Latest news with #InstituteforProgress
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
On Chinese student visa rollback, MAGA scores another victory over tech
The Trump administration's move Wednesday night to revoke Chinese students' visas created another political headache for a powerful industry already struggling to deal with the White House's barrage of changes to trade and visa policies. Although the announcement was light on details, Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared Wednesday that the U.S. will 'aggressively revoke' visas for Chinese students, singling out students 'studying in critical fields.' Computer science, math and engineering top the list of subjects that Chinese students study in the U.S. — areas that could well be in the crosshairs of national security concerns. They're also of central importance to the tech industry, which relies enormously on foreign-born talent. 'This is not just going after one of 10 different pathways into the U.S.,' Jeremy Neufeld, director of immigration policy at the Institute for Progress, told DFD. 'It's going after the primary way that we are recruiting talent, and it is going to significantly reduce the amount of talent that we are able to recruit.' A remarkable 70 percent of Silicon Valley's highly educated tech employees are from overseas, according to a recent study from a regional think tank — and of that group, China supplies more than any country except India. Eighteen percent of those employees are currently Chinese-born. It's not clear how many of them literally came as college or graduate students, but at a moment when the U.S. is locked in a tech race with China, kicking out Chinese students strikes many industry observers as an ill-timed own goal. 'This is, frankly, going to play into the Chinese's hands,' Rob Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, told POLITICO. 'They're going to ramp up the research and teaching quality of their universities even more, so that in 10 years even if we were begging them to send their students, they're going to say, 'Nah, we're not going to do that.' ' But the tech industry is — so far — largely keeping quiet about the policy. Of the numerous Big Tech companies and affiliated groups contacted by POLITICO in the wake of Rubio's announcement, almost none were willing to go on the record Thursday. Meta, Google, Microsoft and Nvidia formally declined to comment. Tesla, Amazon and Apple didn't respond to POLITICO's emails. Their silence speaks to the political squeeze that the industry finds itself in after largely accommodating itself to Trump — and even, for many leaders, pledging their explicit support for the president. The argument over foreign tech workers began to stir up drama between the MAGA and techie wings of the GOP before Trump even took office for the second time. In the months between the election and Jan. 20, Elon Musk and Steve Bannon — both Trump supporters — found themselves embroiled in a high-profile public debate over H1-B visas, which allow companies to bring high-skilled workers to the United States. Musk, a champion of the visas, argued that although flawed, the program was necessary to compete with China and other high-tech nations; Bannon argued in nationalist terms that the program should be abolished entirely in favor of nurturing homegrown talent. The visa move looks like another win for the Bannon wing. DFD reached out to influential voices in the right-leaning parts of the tech world — thinkers and investors who had supported Trump as a vehicle for accelerating American competitiveness. Like the Big Tech firms, they wanted no part of this conversation. Andreessen Horowitz, the venture capital firm whose employees pepper the Trump administration and whose 'American Dynamism' portfolio emphasizes a high-tech, pro-industrial vision of state capacity, simply pointed POLITICO to a blog post about 'talent' that made no mention of student visas or foreign workers. Julius Krein, the conservative policy wonk who argues for a strong government hand in building competitive national industries, declined to comment, telling DFD it's 'not really an issue I have any meaningful insight on.' The Foundation for American Innovation declined to comment beyond pointing DFD to an essay by senior fellow Dan Lips promoting broad reforms to the student visa program. One industry figure who did weigh in: Josh Wolfe, partner and co-founder at venture capital firm Lux Capital, who called the visa policy shortsighted — and, like Atkinson, saw it as something of a gift to China. 'If we make it harder for the world's best minds to stay and build here, we're not just stifling startups, we're underwriting our competitors,' he said. 'Talent is national security. We should act like it.' The Bannonite contingent within the Republican Party has the advantage of a very simple message: Jobs in America should go to Americans, tech or otherwise. But the economic and geopolitical reality the country's biggest industries have to navigate isn't quite that simple. Americans, at least for now, are not qualified to do many of the jobs required to meet the administration's goal of besting China on the world stage. 