What Did AI Leaders Just Agree To?

Intro and show open

00:00. Thank you. Thank you. Bye. you

00:55Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. . you you Thank you. Thank you. Bye.

03:17Thank you. Thank you. Every morning, the President of the United States receives the most exclusive briefing in the world. the PDB. the best intelligence on the planet distilled into what matters most. But the contest that will define this century isn't only fought with armies and spies. It's fought in labs. and code and chips. in technology. That's why we created the President's Tech Brief. Twice a week, we bring you a briefing on technology and national security. the one that we would put on the Resolute desk. The world is moving faster, and so are we, by tracking the current state of the tech competition with China through our tech scorecard. Live from the SESP studio, your briefing starts now.

04:36now. .

Analyzing the signed AI document

04:42Hi, welcome to the President's Tech Brief. I'm Ily with the SESP and we're here live from Washington. I'm here joined by Martin. Martin. Good to see you, Ily. Good to be back. Two days ago, you and I, Martin, talked about the lunch that the President was having with the AI. Ily. CEOs after that lunch. The document was signed, so what the president calls this morally binding document. So today we're going to analyze what that document means. It has four layers of control that I think the president expects all these companies to follow through. And if you have any questions from the audience or any comments, please let us know. Our question for the day is, do you trust AI companies to police themselves? Your response or responses are already rolling in and we'll read some of them during the conversation, Martin. Great, great. So what's your take, Martin?

05:33Well, I think the four layers are a great starting point, right? What I really want to then know is if one of these tests does indicate a failure, how does that change how the company is structured, how it operates? So there's some unknowns there, implementation deadlines, who the third-party auditors are going to be, and whether or not any of these reports will be made public. I think there is a benefit to maximize the transparency, just so that we can – increased trust in what these companies are building. I think first you need to build trust between the companies because I think having an independent auditor has to be an actor or... organization or somebody that really everybody trusts? And then are the companies really going to showcase everything they're working on and what they're building on?

06:21And then thirdly is what happens when they don't follow this. We saw the FTC, we talked about this. The FTC, I think, court ruling, right? order on that one. Case. Case against open AI and Anthropic yesterday. Yeah, exactly. So a lot of developments still in play. So as we go through the month, we'll see how this all starts planning out, this is shaping out. But overall, I think this is a good step in the right direction. And hopefully it'll take some of the heat out of the debate right now so we can have more balanced discussion on how we move forward.

07:06from what we've seen so far. We had two comments that came on our LinkedIn page. If our team can pull it up.

07:16I think people had the same questions. Like you and I have a conversation.

07:24Similar concerns, I believe. Yeah, I think so. I think this is largely representative of how a lot of people are thinking about these issues. And so, yeah, it's fantastic to see people engaging with SESPs posts and on these issues, how we're thinking about it. And that's exactly what we want, right? To just have a mature, robust discussion. We also have a question on Signal that I just got. So what do you think is going to happen after this? The President calls it morally binding document. Sure. Well, I want to see the companies then telling us what the implementation actually looks like, right? When they start, what their implementation plan is. Again, this provides... the leaders of these tech companies a great opportunity to show the American public that they're taking these issues seriously. So I would love to see for each of the companies that are impacted by this.

Reflections on leaving Iraq

08:21How are you going to act now that you've signed this document? We will cover this topic at length with our guest, Brandon Daniels, shortly from Exeger, who was at the meeting. And then we also had a conversation yesterday on our... weekly segment across the aisle with Mike Kuyken and Josh Hodges. But first, you know, this was an interesting week and probably to a certain degree a sad week because we left, our forces left Iraq. where you served, Martin, after how many years now? 23 years probably since the operation against Saddam Hussein from our forces. We have Ilbert here from our team joining us who also served there. So I just want to quickly before we move on on the next topic just to get your take.

09:06You were there how many years ago, Martin? Exactly 16 years ago. So, yeah, I was... Tell us how you landed there. What did you do? Yeah, so I was working with the Central Intelligence Agency at the time. And, you know, I was working on completely different topics, but I wanted to volunteer and, you know, contribute myself to the very important mission that we were there for. I was originally slated to be in Balad, but then it turned out that there was an underlap in staff coverage in Anbar province. So I actually found myself in Ramadi. for the rest of the year, which was a pretty wild time. Was that a formative experience for you, Martin? Oh, absolutely. I never would have fathomed that I would be doing the work that I was doing.

