Critical Technologies Reshaping National Priorities
hello everyone this panel is ai super computing cyber quantum and critical technologies that are reshaping national priorities i'm stephanie wander i'm the director of programs at the atlantic council's geotech center for those of you that are in california and like are like what is the atlantic council we are one of the top 10 think tanks in the united states we focus on issues of global and geopolitical importance and specifically our geotech center focuses on issues of essentially critical technologies how we ensure that they support human benefit humanity and how they also intersect with geopolitics i'd like to turn to my steam panelists today to introduce themselves keith and then marie if you would go ahead and welcome yourself it's great it's great to be here thanks stephanie uh my name is keith strier i'm the vice president of worldwide ai initiatives at nvidia uh if you haven't heard of nvidia we make some some graphical processing chips that maybe you're you you've in the gaming space and your team we've seen your teens you know running to the stores to get those but in fact that's not the whole story we're actually an accelerated computing platform company and really a significant uh partner with both companies and countries around the world in solving some of the most complex problems from autonomous vehicles to climate prediction to even the future of retail experiences really across all the industrial applications and and we're uh we're proud to do that in my role i oversee our global portfolio of government business so our our strategic partnerships and commercial business with governments foreign governments around the world good afternoon my name is anne marie larson and i'm denmark's tech ambassador and you might think what is in tech ambassador we'll probably dive more into that later but denmark was the first country to appoint an ambassador not to a country or an international organization but to an industry recognizing how much impact technologies have on our lives our economy our democracy i'm based out in silicon valley but with a global mandate so uh trying to oversee tech industry not not just here in the us but globally it's a pleasure to be here and what ann marie didn't say uh to give denmark a little more credit is denmark was the first country in the world to appoint a technology ambassador way ahead of its time and now that's uh there must be 25 or 30 right almost 30 countries that follow suit uh so uh but thank you i mean i think being the first has been a bit of a testing the waters and a lot of people you know attack ambassador is that necessary but what we're going to be speaking about today about the political implications of technology has really shown that governments need to engage much more with basically people like you who are working with industry either as investors who are in the deep tech space to understand how do we best develop design disseminate technologies that are aligned with some of the geopolitical challenges that we're seeing so emory i'd love to start back with you could you talk a little bit more about what a technology diplomat actually does how you interact with both governments and potentially the private sector certainly i want to start by saying what you know the conversation around why should we have a tech ambassador we have ambassadors in germany in london we have ambassadors to the world trade organization to the un why to the tech industry and it really came about i think a very strong notion that technology is no longer a fringe issue where we only talk about our smartphones or you know how technology tendentially is affecting lives it is absolutely transforming every aspect of danish life it is completely altering transforming our labor markets our industries our democracy our communities our society is dependent on technology and even our government now runs almost fully digital that means there are incredible opportunities to be have with new emerging technologies but also risk that we need to mitigate some of these risks are obviously cyber security as we talked about with crowdstrike before our digital infrastructure most of our government is run digitally we need to address the cybersecurity issues we have to do that with industry and then the second piece is that these large silicon valley-based tech players have unwillingly become geopolitical actors you might say who holds most power over denmark is that meta or is that germany who do we have diplomatic relationship to in terms of shaping our future for terms of jobs opportunity for market creation economic societal for our democracy for values and principles and in that sense tech companies are i think as important if not more important than many of the countries where we've been having diplomatic relationships for a long time so that's the purpose of a tech ambassador it is to speak to tech companies and try to gain understanding of how tech companies operate it is to engage diplomatically and not only come and say this is how we regulate you but actually in an open frame candid conversation understanding how do we best collaborate because no regulation as you might be well very well aware of is perfect a lot of this require um sort of neutral ground conversation dialogue and a little bit of of tag teaming i think some of the challenges that we as democratic states are facing you as tech companies or investors and tech companies are facing two and so that's a purpose broadly of tech diplomacy keith obviously coming from the silicon valley private sector i really want to understand your perspective on first this point that emery made about the fact that tech companies are becoming sort of unwitting or potentially winning geopolitical players one and then how you would in turn work with someone like emory as a tech ambassador from where you sit yeah you know tech yeah all large companies not just technology companies have always had a government affairs functions you know and and and trade compliance departments and those kinds of things and export import compliance and then you know so for the most part you know having the relationship between uh companies and now specifically the big tech and the governments have been mostly around compliance and regulation and to some degree you know just sort of listening to each other you know but kind of from a distance i i think what what denmark has has initiated and now ann marie and her role and these other 30 ambassadors have kind of established as a completely new paradigm of cooperation you know it's not just we'll talk to