'China graduates over 50 percent of the world's AI undergrads,' said Wolfe, whose firm invests in AI companies, 'and America's share of international students has dropped from 23 percent to 15 percent over two decades. That's less a statistic and more like strategic surrender.' China has four times the population of the United States, and a massive advantage when it comes to STEM education. According to a report from research firm fDi Intelligence, China graduated more STEM PhDs than the United States starting in 2007, and doubled the American number by 2022. Chinese industry is making huge strides in AI and microchip development, not to mention other fields like advanced biotech. With that background, it's not just policy wonks who are concerned about the Trump administration's hard-line nationalist policies putting America on its back foot. Though he didn't weigh in Thursday, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang — whose company produces the advanced microchips at the center of an ongoing trade war with China — warned Jim Cramer in a recent interview that China is 'filling the gap we left and growing exponentially.' 'The only way we have a real chance at keeping up here is by using our advantage that we don't have to just rely on people here, we can rely on the best and brightest from around the world,' the IFP's Neufeld said. 'It's disappointing people aren't willing to talk about this,' he said. 'We need a balanced approach if we're not going to just forfeit the technological competition.' Anthony Adragna, Daniella Cheslow, Gabby Miller and Christine Mui contributed to this report.
Politico
5 days ago
- Business
- Politico
On Chinese student visa rollback, MAGA scores another victory over tech
The Trump administration's move Wednesday night to revoke Chinese students' visas created another political headache for a powerful industry already struggling to deal with the White House's barrage of changes to trade and visa policies. Although the announcement was light on details, Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared Wednesday that the U.S. will 'aggressively revoke' visas for Chinese students, singling out students 'studying in critical fields.' Computer science, math and engineering top the list of subjects that Chinese students study in the U.S. — areas that could well be in the crosshairs of national security concerns. They're also of central importance to the tech industry, which relies enormously on foreign-born talent. 'This is not just going after one of 10 different pathways into the U.S.,' Jeremy Neufeld, director of immigration policy at the Institute for Progress, told DFD. 'It's going after the primary way that we are recruiting talent, and it is going to significantly reduce the amount of talent that we are able to recruit.' A remarkable 70 percent of Silicon Valley's highly educated tech employees are from overseas, according to a recent study from a regional think tank — and of that group, China supplies more than any country except India. Eighteen percent of those employees are currently Chinese-born. It's not clear how many of them literally came as college or graduate students, but at a moment when the U.S. is locked in a tech race with China, kicking out Chinese students strikes many industry observers as an ill-timed own goal. 'This is, frankly, going to play into the Chinese's hands,' Rob Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, told POLITICO. 'They're going to ramp up the research and teaching quality of their universities even more, so that in 10 years even if we were begging them to send their students, they're going to say, 'Nah, we're not going to do that.' ' But the tech industry is — so far — largely keeping quiet about the policy. Of the numerous Big Tech companies and affiliated groups contacted by POLITICO in the wake of Rubio's announcement, almost none were willing to go on the record Thursday. Meta, Google, Microsoft and Nvidia formally declined to comment. Tesla, Amazon and Apple didn't respond to POLITICO's emails. Their silence speaks to the political squeeze that the industry finds itself in after largely accommodating itself to Trump — and even, for many leaders, pledging their explicit support for the president. The argument over foreign tech workers began to stir up drama between the MAGA and techie wings of the GOP before Trump even took office for the second time. In the months between the election and Jan. 20, Elon Musk and Steve Bannon — both Trump supporters — found themselves embroiled in a high-profile public debate over H1-B visas, which allow companies to bring high-skilled workers to the United States. Musk, a champion of the visas, argued that although flawed, the