09:54how much responsibility I was entrusted with, got to work with, Special Operations Forces, with diplomats, from the United States as well as Iraq and then a whole bunch of provincial leaders as well. Lumber, what about you? How did you end up going there? In Iraq? Well, I was in Iraq three different times. One was in the immediate aftermath of the invasion. This was in 2003. I was working for U.S. Institute of Peace at that time, so we're trying to do some capacity building for the newly stood-up Iraqi ministries. And then my second time there was in 2007 during the surge that General Petraeus led. I was privileged to be part of his staff. So I was there for a year. That's really when we sort of turned the tide against the

10:47a civil war that had erupted in 2006. And then I traveled quite extensively to Iraq in 2015-2016 during the height of our Defeat ISIS campaign. Secretary Ash Carter. Yeah, who led that effort. So this is sort of the third operation that we're bringing to a conclusion called inherent resolve. It's bittersweet in many ways. I think on one hand, You know, I'm glad that U.S. service members no longer need to be there, and the Iraqis can take care of their own security. We lost... nearly 4,600 U.S. service members. 300-day coalition members as well. But I saw twice what the withdrawal from Iraq led to, in either instance in 2006 or in 2011. The outcome was positive. You know, in 2011, ISIS came back and engulfed the country in turmoil.

11:53So I hope that's not the case this time. I would have preferred that we kept some residual presence. sure that threats in that part of the world don't impact our interests and the stability of Iraq. We are where we are now. I've never served in Iraq, but I was there 48 hours, I think, with the Deputy Secretary of Defense once on the way to Afghanistan. It was fascinating. That landing in Baghdad is something I will never forget. Did you do the corkscrew? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. How was it for you, Martin, this week to see this coming to an end? It brought back a lot of memories. Frankly, yeah, and that story and just seeing those pictures that I hadn't looked at in many years, I was like, oh, holy cow, what a time that was. It was, yeah, just, again, a very important experience for me as an American, for me as a young CIA officer.

12:55So, yeah, very formative. Fascinating. I mean, you know, just to thank everybody that served there, many, many troops, a lot of lost lives. And, you know, the region is still, I think, evolving. I mean, we are now, you know... in war against Iran. And I think this doesn't come at the expense of us leaving Iraq, as you said, like every time we withdrew or we changed the operation, you know, other actors filled the vacuum. So hopefully this time that's not the case. But we'll be interested to know your thoughts. Yeah, I mean, to Martin's point, this was formative not just for me, but I think for an entire generation of policymakers in the U.S. I mean, Iraq, Afghanistan, the war on terror. In many ways, I think the Iraq debate continues to this day among sort of the foreign policy elites. You know, I think Iraq has been through a lot, certainly. It's certainly in a much better place now than I think it was in 2003 or 2006, but

14:00or certainly in 2014.

14:06We have different ways of staying engaged there with the Iraqi government and make sure that Iraq remains independent. It certainly doesn't become sort of a stooge of the Iranian regime and that it becomes a net contributor of security to the region. It looks promising, but again, you know, I'm cautious because the last two times, I think, things didn't work out as the way we had hoped. it would Gentlemen, thank you to both of you. Thank you for your service. You know, I hope you don't have to go back anytime soon there, and I hope that country is on the path. towards stability and brighter, you know, perspective for their people first, and then for the region. Thank you. Thank you. *music* Welcome back. We're joined by Brandon Daniels, who is the founder and CEO of Exeger, one of the leading AI companies. But the other reason why we wanted to have you today, Brandon, good to have you. Good to be here. Yeah, thank you guys for having me. Yeah, it's great.

