By Will Hurd and Robin Kelly The United States is the global leader in artificial intelligence. We have an innovative private sector, world class universities and remain the top destination for international AI talent. However, American leadership is no longer guaranteed. In fact, Eric Schmidt and Bob Work, the chairman and vice chairman of the congressionally established National Security Commission on AI (NSCAI), wrote, "[T]he United States is in danger of losing its global leadership in AI and its innovation edge." The Chinese Communist Party is the biggest threat to America's leadership in this realm. The CCP's strategic aims include becoming the next world power by 2049 and the global AI leader by 2030. In China, AI fuels techno-authoritarianism. The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission's 2019 report found that the CCP is positioning Chinese firms to become the next AI leaders through "government intervention, market structure and construction of AI enabling infrastructure." Through congressional action, we can sustain American leadership and continue fostering innovation. As the former chairman and ranking member of the Information Technology Subcommittee of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, we learned three things: The federal government can accelerate innovation; use of modern technology within federal departments and agencies empowers public servants to create value for the taxpayer; and, rapid technological change creates societal trade-offs. We've used these three findings to inform and shape a national AI strategy that allows America to take advantage of technology in a responsible and effective way that reflects our values. Our national AI resolution recognizes the AI accomplishments of the Obama and Trump administrations, asserts Congress' critical role in advancing AI in America, identifies the need for a comprehensive AI strategy, and proposes four pillars to guide that strategy, informed by our ongoing collaboration with the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC). The first pillar, workforce, is critical because AI will affect all Americans either in the workplace, at home, school or in their private lives. We must enable our workforce to build and know how to use AI systems, but currently the U.S. faces an AI talent gap, limiting our ability to advance AI both outside and within government. Since AI will reshape the way we work, the federal government should prepare the workers and students of today for the jobs of tomorrow. For mid-career workers, the federal government should rethink the way it looks at education, transforming it into a lifelong learning process. Tools to promote flexibility in the workforce include last-mile training, industry-sponsored credentials and incentivizing skills-based hiring. For students, the federal government should promote educational equity and opportunity for computer science and STEM. We can do this by up-skilling our current teachers, increasing access to broadband and expanding our existing technology programs. National security is the second pillar of our strategy because, as the NSCAI believes, AI will change the way we defend America, generate intelligence and fight wars. We should focus and invest research dollars into human-machine teaming, trustworthiness and ethics. Our military and intelligence community should be able to trust their AI systems, and all Americans should trust that those systems will be used ethically. American allies have been pivotal to the last 70 years of U.S. leadership in international security. When it comes to incorporating AI, that cannot change. We must collaborate with our allies on AI technologies and make those systems interoperable where appropriate. Our third pillar is research and development because the federal government must continue supporting revolutionary technologies, like AI, as it did with the Internet. The first step is increasing our federal funding for AI R&D. In recent decades, our R&D expenditures have stagnated while China's have quadrupled. Computing resources and data are essential ingredients to AI research. The federal government should increase access to existing supercomputing resources for AI researchers and build on the Open Government Data Act to release more datasets. Our fourth pillar is pivotal to ensuring American values are reflected in this emerging technology. It is ethics. Questions about fairness cannot be defined mathematically. The trade-offs that AI systems will create should be reflective of American values, and Americans' elected representatives in Congress must be involved. Though AI technology is new, questions about fairness are not. We should use existing regulations as a starting point for the regulation of AI. We already prohibit discrimination in lending based on race. That discrimination is wrong whether it is done by a human or an AI algorithm. Congress already has a natural entry point for promoting the ethical use of AI through its oversight function. Each congressional committee should review the existing regulations in their jurisdiction and include AI policy in their oversight agendas. This resolution is just the first step. Our project with BPC identifies 78 specific actions, such as those cited above, that will guide America towards responsible AI innovation. It's the responsibility of every elected official to recognize that our world and our economy are changing. We want America to be a leader. And, to ensure that we are, we must take AI seriously by legislating to promote the benefits of AI while creating limits where appropriate. We look forward to collaborating with our colleagues on both sides of the aisle in making the possibility of American AI leadership a reality.

