Clearly, greater intelligence—whether artificial or human—is needed to prevent our defense dollars from advancing China’s ambitions to become the world’s AI superpower. To make researchers receiving support from DoD more accountable, I authored a law—that the Biden administration has refused to enact— requiring public disclosure of Pentagon projects paid for with taxpayer dollars.
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Joni Ernst
U.S. senator from Iowa; combat veteran
In an April 2024 column, Joni Ernst wrote that she authored a law requiring public disclosure of Pentagon projects paid for with taxpayer dollars and that she is launching a Defense Department Inspector General investigation into how much U.S. defense money may have been sent to labs and research institutions in China over the past ten years.
U.S. Senator for IowaPublished April 29, 2024 · date of remarks not establishedOfficial Senate office column
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Surrounding words
And six of the seven investigators involved in a 2020 robotics study funded by DARPA and the Navy are now at the Beijing Institute for General Artificial Intelligence in China. Clearly, greater intelligence—whether artificial or human—is needed to prevent our defense dollars from advancing China’s ambitions to become the world’s AI superpower. To make researchers receiving support from DoD more accountable, I authored a law—that the Biden administration has refused to enact— requiring public disclosure of Pentagon projects paid for with taxpayer dollars. Until the law is enacted, it will continue to be difficult to identify DoD collaborations with those closely connected to the Chinese government. While Congress recently directed the Defense Secretary to enforce compliance with my transparency law, I am also launching an investigation now being conducted by the DoD Inspector General to determine the amount of U.S. defense dollars that may have been sent to labs and research institutions in China over the past ten years. o put a cherry on top, I’m giving my April 2024 Squeal Award to the bureaucrats at DoD who have been blindly bankrolling Beijing’s AI brain trust.
What this quote does not say
- The column's factual spine is attributed to a Newsweek investigation and concerns Song-Chun Zhu; those claims are Newsweek's, as characterised by Ernst.
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