Brandon Daniels on the White House meeting

15:24is you were one of the CEOs attending the meeting with the president two days ago. So we wanted to take... I came from the White House. Got to go back to the White House right after this. Thank you for doing this. So tell us... What happened inside that room? What was the conversation about and then how that led to the signing of the document? Yeah, yeah. So... First, just taking a step back, you know a lot of people have talked about that meeting one of the things that I haven't seen reported anywhere is that the meeting was three hours And that amount of time... with that group of people, led to a really robust discussion. Led to a really robust discussion around the future of superintelligence, the name superintelligence. It also led to a really robust discussion around safety,

16:15around scalability, around... sort of the infrastructure that needs to be built around superintelligence, it led to a very, very vibrant debate. You know, because a lot of people have said the meeting was congenial. It was. It was congenial. A lot of people have said the meeting was a lot of people interacting and engaging, some people that hadn't met before. Yep, that happened too. But there was – the president encouraged robust debate. So we started the meeting, and before the meeting – Mark Zuckerberg and Jensen had put together a series of principles that they believed to be you know inherently superseding principles that we all could agree to regardless of where we sat on the super intelligence existential threat debate. Right. And so, you know, we had that piece of paper going in and that had been shared with Speaker Johnson. It had been shared with some of the folks in the administration like we knew we were going to come out with

17:31an agreement or no agreement, right, on information that had been shared. Then the president was that document coordinated between Mark and Jensen beforehand or. Yeah. Yeah. But it was also circulated to the CEOs that were going to be there. Right. So, you know, that that that set of principles. you know, was not new to the people in the room. Then the president opened it up and asked us each for our views. We all had five to ten minutes to talk, and then we had an opportunity to exchange thoughts on the things that people said. So, you know, we we we all came to a consensus. I mean, everybody thinks like, OK, you know, there's there's so much alignment in that group because everyone's running companies in super intelligence in AI that that all have the same motive. That's not true.

18:25I mean, the motives of Nikesh versus the motives of Haktan, versus the motives of Dario, are all very different. All of us have different backgrounds. All of us have different business journeys. All of us are on different sides of the spectrum, right? Any unresolved issues that you're able to share? I think there was there was a debate and there were some issues that didn't have to be resolved. Right. Like which which which issue do people believe is the more important one? the existential threat of not being the winner in AI? or the existential threat of a potential errant or a purposefully set model doomsday, right? We didn't have to agree or disagree which one was more likely. But I will tell you, everyone in that room said we had to win the race.

19:24There was not, to a man, everyone said the most important thing is that we win the race. It for sure is. But that doesn't mean that some people didn't have on the same level the risk of AI doing something that we didn't anticipate. But the superseding principles that we came up with were one, look, everyone in that room is a programmer. So we've all built these agents. Like I talked about when the president asked me for my comments, I said, you know, we have to go back to the beginning. The agents that I built, the first agents that I built in my company, because I actually sat down and built the. I know, I remember you telling me. actually were not for my company. The first one that I ever built was actually to diagnose a complex set of cancers that my wife has.

20:11She's got immunodiseases. She's got what's called Ehlers-Danlos. It actually erodes away at your connective tissue. And I wanted to understand the link between this sort of constellation of cancer that she has and cancer. these immune issues, right, or autoimmune diseases, essentially, and see if there was something we could do to attack both. And my wife right now is in clinical remission, 'cause we did attack both. And so I said, we can't forget that in this conversation. And do we want to be the ones that have that kind of power? Do we want someone else to be the ones that have that kind of power? And so, you know, we had a conversation and we said, okay, we know that we can put governance and code. So let's do it. Because AI models, super intelligence capabilities, they are impotent without tooling.

21:01So it's actually the tooling and the software and the access to data that makes it potent, makes it so it can be productive. We can put governance in that tooling. We can put what I call the surge protector. In my systems today, if something is draining too much cost, draining too much compute, or is covering too much cybersurface, there's actually a surge protector that shuts it off. That doesn't mean that that AI model can't keep learning and getting better and better and better and better. It doesn't mean I have to give up my innovative place. And that's one thing Jensen and Zuckerberg both said was, hey, like, I don't think that innovation and safety are loggerheads. They're actually, you know, one thing here. So, you know, I come back to the point of disagreement.

