LAS VEGAS — One of the defining characteristics of the nation’s top tech convention is its sheer bigness — represented at CES is not just every size of tech company, from the smallest supplier to giant firms like Google, but industries from automotives to robotics to video gaming. That means policy discussions tend to be wide-ranging, across subjects including (but certainly not limited to) competition, financial regulation, and geopolitics. Yesterday we covered the omnipresence of AI, but given the convention’s scope there are plenty of other technologies regulators are eager to hash out the terms of their relationship with. There’s a sense of urgency, not just because technology is moving quickly, but because of the unsettled political moment both at home and abroad. Elections are looming in the U.S. and around the world, as is the potential passage of the European Union’s sweeping AI Act. Then there’s the ongoing trade tension with China, and the intensifying threat of cyber warfare. Anne Neuberger, Deputy National Security Advisor for Cyber and Emerging Tech at the National Security Council, spoke as part of a parade of government officials this morning about the U.S. Cyber Trust Mark, a sort of Energy Star-like seal of approval for hacking-resistant technology. Neuberger announced that the U.S. has signed a political deal with the European Union over sharing those cyber standards, touting that consumers will know their products are safe whether they’re sold in “Paris, Texas, or Paris, France.” Still, it was clear roaming the convention that kind of cooperation isn’t the whole story: there’s also inevitable geopolitical competition among allies, both regulatory and economic. This morning I spoke with Liz Hyman, head of the XR Association, the leading trade group for what it calls “immersive technology.” Hyman was here in Las Vegas as a booster for the field ahead of what could be a make-or-break year for the technology (more on that in tomorrow’s DFD), but she had plenty of thoughts about how important it is not just for the U.S. government to get these tech policy issues right, but to get them right first. “Europe is very focused on the industrial metaverse, they're very focused on digital twins, and we had better get going before the train leaves the station,” she said, citing a recent white paper the XRA published on the need for the U.S. to stay competitive on immersive tech. (Roland Busch, CEO of the German tech giant Siemens, touted his company’s progress toward building an “industrial metaverse” in this year’s CES keynote speech.) Jennifer Huddleston, a tech policy research fellow at the free market-oriented Cato Institute who spoke on a panel about promoting tech competition, had a predictably sharper view of the policy environment on the horizon for 2024 and the relationship between the U.S. and Europe when I spoke with her afterward. “You’ve seen what appears to be a much more deliberate targeting of large, successful American companies [by European regulators],” Huddleston said. “Do we want European bureaucrats to be the ones playing policy designer, or do we want innovators and the marketplace to be the one that decides what design wins out?” Tech companies seem to be taking this unsettled moment seriously, or at least acknowledging the global uncertainty. For some of the biggest and most globally oriented tech firms, they believe they can effectively design their way out of it. “We are enablers,” Ziad Asghar, Qualcomm's SVP of product management, told me this week as he previewed the company's new chips enabling powerful on-device AI. “We allow our customers the ability to configure [their technology] as such that they can comply with stringent requirements, or a different regulatory paradigm in different cities or countries.” Qualcomm was at CES touting the integration of these chips into cars and smartphones, about as ubiquitous as technologies get, making the ability to get along with regulators at home and abroad paramount. (Transportation, in particular, was a major focus at this year’s convention — yesterday afternoon I spoke with Adam Kovacevich, founder and CEO of the center-left Chamber of Progress, who said that 2024 is shaping up to be a crucial year for autonomous vehicle policy.) Ultimately, despite — or, maybe, because of — the intimidating slate of regulatory and geopolitical challenges facing the tech industry this year, Washington’s emissaries at CES took an overall tone of techno-optimism, often explicitly reassuring the industry audience that they’re firmly in their corner. “On the government side there’s a really committed team working with all the tech innovators here,” said the NSC’s Neuberger. “This is the route to economic growth; this is the route to ensuring the U.S. remains a leader in innovation.” Paul Rosen, the Department of the Treasury official charged with enforcing investment security, described his office’s relationship with tech even more bluntly: “We don’t want to take a sledgehammer to business.”
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