5 questions for Rep. John Moolenaar

Politico

19 hours ago

With help from Aaron Mak
Hello, and welcome to this week's installment of the Future in Five Questions. This week we interviewed Rep. John Moolenaar, the chair of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. That post puts the Michigan Republican at the center of some of the thorniest geopolitical issues, including winning the technological arms race with China.
Moolenaar talks to us about artificial intelligence and his ideas for an 'America First AI Policy' that would keep the U.S. ahead, block China from accessing U.S. technology and expand international partnerships with appropriate guardrails. An edited and condensed version of the conversation follows:
What's one underrated big idea in tech?
AI can be used as a weapon. From helping cyber criminals to building autonomous systems to injecting Chinese Communist Party propaganda directly to the U.S. public, AI has immense power — and we need to treat it that way.
And that starts with securing the chips that power it. And I co-sponsored The Chip Security Act, which is a bipartisan bill that would require location tracking for advanced American chips and mandate reporting if they're diverted or misused. Right now, American chips are being smuggled into China and used to train AI models that serve the CCP's military and surveillance state. And we can't allow that.
When you think about it, in the Cold War we tracked nuclear material, and today we should be tracking advanced chips, because they're just as strategically important.
That is a simple idea, but it could determine whether American innovation is used to protect freedom or to power authoritarian control.
What's a technology that you think is overhyped?
I think the idea that high-end compute is the only path to AI is overhyped, and the Chinese model DeepSeek proves it. Even though there are restrictions on advanced chips, the CCP found a workaround, and they built an AI system that censors, surveils and pushes propaganda using stolen AI models and likely smuggled chips.
Our committee detailed all of this in our DeepSeek report, and what it shows is that the CCP is adapting fast, and they're not just chasing high-end hardware — they're trying to indigenize the entire tech stack: [Graphics processing units], cloud computing and the tools to manufacture chips themselves.
So we need to think better, not just about cutting off chip exports, but about securing the entire ecosystem. The race is not just about who has the most powerful hardware, but it's about who controls the platform and protects the values built into it.
What could the government be doing regarding technology that it isn't?
We need to treat AI like the strategic asset it is, not just another tech trend. And I joined alongside ranking member [Rep. Raja] Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) in a bipartisan letter urging the Commerce Department to act — and act fast.
We need clear standards for AI safety and transparency before these models are deployed, especially in critical sectors like defense, infrastructure and finance.
That means safety testing, transparency requirements for new models and strong oversight of training data, so we don't end up with CCP-style systems like DeepSeek, which are hardwired for propaganda and control.
We also need to build more capacity at home: More fabs, more data centers and more secure supply chains, and close the export loopholes. The CCP is trying to indigenize the full tech stack. If we don't control the whole program, we're giving them the tools to bypass our restrictions.
With our values, we need to lead globally — and our allies need to adopt similar guardrails — so that we can prevent Beijing from their techno-authoritarianism. We still have the edge, but if we want to keep it, we have to act like we intend to win.
What book most shaped your conception of the future?
Recently, I read 'The Peacemaker' by William Inboden, and it shaped how I think about American leadership in the dangerous world that we have today.
It was about Ronald Reagan and about how he faced Soviet aggression, nuclear brinksmanship and economic instability, but he stood firm with moral clarity, military strength and a deep belief in America and our values.
It didn't happen overnight. When you think of the Soviets launching Sputnik, America didn't back down. We stepped up and invested in science, defense and education. And that wave of innovation allowed Reagan's strategy to dominate technologically — and our strong military defense — but we also won the war of ideas.
That's the advantage that free societies grounded in faith and truth have over these authoritarian regimes. I believe the future is going to be shaped by those who lead in AI, semiconductors and quantum, but even more so by those who defend the values beneath them. And Reagan showed how to lead with strength and with faith and we need to work with other like-minded nations to work together to defeat this authoritarianism — and some of these partnerships that are emerging with China, Russia, North Korea and Iran.
What has surprised you the most this year?
What has shocked me the most when it comes to the work we're doing with our select committee is how much of our American-made technology — our investor dollars and even our taxpayer dollars — are benefiting the Chinese military and surveillance state, and despite our sanctions, our export controls and national security warnings, the CCP is still building AI-enabled weapons using our chips, our money, our cloud services, even our research.
We need to get much more serious about our enforcement, and that's precisely why we need an America irst AI policy to ensure America always retains a majority of global compute and leads the free world in this effort.
Trump's tough talk on semiconductors
The White House's plan to extract more investments from semiconductor manufacturers might actually be working — though the strategy may have its limits.
On Thursday, chip fabricator Micron said it would invest an additional $30 billion to expand its Virginia plant, and construct a new facility in Idaho. This comes as President Donald Trump's Department of Commerce renegotiates manufacturing grants that the Biden administration had agreed to furnish under the 2022 CHIPS Act. Micron received $6 billion in CHIPS funding last year, and will now get an additional $275 million, as well as a 'white glove' service to loosen and expedite permitting.
In May, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the administration would demand that companies ramp up their investments if they wanted to receive the CHIPs grants they'd been promised. Trump has also claimed he's been able induce extra investments by threatening companies with tariffs in renegotiations: He said in April that he raised the prospect of imposing 100 percent tariffs on the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, leading it to pitch in another $100 billion. (TSMC declined to comment on Trump's version of events when DFD asked earlier this week. Micron said it could not comment on whether tariffs were part of its renegotiations due to it being the quiet period before reporting quarterly results.)
As Trump notches wins in his pressure campaign, Chris Miller, the Tufts University historian who wrote the widely influential book 'Chip War,' told DFD earlier this week that aggressive tactics can only take the White House so far. 'Companies are not going to do more than is economically rational,' he said. 'That will be a limiting factor in terms of what kinds of renegotiations we end up seeing.'
It seems like Trump hasn't hit that limit quite yet.
Deepfakes come for the LA protests
The Los Angeles protests are reigniting the argument about misinformation during moments of tumult, especially since AI may be making the problem worse.
As with other recent upheavals, like the George Floyd protests or Jan. 6, 2021, riot, misleading photos and videos taken out of context are circulating online — Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas)reposted a clip of a burning car that was actually from 2020. AI is now complicating the situation even further. For example, a fake AI-generated video of a National Guardsman talking about 'gassing' protestors gained hundreds of thousands of views this week.
POLITICO's California Decoded team reported on Friday that at least three Democratic state lawmakers are monitoring the situation, which they say emphasizes the need for AI legislation. 'The AI-generated images are inflaming the situation,' state Sen. Josh Becker told Decoded, who added that the California AI Transparency Act will eventually be sufficient to counteract such deepfakes. The law requires watermarks to signal that a certain piece of media was AI-generated. The act was passed last year, but won't go into effect until January.
However, the First Amendment has stifled AI content laws in the past. A federal judge in October blocked California from enforcing a ban on deceptive AI content. While watermarks may seem less extreme than a ban, they may still raise free speech issues.
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Stay in touch with the whole team: Aaron Mak ([e-mail]); Mohar Chatterjee ([e-mail]); Steve Heuser ([e-mail]); Nate Robson ([e-mail]); and Daniella Cheslow ([e-mail]).