21:45On the point that we all have to know the model purpose and set up monitoring, safeguards, and guardrails to make sure that we are... We are monitoring whether or not the model is operating for its purpose. We all agreed to that. We then all agreed that we could do it in code. We know that we can put that governance into code, but we have to empower our people to do it. And then the thing that I thought was brilliant and, you know, even Elon and others were aligned with this is we should have third party external auditors. Any discussion on how those third party auditors would be selected? Are there specific criteria that we're going to look for? I think one of the things that was interesting is, one, they have to be experts, right, to do the audits. And that's a very small population of people.

22:33But there's also an opportunity to train people and have people become fluent in these tools. And so that's one thing is we have to be able to attract that kind of a talent into the auditors. But one of the things that I also thought was interesting is, The president came up with this idea that, you know, you have a board for those auditors, and those might not be people that, that are programmers or developers. Those might be great lawyers that understand the technology, or great policy makers that understand the technology, which I thought was really brilliant. And everyone kind of really liked that idea. I wasn't sure if, you know... We're all technologists, and there's a little bit of this, like, technocrat feel to the meeting, right? But, I mean, you know, Vice President Vance said the same thing. I mean, like, there was agreement that we should have people that are thinking about more than, like, how the technology is effective.

23:25but think about it more from like a humanitarian impact perspective that I thought was really interesting to that third-party auditor. We have this four-layer framework now. Which of the layers do you see being most consequential for how companies will... behave going forward? I think one, empowering the people beneath you to make sure that you have the guardrails and capabilities set up to make sure it's safe. We have to do that already. I like to think of our artificial intelligence and Palantirs and Nikesh's from Palo Alto networks. I like to think of our AI as ruggedized AI, right, because we deploy to defense networks and we deploy to, you know, FedRAMP-high, you know, systems that are managing cargo and stuff like that. So we can't have errant decisions. So all of that stuff is there.

24:22the loop that ends up taking down a system or crashing a bunch of compute or whatever. That empowerment is really important, right? And I think it addresses some of what the FTC has brought up in the investigations into Anthropic and OpenAI. And then I thought the idea that we both have board committees and an external auditor that reports that board committee on AI development and safety, I thought was was also really consequential. I know you're heading back to the White House, Brandon. Tell us a little bit where does Exeger stand in this now? What are you working on? What makes you excited really about the next steps in this space? So so the way that the meeting went when we when we closed the meeting, folks scattered off.

25:08I don't think Jensen was on that signed document, was he? I can't remember. Or six tech CEOs, but I don't remember. I think Jensen was on it. Was he on it? I couldn't remember. The way that it happened is we closed out the meeting, and I know Alex wasn't on it, because Alex had to run. I had to run. Lisa had to run. There were a bunch of people that had to run right after the meeting.

25:38and have, and even though, I mean, Anthropic was not destined to be where they are. They were just very smart about creating their models, right? I mean, they were an underdog in comparison to OpenAI or NVIDIA or anybody else, right? So the beauty of where we are is it's democratized, and so somebody not in that room might be the best person like super intelligence company in three years, which I think is super cool. But the idea is now what we're doing is we all have to agree to those principles. So in the next few days, we'll all sign on to that document. We'll all agree to it, and we will all implement it in our companies. Is there an agree-to implementation timeline, or is it up to each individual company to... I think we will get into those details, but it's way faster than anyone could regulate the industry. I mean, a lot of people talk about, oh, yeah, let's regulate, let's regulate, let's regulate. The thing that I thought was...

26:35wild about that meeting is industry is taking action to provide safety faster than anyone else could act. And there was alignment in that room from the administration to all of the CEOs. Brandon, thank you. I know you're a busy man. Thank you for dropping by and letting us know what happened. A huge historic meeting that you were part of. It was awesome. Best to you and the company and we'll see you soon. Thank you. you

Across the Aisle: bipartisan reaction

27:18conversation with Mike Kuyken and Josh Hodges for this particular meeting. They were actually here in person. They were here in person. So let's watch that conversation. with both of our friends. So Martin, our next segment is Across the Aisle, and for the first time actually we have Both Mike and Josh here in Portland. Gentlemen, good to have you. Great to be here. It's great to be here. We're celebrating five years of SCSP. Thank you for coming. Good party today. Yeah. For those of you that don't know, Mike Kaiken... former National Security Advisor to Senate Leader Chuck Schumer, Joshua Hodges, former National Security Advisor to House Speaker Mike Johnson. Big titles, big people, big personalities. I'm trying to be less big every day. All right. Let's jump into the topic, Martin. Yesterday, the president hosted major AI CEOs.