you and you talk to us and then we'll go back to our jobs it's actually you know let's really engage and have a conversation about how you know your technology and how it's being applied adopted sold and used within our borders is having a real impact on our citizens and and we you know we um i think companies have an obligation to participate in that conversation and to cooperate and we recently i had the honor of uh being one of the hosts in fact the the all the world's tech ambassadors came together uh recently to silicon valley and they did a tour they went around to the usual suspects uh and met with different companies and nvidia was one of them and it was great and we had two hours you know in a very uh open frank conversation and and i think it was it's fundamentally a different kind of conversation than a trade conversation or pure policy conversation or regulatory conversation you know that it's just not about that it's really about how do we work together to advance our shared values and and for a shared benefit for for all humanity frankly uh and that's something that's that's a great opportunity and we welcome that emery and those kinds of conversations what kinds of questions are you asking when you're when you're on one of these trips or looking at a technology or talking with a company what things do you want to know what are you trying to assess and how are you what kind of agenda are you trying to drive forward first of all trying to understand from a company perspective what do you see as the major sort of geopolitical challenges i think if we as governments are to address them adequately especially in a technological realm we need to understand how companies see things because to be honest often we don't really have the same starting point businesses you move way faster than governments do you have a tendency to be much more good at foresight than governments oftentimes aren't and there are different dynamics at play for for companies by having that conversation and trying to understand what's actually happening in companies we can be much more efficient in collaborating on large issues whether that is artificial intelligence uh super computing quantum or to the question around cyber security how to uphold democracy uh digitally how to ensure that the norms that we establish globally they're also upheld in cyberspace etc so i think that is one piece the second piece that's really interesting for me is to see the movement as the industry sort of recognizes the geopolitical responsibility you hold as well and i think the question you know what is your foreign policy most companies would have said a few years ago it's market expansion that's my foreign policy and i think it's becoming much more nuanced now because we recognize it's not only about market expansion but it's also about what markets do you operate in and how what are some of the challenges whether that is export um sort of challenges fdi screening uh some of you doing work especially with researchers in countries where it's a bit more challenging so engaging in that dialogue on how to support i think shared mission about you know creating incredible technology that can help solve the world's problems while at the same time addressing some of the geopolitical challenges so i've talked with a few technologists who their favorite thing to say is that government moves too slow government's you know outdated what do you say to them to persuade them to come to the table to collaborate on issues why should they why should they care why should they engage on geopolitical issues first of all government is trying to do this a bit differently appointing tech ambassadors i'm not a career diplomat i did not grow up in the ministry of foreign affairs i come from a private sector background and i've been working with technology for for years and this so actually having people who understand what they're talking about i think that is the first way that we are sort of from government side showing that we really care the second piece is that companies have unwillingly become these foreign political actors a lot of the work that we do with the nato alliance for example is saying you cannot only work with the traditional military industrial complex lots of the companies out in silicon valley find themselves to be national security actors having to have large teams sitting with cyber security disinformation misinformation looking at the war and you know the war in ukraine right now it is social media platforms who are at the front line of taking really big decisions on what should be allowed online and not what type of speech when it comes to russian aggression when it comes to defending ukraine what should be allowed and in that space we don't think that tech companies should be standing alone making these decisions that requires us to partner up so what we're doing it really is an invitation to that collaboration in what is a messy challenging and quiet and nascent space keith i am so eager to hear your perspective on this because i know that you are a private sector individual who really believes in working with government you've contributed to oecd responsible ai work you've you're sitting on a really credible commerce committee so tell us more about how you engage with government why you think it's important to do that well i know the government has a bad wrap around speed and and there's probably some true there's truth to that from a procurement perspective maybe but actually on the topic of artificial intelligence specifically things have moved pretty fast uh and and the engagement level is extremely high so it's two it's 2022. if you go back just five years ago there wasn't a country on earth with a national ai strategy not one right and now pretty much every developed nation in the world and a handful of uh emerging nations have them as well i mean there's 60 70 countries uh you know have released these strategies and in some cases they're on their second or third version of that and all of these are championed at the head of state level you know these aren't down in some low-level ministry these are at the prime minister level uh typically and they're pervasive they're they're not just about science they're about the future of industry the future of jobs the future of healthcare the future of food i mean they're very comprehensive it's really about taking this general purpose technology this very transformational capability applying it broadly across the economy across society so everyone kind of gets that no one needs to be sold on that and that happened in just a few short