McCaul Discusses Effort to Secure AI Supply Chains with Under Secretary Helberg

WASHINGTON - House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Emeritus Michael McCaul (R-Texas) discussed the importance of Pax Silica - the State Department's initiative to secure high-tech and artificial intelligence supply chains - with Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs Jacob Helberg at a committee hearing titled, "Advancing National Security through Commercial Diplomacy."

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Full Exchange:

McCaul:Secretary, it's great to see you. Let me commend and applaud you for your recent appointment to secretary. I want to commend the administration for their picking such a talented person in the technology space. I've been to your [Hill and Valley] summits here on the Hill, talking about technology. You were also on the China Commission for many years when I was chairman, and I worked really well with you on your recommendations on China, as they are the great power competition that we face. And I know your personal views about China and your public views, and they pretty much are the same, and it is that China is the greatest threat that we face today. … I know this Pax Silica is a very interesting concept to me, and it's an alliance between the United States and our partner nations, moving forward on technology - obviously semiconductors, but [also] AI, which is the future of warfare. When we talk about advanced weapon systems like the AUKUS bill that I passed, bringing together the U.K., Australia, and the United States to advance AI technologies and also quantum with advanced weapons ... I know you just got back recently from India and had a very successful meeting with Mr. Modi over there. I want to give you an opportunity to talk about the importance of Pax Silica, what it is doing to advance our interests abroad, and to accelerate the core AI race against China.

Helberg:Thank you so much, and I'll be brief to be mindful of time. But I completely share the sentiment, it's great to see you, and you were indeed at the very first Hill and Valley Forum many years ago, so it's been great to work with you all these years. With respect to Pax Silica, we have three lines of effort. The goal is to secure our supply chains, and we want to focus on artificial intelligence because we believe it's one of the most transformative technologies that will affect the future of our economy. Our three lines of effort include membership, so focusing on being very deliberate and strategic about the composition of the group. The group now includes Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Australia, Israel, the UAE, Qatar, the U.K., and Greece. We included India just about three days ago, and Taiwan is also a part of the group. The second track is projects - infrastructure projects. And when it comes to projects, we're focused on logistics infrastructure and industrial capacity. The basic premise is we believe that logistics is key if we want to secure supply chains, because we can have access to minerals and factories, but if we don't have a way of moving things around efficiently and in a cost-effective way, we will not have secure supply chains. And industrial capacity because we have offshored all that capacity. Our supply chains are filled with thousands of vendors that we have very little visibility into, and so we want to create an environment where we reduce the information silos, and we have more industrial might in order to do surge capacity when we need to. The last line of effort is policy. We want to use Pax Silica as a platform to coordinate at a policy level with our partner countries, especially and including for developing baseline definitions for us to agree for how we define sensitive technologies and critical infrastructure. We want to coordinate on anti-dumping practices and market incentives. And we also want to agree on a pro-innovation agenda for AI.

McCaul:Well, I think this is one of your legacy items, and I'm glad again you're in the position you're in to advance these sort of creative ideas. I always find, Mr. Chairman, when you have an economic alliance with countries - you know, in addition to the weapon sales that this committee does - the economic and diplomatic efforts really solidify those alliances with a common goal against our adversaries. And I think that's precisely what Pax Silica does. I look forward to hearing more good news from you on that issue, and let me commend you for your service, sir.

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