| Can Democrats Make Peace with the Tech Industry? |
| A Democratic congressman from Silicon Valley discusses AI legislation and the party’s frosty relationship with the tech industry |
| The AI industry is moving fast. Congress is not. |
| That’s the basic state of play on legislation concerning an
industry that has emerged as a major force in American society, generating concerns
over job
losses, data center construction, and security
risks. |
| I recently discussed these issues with Democratic congressman
Sam Liccardo, whose district in California includes San Jose, Palo Alto, and
Mountain View. Liccardo has introduced
legislation to alleviate AI-related job losses, opposed
a moratorium on data-center construction in favor of more moderate policy
solutions, and proposed federal preemption of state laws for companies that satisfy
federal
safety standards. |
| Two things have made this difficult. |
| The first is that although Republicans control both Congress
and the White House, the party, in Liccardo’s words, has been “reduced to
Donald Trump’s whims,” and “those whims on AI seem to be as mercurial as Donald
Trump’s ceasefire declarations in Iran.” |
| The second is that Democrats have not coalesced around a
vision for AI and are working to regain the support of the tech industry in the
wake of Joe Biden’s presidency. |
| “There was a growing divide between many longstanding
Democrats in Silicon Valley who had supported [Barack] Obama, supported [Bill] Clinton,
believing we were the party of innovation,” Liccardo told me about the impact
of the Biden era. “I heard a lot of frustration about everything from antitrust
policy to tax treatment to regulatory overreach, a whole host of issues.” |
| Liccardo wants to address this problem and “build a stronger
bridge — or rebuild a bridge” between the Democratic party and the tech industry. |
| This interview has been edited for length and clarity. |
|
| There was news recently that some OpenAI models broke out
of their constraints and hacked another AI company. What was your reaction when
you heard about that
story? |
| It provides context about just how hard it is to install
safeguards that will be effective in containing risk. |
| The story seemed to confirm fears that a lot of people
have about the industry moving too quickly: Do they really have a grasp on what
it is that they’re doing? |
| I think that the leaders of several of these companies have
conceded that they don’t have a firm grasp. And I think we should take them at
their word. |
| At a very high level, how do you see the state of play on
AI legislation in the current Congress? As a practical matter, at least in this
Congress, under the Republican majority, nothing of any significance seems to
be happening. |
| Am I missing things that are happening behind the scenes
among you and your colleagues? |
| I don’t think you’re missing much. Usually the advantage of
having a White House, a Senate, and a House of Representatives controlled by
the same party is that you actually would see significant progress on major
legislation aligned with the objectives of that party. |
| In this case, the party is reduced to Donald Trump’s whims
in terms of its agenda. And those whims on AI seem to be as mercurial as Donald
Trump’s ceasefire declarations in Iran. |
| It seems like the White House has a pretty clear vision
of AI legislation and regulation — that there should basically be none anywhere
at the
federal level or the
state level — but they’re not actually trying to move a bill that
would formalize that framework through Congress because presumably it would not
get enough votes. |
| I think clearly the White House would like to exert control
and have governmental authority imposed upon the market in various ways, and we
can talk about those ways in a moment. |
| But you might be right that Donald Trump would prefer that
it not happen the old-fashioned way — namely Congress enacting legislation that
subjects everyone to a transparent, rigorous, and fair process. |
| What do you think is a sensible way of moving forward
here? You recently
introduced the SKILL Act. What’s your particular vision for how you’d
like to see this industry regulated? |
| Well, I think it would be good to start with where the
American public is. We know that AI is polling below ICE because of widespread fears about three
general topics. |
| | | “AI is polling below ICE” |
|
| One is jobs and whether or not Americans will see themselves
in a post-AI economy or can see themselves benefiting in a post-AI economy. |
| The second is data centers and all the impacts those may
have on local communities. |
| And the third is around safety, particularly safety with
regard to catastrophic risks. |
| To say it more succinctly, what we need to focus on are
jobs, data centers, and safety. |
| What I think is likely to be able to move through Congress
in a happy world sometime between Election Day and December 31st might be some
modest proposals around jobs and data centers, but I am not yet seeing enough
consensus build around safety. |
| I have a lot of views. I put some of those views out in
op-eds that I put out in the Wall
Street Journal and Washington
Post. So I’m not secret about where I stand on all this stuff. |
| I’m working on a bill now that’s consistent with what I said
in the Wall Street Journal about how Democrats ought to be looking at
data center buildout as a great opportunity to deliver substantial investment
to local communities, and to enable the investment in the grid that we
critically need to transition to a green economy. |
| We’re very deep in the weeds and we have bill text, and we’re
sharing it with advocates and people in industry and labor and lots of other
folks. What I recognize, bluntly, is that a bill that says we’re going to
mandate renewables is probably not going to go far, certainly as long as
Republicans control both chambers, but even after November, we still have to
get 60 votes in the Senate. |
| So we’re going to need to be creative about how we can
leverage this moment for the benefit of local communities and for our
environmental ambitions. |
| How are these issues being handled within the Democratic
caucus? Do you feel like there’s a sufficient process around evaluating these
issues, or are you sort of doing your own work and trying to get your
colleagues’ attention on this stuff? |
| Well, it goes back to the Will Rogers line, which is that I’m
not a member of any organized political party. |
| There are a couple of dozen colleagues who are deeply
engaged in these issue through various caucuses — for example, the
Build America Caucus that Josh Harder’s leading very well with Scott Peters
and others — there’s a group there that’s working on it. |
| We’re trying to do some things that could be bipartisan.