years and so now we're kind of in this phase that we're shifting from talking about policy to implementing programs and what's interesting is i also have noticed that uh you're mentioning you're not a career you know sort of uh diplomat that there's quite a few of the of the the men and women who lead uh ai for their nations came from industry frankly the the current head of digital for slovenia is was an uber executive right and another i basically recently met a minister of ict uh in the middle east and he spent 10 years at cisco you know and so you're starting to you know there's a really nice cross-pollination and and those individuals are coming into those roles quite you know energetic and ready to take action uh and so and we see that from from a nvidia's perspective you know the pandemic obviously was was it was a was was and continues to be a challenge uh from a business perspective but really we never lost any pace as far as our collaboration with governments across the world and during the last two years you know we signed you know at least uh two dozen partnership agreements across the world and and and that was just evidence to me of the of the level of effort and and focus on this topic so we at the atlanta council like to say that technology is the chess port of great power competition so these kinds of technologies ai super computers quantum are where the where geopolitics is quite literally every day playing out so i wanted to specifically ask about how the ukraine crisis has changed the fame the the board game essentially for you how are you seeing the chess board as evolving because of that at times it feels like on february 24th i think when we woke up and invasion happened it was like being in the 1980s again tanks in the streets of europe i'm danish i was actually in denmark at the time i just had my little son who was not even two months old and i think sitting and witnessing tinks and military and boots on the ground just seemed like something that happened three four five decades ago so i think it's in some sense it has you know catapulted us back to a time of tension that we haven't been in for a long time at the same time it is by no means the 1980s it is very much 2022 where big tech uh where whether we're talking the cyber attacks that started happening already february 23rd and had a huge impact on digital infrastructure in ukraine the role of technology whether we're talking disinformation and the way that it's been used in ukraine i think it's it's highlighting that one the geopolitical tensions have have have never been higher at least for the past 30 years two the bifurcation of the world is also is also echoed when it comes to technology and the sort of east versus west is becoming a little bit more tangible and something that we have to reckon with and thirdly this is no longer just a question of what is the hypothetical conversation that we've been having about what happens when a war plays out in cyberspace what happens when we need to push some of the adversaries or also what happens if we do not stand on the right side of history between who are the democracies and who are not so i think it have forced of all to take more of a stand um even out here you know i live up in the bay area and people who are taking a stand even though we are you know thousands of miles from ukraine thinking about products services the way the way that we're doing business what impact does it have on the conflict um i think these are some of the really big things and then just lastly to the sort of the the chessboard conversation for many years and to some degree still it was whether you had access to nuclear weapon or not that defined your place in the geopolitical realm i think the access to you know access and ownership over uh advanced ai quantum super computing is the sort of new demarcation lines of where you are in that chess board do you want to build on that well look i mean the the the war in ukraine has been uh uh the the impact we don't even know yet we have we haven't really felt and unraveled but for nvidia you know like many other us companies we we have shut down and started to wind down our operations there and also move our employees out of russia if they want that um and so you know we've had there's that impact it was a relatively small part of our business but still it was there and and it isn't anymore and so there's that there's the the supply chain implications of broadly speaking that that are starting to be felt around the world there's the broader impact on europe and the european economy and how that's affecting you know our business and our people uh across the world so i mean i i don't see anything positive from it right we're still understanding and assessing and managing through it like everyone else but i think the bigger issue as you pointed out the the geopolitical landscape has changed there's tensions now that that are kind of surface they're no longer below the surface they're above the surface it requires all global multinational companies to take stock of you know of what they want to do and how they want to do it i don't think there's an easy answer i don't i don't want to suggest there's a pithy quick answer to that question i think there's harder questions that are coming out and and there's there's more uh more time needed to come to that decision but i think also collaboration with our with our uh partners both in the for-profit and in the public sector is an essential part of going forward which was maybe less so five years ago just adding one thing i think the 1990s where a lot of the large tech companies really came of age as it was you know it was fukuyamas the end of history it was the idea that we're all sort of going towards more democracy more integration ever greater globalization and that just didn't happen that did not materialize we're seeing a greater decoupling i think the naivety with which we could easily enter into markets and that's whether we're government or private sector we have now sort of waking up and realized that it's just much harder whether it's the sanctions that have a very direct impact on specific companies or the more moral questions should we be available you know i think a lot of the the the companies up in the bay should we be available in russia or not are we supporting you know with our infrastructure products and services opposition leaders who are mobilizing or are we supporting a regime right now that frankly we do not want to be supporting and that is making it much harder to be a tech company because there is no world now where you can i think sort