program was necessary to compete with China and other high-tech nations; Bannon argued in nationalist terms that the program should be abolished entirely in favor of nurturing homegrown talent. The visa move looks like another win for the Bannon wing. DFD reached out to influential voices in the right-leaning parts of the tech world — thinkers and investors who had supported Trump as a vehicle for accelerating American competitiveness. Like the Big Tech firms, they wanted no part of this conversation. Andreessen Horowitz, the venture capital firm whose employees pepper the Trump administration and whose 'American Dynamism' portfolio emphasizes a high-tech, pro-industrial vision of state capacity, simply pointed POLITICO to a blog post about 'talent' that made no mention of student visas or foreign workers. Julius Krein, the conservative policy wonk who argues for a strong government hand in building competitive national industries, declined to comment, telling DFD it's 'not really an issue I have any meaningful insight on.' The Foundation for American Innovation declined to comment beyond pointing DFD to an essay by senior fellow Dan Lips promoting broad reforms to the student visa program. One industry figure who did weigh in: Josh Wolfe, partner and co-founder at venture capital firm Lux Capital, who called the visa policy shortsighted — and, like Atkinson, saw it as something of a gift to China. 'If we make it harder for the world's best minds to stay and build here, we're not just stifling startups, we're underwriting our competitors,' he said. 'Talent is national security. We should act like it.' The Bannonite contingent within the Republican Party has the advantage of a very simple message: Jobs in America should go to Americans, tech or otherwise. But the economic and geopolitical reality the country's biggest industries have to navigate isn't quite that simple. Americans, at least for now, are not qualified to do many of the jobs required to meet the administration's goal of besting China on the world stage. 'China graduates over 50 percent of the world's AI undergrads,' said Wolfe, whose firm invests in AI companies, 'and America's share of international students has dropped from 23 percent to 15 percent over two decades. That's less a statistic and more like strategic surrender.' China has four times the population of the United States, and a massive advantage when it comes to STEM education. According to a report from research firm fDi Intelligence, China graduated more STEM PhDs than the United States starting in 2007, and doubled the American number by 2022. Chinese industry is making huge strides in AI and microchip development, not to mention other fields like advanced biotech. With that background, it's not just policy wonks who are concerned about the Trump administration's hard-line nationalist policies putting America on its back foot. Though he didn't weigh in Thursday, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang — whose company produces the advanced microchips at the center of an ongoing trade war with China — warned Jim Cramer in a recent interview that China is 'filling the gap we left and growing exponentially.' 'The only way we have a real chance at keeping up here is by using our advantage that we don't have to just rely on people here, we can rely on the best and brightest from around the world,' the IFP's Neufeld said. 'It's disappointing people aren't willing to talk about this,' he said. 'We need a balanced approach if we're not going to just forfeit the technological competition.' Anthony Adragna, Daniella Cheslow, Gabby Miller and Christine Mui contributed to this report.
Politico
5 days ago
- Business
- Politico
On Chinese student visas, MAGA scores another victory over tech
With help from Daniella Cheslow, Gabby Miller and Christine Mui The Trump administration's move Wednesday night to revoke Chinese students' visas created another political headache for a powerful industry already struggling to deal with the White House's barrage of changes to trade and visa policies. Although the announcement was light on details, Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared today that the U.S. will 'aggressively revoke' visas for Chinese students, singling out students 'studying in critical fields.' Computer science, math and engineering top the list of subjects that Chinese students study in the U.S. — areas that could well be in the crosshairs of national security concerns. They're also of central importance to the tech industry, which relies enormously on foreign-born talent. 'This is not just going after one of 10 different pathways into the U.S.,' Jeremy Neufeld, director of immigration policy at the Institute for Progress, told DFD. 