28:06The White House, they issued a statement. Let's get into it. Mike, your take. Listen, I think it's good that I always think it's good when industry and government are in a conversation. And I think it's simple. I think government has a good understanding of a lot of issues. I think artificial intelligence is one of these areas where the technology is moving incredibly quickly. And it's important that the smart people in the government actually understand what the frontier is, what it looks like, what the what the opportunity is and what the challenges are. And so anytime there's a convening of industry and government, I generally consider it a positive. I mean, I'm a Democrat, so I was a little bummed to make sure to see that there were no Democrats there. You'll remember Leader Schumer. Actually, you were there with with with Eric Schmidt and a whole bunch of other including Pete, including Jensen and Elon Musk and sort of life. Yeah. And and it was five or three years ago now.

29:01And so, uh, You know, this has been done before, but it's always good to see government and industry talking. Yeah, Josh. Yeah, I mean, look, yes, the meeting obviously happened. I think there's good photo evidence of that. I think what we saw yesterday was really the industry come together in a new way. new administration with a new recognition that... Really, action has to be put behind the words here. I thought it was great that they got everybody aside the declaration, the terms of which are still sort of coming out. But, you know, this is generally good. But it's, you know, we need an actual backstop to it as well. So we actually have to see sort of that self-policing, but also the verification piece of it. And that's the part that I'm really kind of looking to see is like –

29:39Are there going to be new authorities coming forward that help sort of with that policing of it? Yeah, I think there's a lot of really interesting issues that were talked about. I mean, as we think about these models and we think about what the frontier is, I mean, how are we going to do safety? How are we going to make sure the government is involved? And I think, you know, all those topics are sort of front of mind for people. And again, just going back to this, like, very simple point. Industry and the government talking is always a good thing. So, To push back on Josh a little bit, we had voluntary commitments in the previous administration. How is this different? We're actually going to have sort of the policing side of it. So as Trump said yesterday, we're going to have the DOJ, the FTC. I think this morning FTC came out with they're actually doing an investigation and a review of all of the frontier labs. So I think we're already starting to see some of this come to fruition. And I do think this is going to lead to congressional action as well. And to you, Mike, well, you know, the one last question. Yeah, sure, sure, sure. To you, Mike.

30:30Last administration did invite all these CEOs when they signed the voluntary commitment. They did or didn't? They didn't. Okay. So how do you think this time is different? I mean, in both... in both situations, whether it was the Biden administration or the Trump administration, they're building this plane while they're flying it. Right. Uh, That's hard and it's complicated. And so you're doing the best you can in government. And again, I wish it was bipartisan. But at the same time, this conversation is important to have. And the the voluntary commitments will probably change over time. Maybe there'll be some congressional action. I obviously hope there will be, because all of you know, in an industry like this, you want to make sure that you build something that is enduring. And the only way to have something enduring is actually through Congress acting. And I also think in an industry that could be or that will be so consequential,

31:17there be a big bipartisan vote to show that there is an enduring commitment from the government to figure out how to be thoughtful in this ecosystem. What would your advice be to members of Congress as a response to this? Do you see them as being boxed in by the signed declaration? No, not at all. I think it's actually the other way around. I think right now, so the speaker said sort of they're not planning on bringing folks back to pass some of what I think some folks will return to is like these snap laws where you're seeing sort of an overreaction. But what they're trying to do is take a measured approach. Yes, the voluntary policing or self-evaluation combined with government action. And I think as the FTC, as the DOJ, the FBI and others are looking at this, then you're going to see Congress actually identifying ways that they can take rifle shot approaches where it's not over-regulation and it's not shutting down the industry and stunting the growth that we are currently on the cusp of, but actually enabling that. And by the way, we do this across all other sectors, right? Aviation, banking.

