Senator Banks Speaks at Hill and Valley Forum on AI Race with China: “This Is a Moral Fight”

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, Senator Jim Banks (R-Ind.) spoke at the Hill and Valley Forum alongside Executive Vice President and CTO of Palantir Technologies, Shyam Sankar on a panel moderated by Partner of Sequioa Capital, Shaun Maguire, entitled: Scale, Security, and Sovereignty: Competing with China's Defense-Industrial Model.

Click the image above or view the full remarks here.

Key Excerpts below:

Sen. Banks: "… the second cold war is related to the AI race and we can't let China win it. I mean that's the bottom line… I think that the Trump administration, the White House, more than ever before gets this… The AI action plan that was released at the beginning of the second Trump term calling forstricter export controls on chips to China and to our adversaries is the bottom line. That's why I introduced the GAIN AI Act several months ago. We passed it out of the Senate in the NDAA… Fortunately, in the Commerce Department's H-200 rulemaking, they incorporated much of GAIN AI into the H-200 chips rules. So that's good, but Congress needs to codify it. And we need to make sure that we're not helping our biggest enemy… that's the big picture on Capitol Hill."

Senator Banks: "…This isn't just a technological race, a fight over who's going to get the best technology and win the AI race first. This is a moral fight. And we know that the PRC is going to lie, steal, and cheat. And this is more evidence of it. So what happens if they win the AI race? How will they dominate our future and our kids' futures? We can't let them do that. And that's why export controls are so important. And the GAIN AI Act… I believe it's the best path forward for stronger controls over our best chips being sent to our biggest enemy and preventing that from happening. And when there is a domestic customer base in the United States of America, they should get priority forAmerican-made chips over our biggest enemy that wants to take those chips and dominate the rest of the world, especially America's ability to create good jobs and meet the needs and the economic needs of the future that are going to create the jobs that our kids are going to need to survive…"

Senator Banks: "It's such an exciting time with Hegseth and Feinberg and Driscoll and Phelan, all these guys that President Trump has put in at the Pentagon to try to shake it up. I've never seen anything like it. And it makes this an exciting time for all of you. Don't give up. Right now, in the next couple of years, with this administration, we can make up for a lot of the mistakes of the last few decade…"

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