'It's going after the primary way that we are recruiting talent, and it is going to significantly reduce the amount of talent that we are able to recruit.' A remarkable 70 percent of Silicon Valley's highly educated tech employees are from overseas, according to a recent study from a regional think tank — and of that group, China supplies more than any country except India. Eighteen percent of those employees are currently Chinese-born. It's not clear how many of them literally came as college or graduate students, but at a moment when the U.S. is locked in a tech race with China, kicking out Chinese students strikes many industry observers as an ill-timed own goal. 'This is, frankly, going to play into the Chinese's hands,' Rob Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, told POLITICO. 'They're going to ramp up the research and teaching quality of their universities even more, so that in 10 years even if we were begging them to send their students, they're going to say, 'Nah, we're not going to do that.' ' But the tech industry is — so far — largely keeping quiet about the policy. Of the numerous Big Tech companies and affiliated groups contacted by POLITICO in the wake of Rubio's announcement, almost none were willing to go on the record today. Meta, Google, Microsoft and Nvidia formally declined to comment. Tesla, Amazon and Apple didn't respond to POLITICO's emails. Their silence speaks to the political squeeze that the industry finds itself in after largely accommodating itself to Trump — and even, for many leaders, pledging their explicit support for the president. The argument over foreign tech workers began to stir up drama between the MAGA and techie wings of the GOP before Trump even took office for the second time. In the months between the election and Jan. 20, Elon Musk and Steve Bannon — both Trump supporters — found themselves embroiled in a high-profile public debate over H1-B visas, which allow companies to bring high-skilled workers to the United States. Musk, a champion of the visas, argued that although flawed, the program was necessary to compete with China and other high-tech nations; Bannon argued in nationalist terms that the program should be abolished entirely in favor of nurturing homegrown talent. The visa move looks like another win for the Bannon wing. Today, DFD reached out to influential voices in the right-leaning parts of the tech world — thinkers and investors who had supported Trump as a vehicle for accelerating American competitiveness. Like the Big Tech firms, they wanted no part of this conversation. Andreessen Horowitz, the venture capital firm whose employees pepper the Trump administration and whose 'American Dynamism' portfolio emphasizes a high-tech, pro-industrial vision of state capacity, simply pointed POLITICO to a blog post about 'talent' that made no mention of student visas or foreign workers. Julius Krein, the conservative policy wonk who argues for a strong government hand in building competitive national industries, declined to comment, telling DFD it's 'not really an issue I have any meaningful insight on.' The Foundation for American Innovation declined to comment beyond pointing DFD to an essay by senior fellow Dan Lips promoting broad reforms to the student visa program. One industry figure who did weigh in: Josh Wolfe, partner and co-founder at venture capital firm Lux Capital, who called the visa policy shortsighted — and, like Atkinson, saw it as something of a gift to China. 'If we make it harder for the world's best minds to stay and build here, we're not just stifling startups, we're underwriting our competitors,' he said. 'Talent is national security. We should act like it.' The Bannonite contingent within the Republican Party has the advantage of a very simple message: Jobs in America should go to Americans, tech or otherwise. But the economic and geopolitical reality the country's biggest industries have to navigate isn't quite that simple. Americans, at least for now, are not qualified to do many of the jobs required to meet the administration's goal of besting China on the world stage. 'China graduates over 50 percent of the world's AI undergrads,' said Wolfe, whose firm invests in AI companies, 'and America's share of international students has dropped from 23 percent to 15 percent over two decades. That's less a statistic and more like strategic surrender.' China has four times the population of the United States, and a massive advantage when it comes to STEM education. According to a report from research firm fDi Intelligence, China graduated more STEM PhDs than the United States starting in 2007, and doubled the American number by 2022. Chinese industry is making huge strides in AI and microchip development, not to mention other fields like advanced biotech. With that background, it's not just policy wonks who are concerned about the Trump administration's hard-line nationalist policies putting America on its back foot. Though he didn't weigh in today, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang — whose company produces the advanced microchips at the center of today's trade wars with China —- warned Jim Cramer in a recent interview that China is 'filling the gap we left and growing exponentially.' 