funding remains imperative for preserving American dominance in the field over Russia and China. Roughead offered a reminder that quantum computing is a key enabler of advances in artificial intelligence and other frontier sciences, and thus it constitutes a critical national security technology in itself. Rather than bet on supposed “winner” companies and processes and rule out others early on, Roughead argued, the United States would be “wise to place expanded and equitable bets on those engaged in quantum computing R&D,” including smaller firms.

In a fall essay at Foreign Affairs, Senior Fellow Amy Zegart argued that the sources of national power in the modern world have shifted from tangible resources—populations, territory, ships, and natural goods such as timber and oil—to intangible ones like knowledge and technology. This has made power harder to contain and to control. Amid this geopolitical shift, the United States is not adequately developing its knowledge power resources, Zegart claimed, pointing to middling American performance in international assessments of science and math. Zegart also underscored the importance of fixing the immigration system (to attract and retain top talent) and reforming the defense budget to advance American power this century.

In December, 50 US government officials, Hoover Institution scholars, Stanford University scientists and engineers, technology experts, venture capitalists, and business leaders convened at the Sixth Annual Tech Track II Symposium, hosted by the Hoover Institution’s Technology Policy Accelerator.

Chaired by Zegart and Senior Fellow General H.R. McMaster, the closed-door symposium focused on reflecting on the progress in technological innovation, identifying opportunities to grow America’s competitive advantages, and building partnerships across sectors to create actionable solutions. The outputs of the symposium included briefings for the incoming administration to advance US economic and military competitiveness. Attendees discussed working across their respective sectors to develop robust economic strategies, with the aim of strengthening the United States in its geopolitical competition with China and to help achieve US economic, national security, and defense goals.

Opportunities and Risks Posed by the Rise of AI

The United States and its like-minded partners must start preparing a global coalition to develop capabilities to respond to the future weaponization of AI by bad actors, argued authors in “Defense Against the AI Dark Arts: Threat Assessment and Coalition Defense,” a report published in December from the Hoover Institution.

Senior Fellow Philip Zelikow, leader of the Institution’s Workshops on Urgent Security Choices, cowrote the report with Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Eric Schmidt, former chair and CEO of Google; and Jason Matheny, president and CEO of the RAND Corporation.

The report contains actionable steps US policymakers can take immediately to better prepare the nation for defending against AI weaponization and ensuring democracies maintain the edge in frontier AI capability.

The authors provide recommendations on managing the convergence of three vectors: private sector–led innovation, emerging threats, and international efforts. An essential starting point, the authors note, is to establish a national security agenda for AI.

The Hoover Institution, together with Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI), hosted a conference on April 15 with some of AI’s greatest thinkers and emerging regulators alongside Schmidt and Reid Hoffman, who cofounded LinkedIn.

Elizabeth Kelly, head of the new US AI Safety Institute, joined with leaders from her UK counterpart organization to discuss how government regulators will test and evaluate artificial intelligence applications that are constantly improving and evolving.

Yoshua Bengio, cowinner of the 2018 Turing Prize for his work on AI, was piped in virtually from Montreal to provide his thoughts about risks posed by future AI development.

Reid and Hoffman provided their predictions on the path of the AI industry and what governments can do to mitigate risks posed by future AI development.

In an April Foreign Affairs essay, coauthored with Max Lamparth, Hoover Fellow Jacquelyn Schneider argued that large language models (LLMs) are not yet ready for use by the world’s militaries. Schneider and Lamparth cited examples from wargame exercises they organized where AI models, when given autonomy in a preconflict scenario, were more likely than humans to escalate, use force, or even employ nuclear weapons to achieve strategic objectives.

Schneider and Lamparth recommend “fine-tuning” LLMs on high-quality, smaller datasets before they can be properly introduced to military uses or even wargaming. “When we tested one LLM that was not fine-tuned, it led to chaotic actions and the use of nuclear weapons,” she wrote. “The LLM’s stated reasoning: ‘A lot of countries have nuclear weapons. Some say they should disarm them, others like to posture. We have it! Let’s use it.’”

Seeking to foster discussion about how American democracy will adapt and hopefully benefit from a world where access to artificial intelligence is widespread, the Hoover Institution partnered with members of other research projects at Stanford on September 24 to launch the publication of the The Digitalist Papers, an essay series that presents “an array of possible futures that the AI revolution might produce.” The day of panel discussions coincided with the release of the essay collection, which features contributions from senior fellows John H. Cochrane and Eugene Volokh.
 
Cochrane’s piece, “AI, Society, and Democracy: Just Relax,” asks when in the history of the world regulators or experts have ever correctly predicted the social impact of a new technology. He contends that now that generative AI is in the regulators’ crosshairs, our response should not be to treat this newest technology as exceptional. To properly regulate AI, Cochrane says, we cannot be predictive. “Most regulation takes place as we gain experience with a technology and its side effects,” he writes.