By William Hurd While marching in solidarity with George Floyd's family and 60,000 others in Houston, I saw that you can be outraged by a black man getting murdered in police custody, thankful that law enforcement is enabling our First Amendment rights, and angry that criminals are treading on American values by looting, rioting and killing police. I also saw it isn't only the African-American community that is committed to changing a culture in which a black man is more than twice as likely as a white man to die in police custody. When I was 15 and learning to drive, my dad had to teach me if I ever got pulled over by the police, I was to turn on the light in the car, roll down my window, place my hands on the seal so the police could see my hands, and not make any movement unless I tell the officer and receive consent. The culture in which a black dad had to teach his son a lesson that could save his life isn't completely extinguished. Leaders at every level have a responsibility to confront this injustice. Here are three things Congress can do: * Ensure that federal law-enforcement grants go only to departments following best policing practices. The way we solve these broader issues isn't by defunding the police but by ensuring they do better. The Justice Department provides almost $2 billion a year to state and local law enforcement. It's conditioned on compliance with federal civil-rights laws, but that hasn't been enough to prevent unarmed black men and women from dying in police custody. I've learned from police officers and community leaders across the country that insufficient training increases the risk of escalation, and practices like community policing haven't been uniformly adopted. Some 10% of police calls and more than 25% of fatal police shootings involve a person with mental illness, for instance, yet most states require officers to undergo less than eight hours of training in handling these situations. * Empower police chiefs to fire bad officers and keep them off the force permanently. A Washington Post study estimated that between 2006 and 2017 the nation's largest departments fired at least 1,881 officers for misconduct, yet 451 were later reinstated--most after arbitration. * Clarify federal law to ensure officers can be held accountable in court for violating civil rights. A legal doctrine known as qualified immunity shields police and other government employees from liability for official acts. This protection seems sensible in some cases, but it often shields abusive officers. All the chiefs of major police departments have condemned Floyd's killing, and many officers are marching in solidarity with peaceful protesters. The overwhelming majority of officers put themselves in harm's way every day to protect and serve our communities, and anyone who attacks or kills a police officer should be found and prosecuted. We also owe it to the men and women who protect us to prevent a few bad cops from soiling the reputation of the entire force. Whether your skin is black or your uniform is blue, people shouldn't feel targeted in this country. National pain from recent events has tested one of my core beliefs about America: More unites us as a country than divides us. But what I saw this past week only strengthened this belief.

By Will Hurd The lack of government transparency from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in dealing with the coronavirus global public health emergency is contributing to the international community's inability to resolve the crisis. The United States responded swiftly, bringing hundreds of Americans back from China on government-chartered planes while simultaneously establishing safeguards to limit the spread of the virus at home. Having toured Lackland Air Force Base, which was designated as one of the quarantine sites for these returning Americans, I have witnessed firsthand the exemplary efforts being made by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and others to ensure the health and safety of all Americans. The World Health Organization (WHO) considers this outbreak a "public health emergency of international concern." However, what I saw at Lackland gave me confidence in our ability to effectively address the crisis. There are currently 15 confirmed cases of coronavirus in the United States. Americans returning to the U.S. are undergoing multilayered screening processes and a 14-day quarantine period where they are being carefully monitored. Generally, of the cases known, coronavirus has a mortality rate of about 2 percent, compared to the SARS and MERS outbreaks, which had mortality rates of around 15 percent and 35 percent, respectively. While the immediate risk to the U.S. public remains low, the outbreak continues to be a global problem of growing proportions. Addressing this crisis must be a global effort, but China's record of opacity has hindered efforts aimed at understanding its origins and mitigating its effect. As the outbreak began, Chinese officials downplayed the severity of the virus and cracked down on doctors attempting to warn the public. The number of confirmed cases in China has skyrocketed to over 40,000, and the global death toll has risen to almost 2,000 with all but two of the deaths occurring in mainland China. The numbers have been rising so quickly that it is difficult to maintain an accurate count. In their response to this outbreak, the Chinese government's penchant for secrecy and total government control has threatened the lives of their own citizens and risked the safety of the world. Instead of welcoming the global assistance available to them from the beginning, China has prevented health care workers from coming in and has criticized countries like the U.S. for not doing enough in response to the crisis. The U.S. first offered to send expert assistance and resources to China on Jan. 6, and it took the Chinese government over a month to allow a small advance team of WHO experts into the country. This lack of transparency has come even as the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine released a letter insisting that the scientific community needs more sequence data and samples to better understand the virus and its origins. Delaying an understanding of the virus has delayed the development of an effective global response. While disappointing, the CCP's response to this crisis has not been surprising. Their lack of transparency and openness goes well beyond public health issues and extends to all areas of governance, including the business sector. For years, the Chinese government has sought to take advantage of U.S. companies and consumers, and the international community has allowed China's exploitative behavior to continue for too long, often with serious ramifications. For example, last week the U.S. Department of Justice announced charges against four members of the Chinese military in the 2017 breach of Equifax, in which hackers stole personal information of nearly 150 million Americans. China has followed a pattern of exploiting foreign companies to advance their own innovation and advantage. For example, Amazon Web Services had to sell physical infrastructure assets to its China partner, Beijing Sinnet Technology, to comply with Chinese law in 2017. Last year, the CCP ordered all state agencies to remove foreign technology equipment within three years, which could be a major hit to U.S. companies like HP and Microsoft. The CCP's lack of transparency and openness threatens both the health and economic security of the U.S. and the international community. To force China to change its behavior, maybe it's time to impose restrictions on Chinese firms operating in the U.S. service sector or sanction Chinese officials and enterprises that target American firms to create more economic reciprocity. The United States and China are intertwined and both countries can coexist, but this will only become a reality if the CCP starts being transparent not just with the United States and the global community but with its own citizens. Hopefully, the chaos created by the Chinese government's disastrous response to this latest global health threat is the wake-up call the CCP needs to realize they have to change their ways.