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In the news section, our experts take center stage in shaping discussions on technology and policy. Discover articles featuring insights from our experts or citing our research. CSET’s insights and research are pivotal in shaping key conversations within the evolving landscape of emerging technology and policy.

Dewey Murdick and Miriam Vogel shared their expert analysis in an op-ed published by Fortune. In their piece, they highlight the urgent need for the United States to strengthen its AI literacy and incident reporting systems to maintain global leadership amid rapidly advancing international competition, especially from China’s booming AI sector.

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Rita Konaev, Research Fellow at CSET writes with Samuel Bendett that “when it comes to military applications of artificial intelligence, overlooking Russia is a mistake.” In this article, they analyze Russia’s current and potential future technological advances in autonomous systems and information warfare.

Lorand Laskai, Visiting Researcher at CSET, says the developments with China’s DJI Technologies show that “despite the hand-wringing over US-China tech decoupling, workable solutions to data security concerns are possible … the real question is whether these arrangements will be able to withstand the growing distrust between the United States and China.”

“The internet is a very complex and rough environment, and governments, especially small governments, don’t have as many cards as they would like to play,” said CSET Senior Faculty Fellow Ben Buchanan, a cybersecurity expert who teaches at Georgetown University.

Why Blacklisting Huawei Could Backfire

Foreign Affairs
| June 19, 2019

CSET’s Lorand Laskai explains in Foreign Affairs how U.S. restrictions on Chinese technology, including the products of Huawei, could wind up spurring on China’s efforts at self-reliance in innovation.

CSET’s Helen Toner, Jeff Ding, and Elsa Kania testified before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission on U.S.-China Competition in Artificial Intelligence: Policy, Industry, and Strategy.

“We should be clear-eyed about what is going on in China, especially with regard to human rights abuses, but we should not be hysterical about the level of security threat that China poses,” said Helen Toner, CSET's director of strategy. “If the U.S. can act wisely and place its values front and center, it’s likely we can reach a new equilibrium that serves our interests. Fear and hype tend to damage the U.S. rather than serve it.”

In 2018, the Commerce Department proposed categories of “emerging technology” for export controls. “The problem is that these categories are exceptionally broad, denoting large buckets of technologies that are often layered into a diverse set of applications, most with no relevance to national security,” says CSET’s Lorand Laskai.

In this article, CSET’s Helen Toner notes U.S. companies and labs attract top talent worldwide. “Supporting that will help the U.S. retain its advantage over the longer term.”

“AI and other emerging technologies will deliver profound benefits to society, but they will also introduce new risks,” said CSET’s founding director, Jason Matheny. “Technologists don’t always consider the details of policy, and policymakers don’t always consider the details of technology.”