5 questions for Sen. Todd Young

Politico

2 days ago

Hello, and welcome to this week's installment of the Future in Five Questions. This week we interviewed Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.), one of the Senate's leading voices on tech policy and a key architect of 2022's CHIPS and Science Act. Young, who earlier this year published an essay in The National Interest proposing a 'Tech Power Playbook for Donald Trump 2.0,' discusses his skepticism about the value of social media, the insight of Alvin Toffler's 'Future Shock' and why America risks falling behind China on biotech. An edited and condensed version of the conversation follows:
What's one underrated big idea?
Using our tech diplomats at the State Department to accrue more geopolitical power as a country.
We saw in the CHIPS and Science Act that this group of individuals, which I characterized as our special teams — it was football season when I put this together — they can help shape norms of use, develop standards and even help us gain market share. To the extent we advance our tech in different geographies, we're advancing our values, because our values around privacy, consumer protection, transparency and many other things are embedded within the standards of our different technologies.
If the Trump administration and others adopt this approach, I think we can force our adversaries, most obviously the People's Republic of China, to have to produce in a bifurcated way. They produce one set of standards and embedded technologies for their domestic economy, where they'd spy on their own people, and then they'd have to produce for another set of standards for export. Because they have an export oriented economy, they couldn't sustain two different streams of production and they'd have to choose.
What's a technology that you think is overhyped?
Social media, without any question. I'm the father of four young children, and I don't think it is meaningfully, or on balance constructively, enhancing their lives. Actual social connection in person with people, or even by phone, is preferable to the sort of clickbait culture and abbreviated means of communication that we've all become accustomed to. I think it has diminished our attention span, I think it has coarsened our culture and I think it's made us dumber collectively than we would have thought in a universe in which we have instant access to all kinds of information.
As I talk about this topic with regular citizens — that is, those who don't own major social media companies or work at Washington, D.C., think tanks — there is an appetite for certain smart regulatory approaches. However, in the last few years I think there's been a heightened awareness of the potential when you regulate to constrain speech, and a general skepticism of regulators' intentions and ideologies and good faith in trying to intermediate conversations.
When I entered the public fray, I think there was an appetite — or maybe a missed window of opportunity — to come up with a better model through law. It's really challenging right now, because we've become, in many ways, a nation of distinct tribes not just in terms of our political identification but our belief system. There's a distrust of efforts to sort out fact from fiction and to referee the public square, and private actors have seized control of the public square through these social media outlets. We haven't figured out how to address that in a pluralistic, highly populous and dynamic democracy, and we're going to have to come up with answers at some point.
What could the government be doing regarding technology that it isn't?
Unleashing the power of biomanufacturing, which is something I've been deeply immersed in for the last couple of years as chairman of a national security commission on emerging biotechnology.
Other countries have invested heavily in this. Notably, China is more advanced than the United States in some of these areas. The epicenter of this biomanufacturing revolution could be in heartland states like Indiana, using agricultural feedstocks to put into tanks and manufacture many of the components and products that are made through conventional manufacturing right now. McKinsey estimates that today, the technological capabilities exist to biomanufacture 60 percent of items that are conventionally manufactured. What we need is scale in order to make these things cost-competitive, and we offer recommendations for Congress to achieve this sort of scale.
What book most shaped your conception of the future?
Alvin Toffler's 'Future Shock' had a big impact on me. It talked about something that is now familiar to every American: the disjunction between technological change and human adaptation to those changes. We are essentially living the anxieties that Alvin Toffler predicted from a world upended by increasingly rapid technological change. It impacts our psyche. It impacts our relationships. It impacts our professions; it profoundly impacts every facet of our lives and is therefore unsettling and disorienting. Toffler labeled this whole gamut of effects and emotions 'future shock,' and I don't believe he gets frequent enough mention or credit for identifying this profound change that was underway.
The other one is Alexis de Tocqueville. In 'Democracy in America' he talks about how democracy shapes our way of thinking about ourselves in such profound ways, and how it permeates everything in our culture. In this time of tectonic political shifts we are — unless we discipline ourselves against it — inclined to ascertain what is right and true based on what our neighbors think rather than conviction, or trenchant analysis. If any person who lives in a small-'d' democratic culture thinks that they're not susceptible to this, they're wrong. That cultural milieu is put on steroids in an era of social media and, more generally, a fractured media environment in which people live in tribal echo chambers. We all are hardwired in our DNA to want to be part of the crowd. None of us wants to be lonely, and we look to others for guidance about what is right.
So you can think again about how in this populist political age, members of the different parties have fundamentally changed their views over the past few years on some pretty foundational political issues. Setting aside some calculation from politicians here and there, there is a sincerity to it because people are persuaded by the popular opinions of people within their tribe. So you've seen a swapping of policy positions across parties on some really foundational things, and some have genuinely arrived at those new positions through analysism but others are more impacted by democratic culture than is typically realized.
What has surprised you the most this year?
Well, if we're going 365 days back, it would be Indiana University football's No. 5 ranking in the College Football Playoff era. But in this year, it's the Pacers' deep run in the playoffs, and it ain't over.
doge rolls on
Although Elon Musk is personally stepping back from government, DOGE remains at furious work.
POLITICO's Robin Bravender, Danny Nguyen and Sophia Cai reported Thursday on how Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought is quietly directing lasting changes to the federal bureaucracy, which one anonymous White House official described as the 'true DNA of DOGE': The staffers made political appointees at various agencies who can remain at their posts indefinitely.
DOGE staffers are also taking a quieter approach to cutting programs and staff by going to lesser-known departments and agencies, even as courts often stymie their changes. During the last two weeks, DOGE has tried to access the Government Publishing Office, the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights, and sent teams to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the Government Accountability Office.
'Everyone's more nervous about [Vought] than Elon actually, especially because he knows government a little bit better,' an anonymous federal worker told POLITICO. 'While people are excited that Elon is gone, this doesn't change much.'
a new berkeley supercomputer
The Department of Energy announced a new supercomputer project, teaming with Nvidia and Dell on a system to support physics, artificial intelligence and other types of research.
POLITICO's Chase DiFeliciantonio reported for Pro subscribers Thursday on the announcement of a computer based at Berkeley, California's National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, which has around 11,000 researchers. Scheduled for completion in 2026, the computer will be named after Nobel Prize-winning CRISPR scientist Jennifer Doudna.
'AI is the Manhattan Project of our time, and Doudna will help ensure America's scientists have the tools they need to win the global race for AI dominance,' said Energy Secretary Chris Wright in a statement.
In response to a question from reporters, Wright defended the administration's broader science cuts. 'Politics and bureaucracy are the antithesis of science,' he said, adding that 'this administration is 100 percent aligned with speeding up and energizing American science, removing the shackles, removing the bureaucracy, cleaning out the politics, and focused on science and progress.'
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Stay in touch with the whole team: Derek Robertson ([e-mail]); Mohar Chatterjee ([e-mail]); Steve Heuser ([e-mail]); Nate Robson ([e-mail]); and Daniella Cheslow ([e-mail]).