32:19We can do it here. Yes, the technology is moving very, very fast. We can accomplish this. Sure. But, you know, Democrats on the Hill have been pushing for much more. So, Mike, what would your recommendation be to Democratic members of the House in particular on, you know, how do you start working with Republicans on this issue, knowing? fairly well that, you know, Trump is not going to sign certain types of bills. So how should they navigate this? I mean, the simple first answer, Martin, is let's get past the election. I think you're not likely to have a conversation that doesn't, you know, on purpose or accidentally result in a political outcome. But in 30, I don't know, I can't do math. 34 days. 34 days before the election. So the first thing I would do is say, sit on your hands. And then let's maybe see if we can have a conversation during the lame duck. I mean, I would run for 20 lame ducks or

33:09There's not usually a lot of get a lot that gets done in terms of like long things that are really truly enduring. It's usually like, how can we kick the can into January? And I, you know, I don't want to say that Congress won't be able to get anything done during the lame duck. But reality is doing something that is big and consequential is hard. So that's the first thing I would say. Sorry, go ahead. No, go ahead. I was just I didn't expect to agree with Mike on anything today. But this scenario, I'm pleased to hear because I do think getting through the election is really important. In addition to that, like immediately we already have things in the works that Congress is working on, and I think there's opportunity to find a bipartisan approach on the NDA. Again, the whole purpose of this is we want to win. We want to compete against every nation that's trying to develop AI and be the lead to own that marketplace. Right now there are provisions in the NDA that would help us maintain that lead, and I think that is something that on a bipartisan basis we can rally around and do.

33:57Yeah, I mean, the things that Josh mentioned in the NDA, I think there's a lot of really good things in there. And interestingly, they're different capacities, a lot of things that Josh and I have been working on for a long time. So those are good. I think in terms of how do you have this conversation either after the election or in the new year, when there's a new Congress, I mean, the first thing you have to do is sort of figure out like, where are we actually aligned? And I think that one of the conversations you just can't have 34 days or 35 days before an election is like, where is their alignment? I mean, every political actor, regardless of their Democrat or Republican, is going to be like, where can I find the opportunity to drive a wedge into this issue? And how can I how can I get political gain from it? So, again, just this this is not the time to do it, I think that but that doesn't mean, you know, 39 days from now or in January that we shouldn't have that conversation. But I think there's a lot of alignment. I mean, some of the things that Josh talked about with DOJ and FTC.

34:46We'll have to have transparency into that process. What does it look like? What are the outcomes? What are the risks? And how do we think about those? The one thing I'm still puzzled is what role would DOJ would play in this? There's so many agencies that can put on top of this. to do some kind of a vetting, control testing and stuff like that. What is DOJ going to do? I think you're partially right. I think DOJ is sort of the... the muscle, so to speak, to make sure that the companies are compliant. No, I know how the sound of that sounds. It's the muscle. You're going to have a major IC component on this. You're going to have the FBI involved. They're going to have to be involved. specifically with some of the WMD stuff, the bioweapons. And so they're going to have to be involved across the interagency on this. It's not just going to be those two. And that's, again, why I think there's a lot of tools right now

35:26I think the FDC is relying on sort of some statutes that go a little bit beyond their remit. And so they're going to have to work with Congress on that. I mean, we have the departments and agencies that we have. So somebody someone who's going to be picked as the as the I don't know if we say lucky person or unlucky person in this case. And so the agent, you know, how it works readily. Someone's got it. You know, the president has to assign somebody in the piece of paper that he forms. I mean, hopefully it is an interagency effort. You know, the FTC. I mean, it's great. Consumers and the American people are going to have have have should have an incredible role in this. And understanding the impact on on citizens is important. I think the point Josh raised is really important.

