Digital Future Daily – POLITICO

Hello and welcome to this week's installation of the future in five questions. This week, I spoke with David Ulevitch, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz who leads the firm's venture capital team. “American dynamism” The project aims to boost production and innovation in America, including aviation, education and housing. David and I talked about why he thought a national draft wouldn't be a bad idea, how China was likely overrated as a contender for geopolitical dominance, and the need to put “nerds” (as he put it) in political and leadership positions. In government. The following conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity:

What's an underrated big idea?

The first is to reintroduce a national project with a civil service option as a means of building a shared national understanding among diverse groups of people. You want to get a rich kid from one area, maybe a poor white kid from one area, or a poor African American kid, or a new immigrant from another area, put them all in a bunk house and have them do some things in a terrible, uninteresting way. A job that generally has some… Public benefit. Or military service, which is basically that, and they can do that for a year before going to college. It would be a great idea for America to build a sense of common unity and a sense of duty to its country, the lack of which leads to division among people and a lack of understanding that we are all very different on the margins but overall we're all the same.

I would also like to talk about reimagining nuclear energy policy and focusing on a new generation of reactors, both small and modular reactors, and large reactors. We want to be the country that has the electric car advantage, the AI ​​advantage, and we love the cloud infrastructure that supports our interconnected lives, and energy is essential for these things to keep us in this special place — but our energy grid is super-fragile. Nuclear power is base load power, which means it runs 24/7, it's reliable and durable, it doesn't need the wind to be blowing, it doesn't need the sun to be out, it doesn't need to be able to constantly refuel like Coal plant or something like that. Nuclear energy ticks all the boxes if we want it to, and what prevents us from taking nuclear energy seriously is a lack of real leadership and initiative.

What technology do you think is overrated?

I'm a venture capitalist, so I don't like to be a hater. But I think there are technologies that I'm personally skeptical of, whether it's because of a lack of a perceived market or because I think there are better solutions, and one example is that I've never understood wind power generation.

There is a term called MTBF, and… “Mean time between failure” A term used in the industrial field for machinery. The average time between failure of many wind turbines is laughably short. When it really happens, truly When the wind is windy, wind turbines have to stop working or the turbine will blow away, or they will have to feather the blades because it is too windy and they will spin too fast. If you just think about it, it's pretty stupid: What kind of energy system stops working when it gets more input than it wanted in the first place?

What is the book that helped shape your vision of the future?

There are many more, but I recently read Peter Zeehan's book “The end of the world is just the beginning.” Which I thought was very cool. Many people are afraid of China, but if you read this book you will come away with a pessimistic view of China's long-term prospects. He believes that they have a huge demographic cliff from which they will fall, and as this demographic cliff declines, they will lose their cheap labor force and their ability to produce raw materials cheaply, which will lead to a cascading collapse of systems.

He's pessimistic about many things in the world: I mean it's called “The End of the World is Just the Beginning.” But he is particularly pessimistic about China, which was a relatively new perspective for me and one I had not heard recently.

What can the government do about technology that it isn't?

We don't have a cohesive technology road map for America.

We've got some important texts like the Potato Chips Act, but no CTO for America. There's no one saying, “We're going to radically improve the AI ​​of our defense industrial base, and this is how it's going to happen.” We don't have anyone saying, “This is how we're going to use AI to improve the way we educate our kids, make sure they have more productive after-school activities and increase the safety of our communities.” We don't have anyone saying, “This is how we're going to use technology to make our borders safer, and this is how I'm going to do it in a way that's fair and equitable and preserves civil liberties.”

Frankly, we haven't put enough nerds in policy and leadership roles in our country. Technology is a huge driving force for change, but instead of admitting we argue that virtual AI bots are killing us when in reality we have real things killing us every day like fentanyl. Our minds are warped and wrapped around the idea that AI is evil, when non-AI programs are actually killing people. Administering incorrect doses. We know who Horizon scandal in the United Kingdom That non-AI programs mistakenly put people in prison.

The government needs to get more nerds in positions of power and authority. And, you know, hopefully they'll be well-adjusted nerds.

What surprised you most this year?

Watching people realize how broken many elite institutions are. Academia in particular is one. Not all academia, there are great people and I read newspapers constantly. But overall, just the departments and business function of the university have been largely disrupted.

They improve the wrong things, and promote the wrong things. They cover up bad research, and there is a replication crisis. There's just this fraud upon fraud. They are misusing funding. It's been surprising to me to see people open their eyes in a very public way and realize, hey, wait a minute, we may have great students and we may have great professors but we may not have great administrators. Maybe these people are highly incompetent and unqualified. It is time to reimagine these institutions' priorities and how we will measure their goals. I think there will be a reset of their actual priorities, and organizations' standards for success.

Remember when we said Party outlines Is it starting to take shape around artificial intelligence?

About that… POLITICO's Mohar Chatterjee and Brendan Bordelon I mentioned this morning Regarding some Republicans' objections to President Joe Biden's use of emergency powers to make companies provide information about the most powerful artificial intelligence models, as set forth in his October 2023 executive order.

Conservatives call this an overreach, with Sen. Mike Rounds (R.S.D.) telling Mahar and Brendan “there is no national emergency” on AI, and the Biden administration's use of the Defense Production Act to justify this restriction in the EO is unacceptable. “Not necessarily the goal for which the Defense Production Act was created in the first place.”

Free market technology experts, along with the R Street Institute, also disagree Adam Theurer Insisting that “the Defense Production Act is about production—it's in the title—not restriction,” while advocates of the effort such as former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler “The reality is that when you have an ineffective Congress, your options are either to sit back and watch the boat sink…or look for ways to get the boat moving.” The first reporting deadline under the Biden administration plan is A few days from now.

Europe hopes to check Elon Musk's dominance of the satellite Internet By launching its own orbital network infrastructure.

POLITICO's Joshua Busaner I mentioned yesterday On the EU's plans to sign multi-billion-euro contracts by the end of March for a new satellite network dubbed IRIS², which will provide the same kind of reliable and secure internet access in remote areas currently offered by Musk's Starlink company. That service found itself at the center of an international geopolitical controversy last fall after A Biography revealed Musk did not personally enable internet access during the Ukrainian attack in Crimea.

“Ukraine should not depend on the whims of Elon Musk to defend its people,” Christoph Grodler, a member of the European Parliament who leads the EU’s Secure Connectivity programme, said bluntly.

The leading airlines in Europe began Gathering together last spring For network planning. By mid-February, the consortium is scheduled to submit its final offer to contractors who have a plan to operate the network by 2027 or 2028.