When President Joe Biden signed an executive order restricting tech investments in China this month, one of Congress’s designated advisers on China thought the order didn’t go nearly far enough. In a sign of the times, as Silicon Valley warms up to working with the Pentagon after years of keeping its distance, the adviser comes not from the world of national security, but straight out of Google. Jacob Helberg, a new addition to the United States–China Economic and Security Review Commission, is both emblematic of that ongoing hawkish turn — and determined to push it further. A former policy adviser at Google, he is using his perch at the commission to push Silicon Valley to work hand-in-hand with the Department of Defense. “China has a system of civil-military fusion,” he said in an interview. “We have a system of civil-military confusion.” Last week, he called out Meta on social media for its policy on the acceptable use of its Llama 2 large language model, released in July. The policy, which makes the AI model freely available for commercial and research purposes, bans its use for military applications. Helberg argues the military, which has struggled with AI acquisition, could make use of open-source models for applications like disinformation detection. But, he said, the Defense Department will abide by Meta’s ban, while China’s military would freely disregard it if it sees value in the model. He blamed the ban on Silicon Valley’s cultural aversion to the military. Famously, in 2018 — in the middle of his four-year tenure at Google — a staff revolt forced the search giant to abandon its work on a Pentagon AI initiative, Project Maven, designed to automate video and image analysis. But he’s calling on engineers to shed their reluctance to cooperate with the Pentagon, a shift that would make it easier for the military to tap into the private sector’s tech talent. “That’s idealistic,” he said of engineers’ reservations, “but in the real world American democracy has created the conditions for these companies to rise and grow and ascend.” The Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment, and a spokesperson for Meta declined to comment. Helberg, who was appointed by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy for a two-year term that began in January, is one of 12 members of the commission. Outside of that posting, Helberg is also involved in politics as one half of a Silicon Valley power couple. Along with his husband, Keith Rabois, a partner at venture firm Founders Fund, he has co-hosted fundraisers for the likes of Pete Buttigieg and Ron DeSantis. Last fall, the couple hosted a fundraiser for GOP Senate candidates in conjunction with Rabois’ fellow “PayPal Mafia” member, the “All In” podcast host David Sacks, who has become a bridge between Republican politicians and Silicon Valley moguls like Elon Musk. Helberg comes to the commission as Washington’s tech rivalry with Beijing heats up and ramifications unfold for the U.S. tech sector. In June, venture firm Sequoia Capital spun off its operations in China amid growing tensions. And on Aug. 9, Biden signed an executive order restricting U.S. investments in China that fund the development of quantum computing, AI and advanced computer chips. Helberg said the restrictions should extend to other critical tech sectors, like biotech and materials science, citing the priority areas listed in Beijing’s Made in China 2025 industrial strategy. Helberg said he is pushing the commission to recommend additional outbound investment restrictions to Congress. The body was formed in 2000 to advise Congress on China relations as a concession to opponents of the country’s accession to the World Trade Organization. Since then, it has served as a bellwether for emerging developments in Sino-American relations: Its members were raising concerns about Huawei years before a series of restrictive measures imposed by the U.S. on the Chinese telecom giant rocked relations between the two countries. The commission's next set of annual policy recommendations is due to be published in November. | 
Comments
Post a Comment