'The only way we have a real chance at keeping up here is by using our advantage that we don't have to just rely on people here, we can rely on the best and brightest from around the world,' the IFP's Neufeld said. 'It's disappointing people aren't willing to talk about this,' he said. 'We need a balanced approach if we're not going to just forfeit the technological competition.' Daniella Cheslow, Gabby Miller and Christine Mui contributed to this report. a new face at lpo A former bitcoin miner now has a prominent perch at the Department of Energy's Loan Programs Office. E&E News' Brian Dabbs reported today that Greg Beard, an energy investor who ran Stronghold Digital Mining until March, is now a top-ranking political appointee at the LPO. The office provides loans for energy infrastructure projects, and wonks across the political spectrum are trying to save it from congressional budget cuts. With Beard onboard, the LPO has reached out to Bank of America to assess the market value of billions of dollars worth of DOE loans — which some staffers say is a potential move toward selling them and downsizing the office. Brian also reports that Beard has been discussed as a replacement to current LPO acting Director Lane Genatowski, a DOE veteran. openai turns up the heat OpenAI wants to scrutinize a nonprofit it suspects is tied to Elon Musk and his challenge to the company's corporate restructuring. POLITICO's Chase DiFeliciantonio reported for Pro subscribers Wednesday on a subpoena OpenAI sent earlier this month to the Coalition for Artificial Intelligence Nonprofit Integrity demanding to know more about the group's funding and any potential ties to Musk. CANI has argued money OpenAI has accrued for nonprofit purposes should be used as such, and also backed a California bill that threatened OpenAI's restructuring plans. Becky Warren, a spokesperson for CANI, called the subpoena part of OpenAI's 'bullying tactics,' and has asserted that it's a grassroots group not funded by Musk. post of the day THE FUTURE IN 5 LINKS Stay in touch with the whole team: Derek Robertson (drobertson@ Mohar Chatterjee (mchatterjee@ Steve Heuser (sheuser@ Nate Robson (nrobson@ and Daniella Cheslow (dcheslow@
Axios
16-04-2025
- Business
- Axios
Immigrant founders are the norm in key U.S. AI firms: study
More than half of the top privately-held AI companies based in the U.S. have at least one immigrant founder, according to an analysis from the Institute for Progress shared first with Axios. Why it matters: The Trump administration is hammering out its AI policies against the backdrop of intensifying global competition and its own "America first" program and strict border policies. Zoom in: The IFP analysis of the top AI-related startups in the Forbes AI 2025 list found that 25 — or 60% — of the 42 companies based in the U.S. were founded or co-founded by immigrants. The founders of those companies "hail from 25 countries, with India leading (nine founders), followed by China (eight founders) and then France (three founders). Australia, the U.K., Canada, Israel, Romania, and Chile all have two founders each." Among them is OpenAI — whose co-founders include Elon Musk, born in South Africa, and Ilya Sutskever, born in Canada — and Databricks, whose co-founders were born in Iran, Romania and China. The analysis echoes previous findings about the key role foreign-born scientists and engineers have played in the U.S. tech industry and the broader economy. What they're saying:"A critical part of the historic story about U.S. AI leadership, and technological leadership in general, is that we're able to draw on the best and brightest from around the world," says Jeremy Neufeld, director of immigration policy at IFP and an author of the new analysis. "If we're going toe-to-toe in a competition with China, they have a much bigger population than we do. They graduate far more STEM grads these days than we do." Neufeld says the U.S. ability to recruit and retain high-skilled workers faces "two major headwinds": The U.K., Canada, China and other countries are more aggressively recruiting top talent, and the U.S. has created barriers to immigration, particularly the growing wait times for green cards. Flashback: A debate over foreign workers erupted among President Trump's supporters late last year, with Musk and others speaking out in support of H-1B visas for high-skilled workers in "specialty occupations." Other Trump supporters argue the U.S. should focus on training U.S. workers and prioritize their development over foreign workers. Last year, the National Science Board, which advises the White House and Congress on science and engineering research and education policy, called for the U.S. to invest more heavily in training domestic STEM workers, while emphasizing that "foreign-born talent has been, and remains, key to U.S. strength in STEM."