Volokh’s entry, “Generative AI and Political Power,” argues that the use of generative AI tools by the public to answer political questions—compounded by the fact that most popular search engines today are mated to some form of AI—will “subtly but substantially influence public attitudes, and therefore, elections.”

The Future of Space Technology

In February, leaders from government, industry, and academia gathered at Hoover for a discussion on space innovation and commercial integration. The event was organized under the auspices of the Stanford Emerging Technology Review.

Retired general Jay Raymond, distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution and former chief of space operations, US Space Force, was the lead host of the event. His opening remarks shed light on the magnitude of the discussions and the necessity for a more robust partnership between industry, academia, and government in order to improve resiliency and ensure the security of the space domain.

The panel discussions centered on reviewing recent advancements and trends in space technology, analyzing concepts and strategies for space operations, and debating subsequent policy considerations. Simone D’Amico, a Hoover science fellow and professor of aeronautics and astronautics at the Stanford School of Engineering, led discussions on the advancements and trends in space technology, a key focus are of the inaugural SETR report.

“Autonomous space systems provide an exciting future of enhanced capabilities and cost effectiveness,” D’Amico noted. “The increasing trend is towards privatization as the space sector moves away from legacy space technologies owned by governments or large contractors.”

In June, SETR published a “deeper dive” into the issues surrounding developments in the space industry. The essay discussed new developments around satellite technology, including networks of smaller satellites that maneuver and arrange themselves in constant communication with one another. It also entertained the possibility that future satellites will require in-space maintenance networks, possibly enabled by 3-D printing in space and other capabilities not currently used in space travel.

The report further discussed the increased threat of space debris on future space development, as well as geopolitical concerns in space. China and Russia are developing weapons for use in space, despite prevailing treaty language preventing this effort. Other nations are also growing their networks of satellites in Earth’s orbit.

In October, D’Amico sat down for a Q&A with the Technology Policy Accelerator about a challenge he refers to as “the space sustainability paradox.” As we launch more and more items into space, the benefits for those on Earth multiply. But with more than 10,000 working satellites now orbiting earth, and tens of thousands more pieces of space debris tracked each day, the sheer volume of man-made objects in orbit threatens the sustainability of future use of space for humanity’s benefit.
 
So, D’Amico is actively researching solutions, such as developing AI-driven algorithms to help satellites better avoid one another in orbit. There are also space domain awareness technologies, used in orbit or on the Earth’s surface, to better observe all orbiting objects and help predict when two items might be at risk of collision.

Semiconductor Security

According to the inaugural SETR report, recent innovations in semiconductors have enabled manufacturers to produce them at significantly lower costs.

As dollars from the CHIPS and Science Act flow to strengthen the US semiconductor industry, senior leaders from the US government, industry, academia, and international partners met at the Hoover Institution to discuss current opportunities and the field’s future at a SETR forum hosted on May 22.

Almost two years after the passage of the CHIPS Act, foundry construction, research programs, and other related efforts to strengthen domestic semiconductor manufacturing and technology are underway. Recently, independent analysts and industry groups have highlighted positive domestic successes stemming from the CHIPS Act, including leading-edge capacity. But against the backdrop of those positive developments and the fanfare of the CHIPS Act awards, have they put the US semiconductor industry on a sustainable economic path? What impacts are US semiconductor policies having on diplomatic efforts to build secure supply chains with international partners? These were the key questions explored.

Discussions also centered around the implementation of the CHIPS Act by the Department of Commerce, with consideration of the different programs supported by CHIPS Act funding and how they would help grow both the output of the industry and its access to skilled workers. US government representatives described the strategy for CHIPS Act awards, highlighting their thesis that combining public and private capital together will result in a more effective return on the taxpayer dollar when compared with public funding alone.

The Promise of Synthetic Biology

According to the SETR report, in facing advances in biotechnology, “the United States is struggling to grasp the scale of the bio-opportunity, the strategic ramifications unique to network-enabled biotechnologies, and the possibilities and perils of distributed biomanufacturing.”

In September, Drew Endy, Hoover science fellow, professor of bioengineering at Stanford University, and SETR faculty council member, answered seven questions about meeting this “bio-opportunity.” Endy described how the United States can foster a new, world-class domestic biomanufacturing industry with a little help from private lenders and the federal government. He says an issuance of “biobonds” could spur a national resurgence of biomanufacturing, a sector that today is overwhelmingly located in China.

In October, Endy convened nearly two dozen Hoover and Stanford experts, policymakers, and business leaders earlier this month—including Hoover director Condoleezza Rice—to speak with congressional staff on biotechnology issues.
 
Hosted by the Bio-Strategies and Leadership initiative, the congressional fellowship program included twenty legislative staffers from the Senate, the House of Representatives, and various committees of both chambers.

Committees and offices represented included the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the House Committee on Ways and Means, the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, and the Congressional Research Service, among others.

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