of you know happily enter and think about ever stronger globalization the world just looks more differently and that's why these political i want to see even moral questions now come to the forum as a result of that i'd love to understand from you how you think governments are thinking about their strategies so is it about allyship we had talked a bit about yesterday about strategic autonomy and tech sovereignty and these ways that nations and governments are thinking about how they shape their strategies so could you both speak a little bit to that and emery go ahead yeah i mean i mean digital sovereignty uh it was a term that was created to sort of capture you know the need to have the security and resilience you know around not just one it's it's not just about digital right it's a bigger topic but within that term of digital sovereignty you have sort of sort of a stack of issues you've got data that's one issue you've got sort of the compute infrastructure and then the chips that go related to that and you've got the connectivity the the backbone uh the communications networks the 5g so there's all those sort of that whole stack sort of makes up digital sovereignty and it's unrealistic for any country including the us you know to have sort of complete sovereignty around a full supply chain within each of those sectors it's just not realistic right i mean we we really are dependent on these global supply chains and these global networks but but because of the situation and because of almost the recognition of where things are headed that you know it is important to now maybe step back and assess well you know where where might we inv select certain industries certain sectors and have strategic autonomy around things that we can dominate uh you know within a field or lead in a field and and those are very important questions for the resilience of not just the european economy but every economy and and i think that uh i was on i was in a meeting this morning in paris virtually with the oecd's working party in ai and and you know it was four hours of discussion on how countries can individually invest in their own capabilities but for the benefit of of all you know and so because it's not just about the external threats or the externalities you know countries need to invest in these in both the human and the compute infrastructure the capabilities to to to master these technologies for their own benefit not just because it's not because it has a role in the global state just within their own countries right to identify and fight disease to to have competitive industries to deliver great services and make them more accessible to your citizens those are just things you want to do anyway within your country and then there's the external sort of conversation globally and it's not all about that right it's kind of a balance so i think the the idea of digital sovereignty and a strategic autonomy has has always been there but now it's taking on a much more important role i come from a small country that has been doing very well for itself because it's been open integrated with the world we've been trading with you know everyone everywhere and reckoning with the fact that the world is closing down as a dane it is a little challenging to be honest that being said we're definitely not naive in this question uh whether it's the u.s or the eu talking about chips act there's a question now you know what are we actually producing ourselves what are the vulnerabilities in our supply chains on our global value chains and what happens in a world that is more fragile and more uncertain how do we maintain our position in the world we hope and from the danish perspective we talk about open strategic autonomy and you might call that an oxymoron wanting both you know best of both worlds the reason why we're doing that is because we're still not really sure i think what is the right way to take it's about talking yes we do need to invest much more in our own technological capabilities um the idea that the referee don't win the game and maybe as a european for too long you know we've been really good at sort of setting the standards but maybe not necessarily you know playing in the match ourselves so i think it's a good wake-up call for europe to think what are actually our industrial capabilities in this and and why is it that the us is always beating us and you know making really good companies not that there's not great european companies but there's a bit of a you know healthy competition so it's definitely something that we're turning towards what we really do out you know being based in silicon valley but spending a lot of time in dc is talking about a transatlantic digital sovereignty so it's not only a european or u.s but strong allies of the sort of free rule-based order that we like liberal values um you know fundamental principles around democracy how do we create stronger allies rather than every country for itself all right so i'm a big fan of lightning rounds so to wrap up and conclude this panel what i'd like to do is a lightning round on the four technologies named in this panel because we've talked a lot about the geopolitical side but let's talk specifically about these four key technologies so for each one i'm going to just go through the list i'd love to hear from you what you sort of think the time horizon of impact is from a government perspective or you think you know how how soon do they think this wave is going to hit and how does that how do governments think about it then which policies or standards do you think might be shaping the most if if some come to mind and then where do you think governments are perceiving the most opportunity or risk okay so let's start first with artificial intelligence already here um what policies i think as keith said you need to actually have a strategy thinking through what is your vision for applying artificial intelligence in a way that is actually delivering on some of the huge societal challenges that we have the third question was uh opportunity or risk do you think for for for nations overall mainly an opportunity okay keith yeah i mean that's right ai is is not a it's not a new thing i mean it's it's been here 50 years but now it's it's industrial it's it's scaling so so if this is particularly important for smaller countries if they're not investing in in ai as a national capability they will have trouble competing in in this new economy and and that will have a direct effect on the prosperity and if not the security of the nation so it's pretty it's pretty hardcore i think uh when it comes to ai and and