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How Safe Is Our Tech If It Depends on Non-Free Nations?

Europe’s energy woes, in the wake of the Russia–Ukraine war, should spur us to take the question seriously
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Keith Krach

Keith Krach, former chairman and CEO of Docusign, the app that enables you to conveniently buy a house in Delaware while selling one in Oregon, is speaking at COSM (November 9–11 in Seattle). Docusign was of immense help during the COVID pandemic when in-person transactions were often impractical, illegal, or just impossible.

Go here to get the Early Adopter rate before September 15.

Krach, former Under Secretary of State and current Chairman of the Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue University, has been thinking a good deal about our future and new technology. He is committed to the importance of rehoming technology Americans need in the United States, as he told Fierce Electronics recently:

Our adversaries, starting with the Chinese Communist Party, are playing a game of four-dimensional military, economic, diplomatic, and cultural chess, and the crossroads and the main battlefield is technology. The CHIPS and Science Act will help American tech companies build, expand, and modernize domestic facilities and equipment for semiconductor production and accelerate research in AI, quantum computing, 6G, hypersonics, and other national security technologies.

General Secretary Xi Jinping is propping up China’s semiconductor manufacturing by committing $1 trillion over the next 10 years. He is terrified that a united United States will commit to the equivalent of a moonshot. The bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act may do exactly that, taking the technological advantage away from China Inc. and returning it to the United States.

Matt Hamblen, “President Biden signs CHIPS and Science Act: comments and reactions” at Fierce Electronics (August 9, 2022)

In an interview last year, he also told the Washington Post that clean energy tech may depend on regaining control over the processes:

As you know, they’re the world’s largest and fastest increase in terms of carbon emissions. So, of course, we should be working with them [China], but I think really my point is that we’ve got to develop our clean energy business.

They just announced, for example, green bonds today. This is where the United States is financing their energy business, which is financing what’s going on in Xinjiang in terms of genocide. So, you know, I think the strategy has got to keep all of this in mind. There’s just no doubt about it that we’ve got to start cranking up in this area, and I also think that we’re all–you know, we’re free traders, but when somebody comes in the market and doesn’t play by the rules, the market is no longer free. Obviously, they’ve subsidized their business and have done all kinds of things. It’s classic. It’s what they’ve done in many of the other high-tech sectors.

The Path Forward: Safeguarding Global Innovation with Keith J. Krach & Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal” at Washington Post Live (April 22, 2021) Transcript

Mind Matters News has been covering the genocide in Xinjian in China. It’s not something most Americans would want to be inextricably bound up with.

Remember, register here before September 15 to get the Early Adopter discount.

COSM 2022 (November 9–11, 2022) at the Bellevue Hyatt in Seattle is an exclusive national summit on the converging technologies that are remaking the world as we know it — artificial intelligence, 5G and WiFi6, blockchain, cloud computing, space flight. It’s a great chance for civilized conversation between and with industry leaders on trends that really matter.

Other COSM 2022 speakers to pencil in:

COSM speaker hopes to put creativity within every human’s reach. Jules Urbach, a game developer at 18, has large aspirations but he has the advantage of new software that might help.
One of Urbach’s current projects is an archive of everything to do with Gene Roddenberry (1921–1991) and his Star Trek universe

Software pioneer David Gelernter will also be speaking at COSM 2022: Gelernter, a Yale computer prof, is known for thinking through problems from a NON-Silicon Valley-elite perspective. He argues, “The emotional subtext of human communication is crucial to human thought … Too many computer scientists don’t understand this.”

and

How Federico Faggin put the computer’s brain on a chip. In the Marvel Universe, a story like this would, of course, start with a portentous meeting of top AI brains in a secret mountain stronghold, holding the world’s future in their hands… This isn’t the Marvel Universe. The project aimed merely to raise cash for more conventional stuff. Faggin will share his thoughts today at COSM 2022, Nov 9–11.


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How Safe Is Our Tech If It Depends on Non-Free Nations?