There are convenings we’ve been doing with frosh to try to engage with AI tech
leaders to see if we can find some common ground across the aisle on safety
regulation. |
| So there are various groups doing different things, but I’d
be lying if I told you there’s a platform that’s going to roll out in three
weeks that will reflect exactly how we’re going to tackle this stuff. |
| I do know that Minority Leader Jeffries is very deliberately
working with a set of working groups in different areas to deliver a succinct
set of legislative proposals that we can drive right out of the gate in
January. |
| As you can imagine, they’re overwhelmingly focused on
reducing the cost of living. And so naturally, things like energy fit into
that. |
| So there’s some overlap in different ways for some of the
stuff. But I can’t tell you that there’s an AI policy framework that’s imminent. |
| Can you talk a bit about your Innovation for Good
coalition? |
| It became very apparent to me as mayor of San Jose and then
subsequently, as I was running for Congress, that there was a growing divide
between many longstanding Democrats in Silicon Valley who had supported Obama,
supported Clinton, believing we were the party of innovation, and were growing
increasingly disappointed with what they viewed as a Biden administration that
with a few exceptions — for example, the CHIPS Act — generally didn’t get it
about innovation in tech. And by “get it,” I mean not that anybody expected
Democrats to be supporting oligarchs, but that Democrats traditionally had been
aligned with innovators. |
| I heard a lot of frustration about everything from antitrust
policy to tax treatment to regulatory overreach, a whole host of issues. |
| We put out an agenda with a lot of input from several dozen,
if not hundreds, of disaffected Democrats. We put together an agenda that
reflected a set of policies that were aligned with Democratic values but were
still very supportive of innovation. |
| It wasn’t just core tech issues, but things like high-skill
immigration and support for that and support for housing solutions, because virtually every tech center in
this country has a housing crisis. |
| | | “Virtually every tech center in this country has a housing crisis” |
|
| We took it to the New Democrat Coalition. Various colleagues
of mine got involved and tweaked it in different ways, and they ultimately
blessed it and endorsed it. We then used that as a framework for us to identify
legislation that we’d then be encouraging 114 Democrats in the New Dem
Coalition to get behind. |
| This of course is the largest [Democratic] caucus in the
House, so it’s significant that we can get a caucus of this size to endorse
legislation. |
| We’re working on that with roughly nine or ten bills. They’re
mostly overwhelmingly bipartisan bills — I think all but one, maybe. We’re
trying to be pragmatic about it and identify stuff that can actually move, not necessarily
by itself but maybe by attaching itself to other bills. |
| So there’s been some positive progress here in D.C. |
| Then back home, what I’ve been doing through Innovation for
Good: We’ve got a website online — you can check it out, it’s innovation4good.org — because everyone’s
got to have a website, of course. |
| We’ve got the agenda, we’ve got our legislation there, and
then what we’re doing at home, essentially, is trying to build a stronger
bridge — or rebuild a bridge — between an awful lot of these folks in the
Valley who are Democratically inclined and my colleagues or future colleagues
in battleground districts. |
| We obviously want to forge conversations to help them better
understand tech, to understand the unique issues in tech that I think are
generally not well understood in Washington, and to get them supported where
our tech leaders find themselves aligned. |
| I went to many of my donors and many folks who had never even
donated to me and said, look, I’m trying to see if we can build out a larger
pro-innovation coalition. And if you want to help Democrats win in November,
all I’m asking everyone to do — to commit to — is to give $10,000 between now
and November. I’m not going to tell you who to give money to; I’m not going to
tell you how much. |
| But make sure that you’re giving it to pro-innovation
Democrats, and then we’re going to bring a bunch of people to you so you can
come kick the tires on the candidate and make up your mind about whether you’d
like to support the person. |
| It’s going very well. We’re getting good turnout — some
events, as many as 75, 80 people show up, typically more like 30 or 40 — and we’re
raising a good amount of money for these local frontliners who invariably come
out to the Bay Area anyway, because we’re the ATM for the Democratic Party. |
| It’s a way for us to help get people familiar with each
other, understand the issues, then hopefully support pragmatic Democrats in
these battleground seats. |
| There are people associated with the party who would
define themselves as being much further to the left on these issues. Sen.
Bernie Sanders wrote an op-ed in The
New York Times — he has
a bill, too — proposing to have the U.S. government take a stake in
these AI companies. What’s your reaction to that more interventionist type of policy
framework? |
| I think it’s important for people to recognize that we
apparently have a socialist Republican president who believes the same thing. |
| I think it’s important to set this context that we’re seeing
Republican legislators in Georgia proposing data center moratoria and [in] South
Carolina and lots of red places. |
| What we know is true across the political spectrum is that
tech bashing polls very well. AI bashing polls even better. |
| So I expect we’ll see lots of advertising in this election
cycle about how people are going to be tough on tech and on AI. Whether any of
that materializes in policy remains to be seen. |
| I still have confidence, at least on the Democratic side,
that we have a very large coalition of pretty sane people who are interested in
protecting local communities and ensuring that Americans have the skills and
opportunities they need to succeed economically and that American innovation
can continue to lead the world in the 21st century. |