again no one really disagrees with that right and so i think that's so right and as far as you know what strategy i don't think you can afford to not focus on it comprehensively across the whole country and the whole economy so i think i don't think it's a niche i think it has to be treated as it's being treated as a national priority you know from the head of state down and and the and the risks i mean there are risks right i mean ai is a dual technology there's there's it can be applied maliciously it could also just be inherently biased and based on the data that it's trained on so you know you know the the risk is not understanding the risks and starting to to to you know manage those and i think countries are doing a pretty good job frankly led by the europe's you know a referee mentality to to really set you know have very mature open dialogues on what are the risks and how we manage them and and and frankly the us has been taking uh you know working with the europe on that very i think very openly all right keith i'm going to turn back to you for we're going to go reverse order super computing well look that you can't be world class in ai unless you have world class infrastructure the the new super power is super computers i mean if you can't compute large scale models within your borders then you will not be able to create the large scale models that are leading this field right whether it's computer vision or natural language or autonomous systems i mean the there's a very very direct very explicit connection between your infrastructure and your ability to lead in that field this is this is undeniable so and at the same time it's not just about the machines it's about the whole infrastructure around it it's about the people it's about the connectivity so you really need to invest in that that entire infrastructure but uh interestingly enough most countries don't know that and it's actually it's actually a policy blind spot and something the oecd is trying to address which is the the vast majority of ai policy focuses on data and algorithms and and has largely ignored super computing i'm thinking it's more or less well that's taken care of and so you know we're actually trying to address that we being the you know most of the western nations are trying to close that gap i think in sort of time you know it's already here as he said in in some countries more than other just like ai the dual use aspect also goes to super computing you know and if you have adversaries who have access to sophisticated ai and run it on sophisticated supercomputers we have a problem so just with this it's about managing how to use it and how to incentivize the right type of use of it i think we are behind globally when it comes to standards actually both for ai and super computing to some extent it's this you know the always the catch-up game sort of ancient governments trying to catch up to this new and shiny uh amazing agile tech industry my hope is actually now that with aen super computing we're trying to close that gap a little bit more on the catching up so hopefully on the standards we'll make the right ones in the right time all right so final one cyber and quantum how are you guys looking at that from from these lenses from policies time horizon opportunity risk well quantum has really captured a lot of government's imaginations i mean from from i mean it's hard to throw a rock and hit a country that does not have a significant investment in quantum although a few countries china the us germany canada a few countries are are investing at significant scale but but quantum computing uh what's interesting about content computing is is is that while there's been some early sort of successes and milestones demonstrated from a research perspective you know it's it's still considered years away before we have a gen kind of a general quantum computer and so forth but but what we have today is we have classical computing the van newman sort of classical computing models accelerated by gpus and other processors that could simulate quantum computing at tremendous scale so even though we don't have you know a large scale quantum computer we have large-scale quantum computing simulators that are actually quite powerful so i know that ibm made announcement a few months ago that you know they're gonna they have like 127 qubit you know a quantum computer we can simulate a 2000 computer right now and so i think what's going to happen over the next few years is the simulation of quantum computing will fill that gap until the until the actual computing catches up and then ultimately we will have three paradigms you'll have classical computing accelerate computing and quantum computing working side by side to basically create unbelievable uh you know new innovations on all the the frontiers you can imagine with quantum i don't think there's a binary answer whether it is you know all hail mary it's going to solve all our problems are going to be probably you know potentially the biggest threat to our national security architecture that being said as soon as what is a 10 000 cubic quantum computer exists there's no way of turning back and that is going to have a huge you know impact on cryptography obviously but a lot of our national security architecture and structure and it has a huge potential so my hope is with quantum because i don't think it's 15 years out i think it's more like you know five seven years to be honest we actually get it right that rather than with all the other technologies again you know government try to catch up and then we do regulatory and sometimes we get it right often not too right maybe with quantum because we are in advance we can actually get the regulatory framework white so we can take that you know the economic benefits the scientific benefits while addressing the the huge security implications and risks that are associated with it and then take a quantum leap in what i think will be truly awesome for humanity just like what we've been seeing with supercomputing recently that are really accelerating positive transformation in human lives in democracy in the countries where we want to be seeing that type of exploration but you got to have one exactly god you got to have it i mean you gotta have one i think those are the words to end on for sure so thank you both so much for this really enjoyable and incredible conversation uh audience i hope you all really enjoyed it and are a little bit more convinced that it's worthwhile to engage and think about these topics appreciate all everyone's being here today thank you all so much
2022-06-26 09:41