America.gov chatbot discussion

36:03international intelligence play, the cyber community play, and what's sort of the red teaming capacity of this? How are we thinking about auditing? There's a lot of questions to be asked. And Someone's got to lead it, so here we are. So one other thing I wanted to ask you guys was – so yesterday we released America.gov, we being the U.S. government. So it's a chatbot that should allow people to – engage with government services more easily. So love to get your guys take. Well, what do you think of it? Is this the right way forward? Are there any risks involved with something like this? I'll let my esteemed colleague go first on the attack. No, listen, I think... When I think about the American government, one thing I never think is AI ready. And the other thing I never think about is data ready. So I think in both places, I think the administration, I mean, is trying to do some work here. But there's so much work to be done and none of it is being done urgently. And so, like, there's a website, did you know this part, called data.gov, where there's all kinds of the U.S. government and state and local data that's made available.

37:05Where are we in terms of making all this other data available, and how can we think about really mobilizing the entire executive branch to think about data in a real way where we can make sure that these models are actually training on America.gov, on other American data? Because at least before the frontier models sort of got out and started really improving, you know who the biggest holder of data was in the world? Uncle Sam.

37:35some really interesting work with that data. Thank you. So, yes, this is one of those areas where I think it probably sounds very boring to the average person, but it's absolutely essential and necessary. The United States has been drastically behind on this for decades. I mean, literally, like the fact that we have a separate system, a separate website for every little thing you have to do across the government. A country like Estonia has done this decades ago. I was in – we were speaking to a foreign minister from – Kazakhstan, and we were talking about AI and tech and everything, and he pulled out his phone and showed me that on one app, he could go from working on a visa application to paying his water bill, to paying his electrical utilities. It was all there in one place. He didn't have to go to several different websites. It's all sort of there together. Obviously, we had a more complicated system here in the United States, but again, I think it's a great initiative. It probably sounds very boring, probably sounds like it's nothing, but I think it's going to make people's lives much

38:33they're working with performs yeah I mean Martin one of the things I recently did was I was driving so in a city that's not Washington DC and the traffic lights were a disaster can you imagine if you could synchronize all the data in just a city oh yeah and I can take two and a half minutes off your commute every morning and every afternoon morning I was sitting at an intersection for a minute red light, no cars, no pedestrians, like there's a better way. I mean, this is a solvable problem, right? And so as you start thinking about the data that government has available to it, I mean, there's all kinds of really incredible ways. kind of small ways that have a real impact on citizens, right? I mean, in Washington, D.C., I'm told, and I learned this a long time ago when I was in the Senate, that they actually have the ability to control all of the lights in the city, which is astounding given how dysfunctional the D.C. government can sometimes be. But can you imagine taking my traffic light idea and applying that to the District of Columbia? I mean, it would be bananas, Martin. And if you could then say, like, oh, honey, I'm home five minutes early because, you know, Claude or Chachy PT somehow got the lights in the city to get going.

39:36Hopefully you can scale that idea with Uncle Sam's data, and so hopefully you can figure out how to get services faster. It would be pretty astounding. I think it's in general a positive initiative, but like everything's in the execution, right? Yeah, and it actually has to work, right? Because ultimately, if it gives people time back in their day to spend with their families or do things that they need to be doing to create a business or something else, that's amazing. At the same time, there is an inherent sort of security risk and vulnerability to it. Obviously, we all know. America's like the largest cyber target in the world. And so really important that that piece of it goes along and moves forward with it. But again, like an amazing initiative. I mean, the cyber piece is totally right. I'm actually glad Josh raised it. Something we worked on in another capacity, again, is just like how do you deploy cybersecurity in a really meaningful way at scale and quickly. So it's a really hard problem. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. That's right, yes. You can't let some of these things stop you from implementing these things that people have had in their mind with respect to government services for, you know, decades. Right.

40:32Thank you, gentlemen. That's all the time we have for this week's segment across the aisle. Thank you for being here in the studio. Getting the hook. Thanks for having us. Great to be here personally. You should come see Josh and I more often. It's great to see you.

Closing and upcoming summit

40:59Martin, this concludes our Thursday show. We'll be back on Tuesday at noon across all our platforms. Make sure you check out our next big event, which is the AI Plus Robotics. This is our second big AI Plus Robotics Summit. It's the time when we have to really pay attention on this issue, October 14th. Please go and register at scsp.ai, and Martin and I will be back here on Tuesday to cover the next week. Everything that the president needs to know about tech and national security. Have a great weekend. *music*