ELISSA NADWORNY, HOST:
Tackling tech will be high on the agenda for President Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping at their summit this week, from the production of microchips to the development of artificial intelligence. Joining us now is Anne Neuberger. She's a former U.S. deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technologies. Welcome to the program.
ANNE NEUBERGER: Thank you so much for having me, Elissa.
NADWORNY: So what will you be tracking going into Trump's meeting at the White House with Xi Jinping?
NEUBERGER: The U.S. and China are locked in a race for AI supremacy and cyber dominance, and neither country is going to sign a broad treaty that freezes tech development. President Trump needs to send a clear message that disruptive cyber intrusions into civilian infrastructure crosses a red line. So establishing, for example, dedicated bilateral hotlines for AI-enabled incidents is a pragmatic step to manage any of that kind of miscalculation.
NADWORNY: You just said disruptive cyber intrusions. Now, you wrote an article in Foreign Affairs magazine in which you describe something you call, quote, "digital choke points." How do they play into the U.S.-China relationship?
NEUBERGER: China has one of the largest and most aggressive offensive cyber programs in the world. They focus not only on espionage, but also on prepositioning in critical parts of country's infrastructure - power, pipelines, water in the U.S. and in U.S. allies and adversaries of China - countries like Japan, Singapore, the Philippines, Taiwan and Australia. And when we describe choke points, much as we've seen Iran, the Houthis work to try to weaponize geographic parts of the world where they are in a unique position because they have potentially some degree of control over a geographic space, we have a concern that China will use its prepositioning in digital infrastructure to disrupt the operations of those infrastructure in a period of crisis or conflict.
NADWORNY: You also talk about certain deficiencies that the U.S. has that leaves it vulnerable if China decides to take advantage of them. What are some of these vulnerabilities, and what can be done to address them?
NEUBERGER: We're a large country, and we have thousands of water systems around the country. We have thousands of electricity systems around the country. Many were built in the last 30, 40, 50 years, before the age of cyber warfare. So given the size of U.S. infrastructure, given the degree - as people call it - of tech debt, of old systems that really are hard to update, and given the fact that they're largely owned by private companies who, until recently, didn't have any obligations to maintain a set of cyber standards in terms of the security of those systems, that's a real vulnerability for the United States.
NEUBERGER: AI is a game changer. It's a dual-use technology. It's a game changer for attackers, but I think it's an even bigger game changer for defenders because AI can take a lot of information and help quickly analyze it. There's a massive amount of data coming off a network related to just the operations of a system - think the national power system. And AI can help gather all of that information, identify what may be anomalous activity, unusual activity, which is often the first sign of malicious cyberactivity on a network. And I actually believe it helps defenders even more than attackers because attackers always had an edge.
An attacker only needs to find, you know, one digital door in. A defender has to be watching every door and window. And in the age of AI, attackers can jiggle every doorknob continuously all the time. So as a result, what AI can do for defenders, in terms of running on a network, gathering all the data, finding something that's anomalous or analyzing old code to generate patches for that code is a game changer because it makes that work possible in a way that really wasn't when we only were able to do this through people's hard work and skill.
NADWORNY: What should President Trump be communicating to Xi Jinping about this technological competition between Beijing and Washington?
NEUBERGER: You know, Washington and Beijing can try to agree on one area of shared risk - preventing AI models from offering actionable assistance in generating chemical or biological weapons. That is one area that potentially the countries could work together. In fact, you know, over the last number of years, one of the positive areas of U.S.-Chinese cooperation was in countering the spread of fentanyl. Much of the precursor chemicals are produced in China. And as you know, it was really wreaking havoc in American cities. And the U.S. and Beijing, U.S. and China, worked together to put in place some controls, and it was a positive area of cooperation.
So cooperation is possible when there are joint areas of interest. And I think that preventing AI models from offering that kind of assistance in generating chemical or biological weapons is in both countries' interest and could be a foundation for some kind of work together.
NADWORNY: I wonder - within the U.S. government, what's the most misunderstood aspect of China's use of cutting-edge technology?
NEUBERGER: I think the big area of debate has been in the area of whether leadership means having the best models or whether leadership means the world running on a technology as its foundation. In the U.S., the approach has really been trying to ensure that U.S. models are always at the cutting edge. China, in contrast, has a playbook, which we've seen in other technologies like 5G, of recognizing that good enough, lowest-cost technology is what many countries and companies around the world will pick. Indeed, you know, when we look at Silicon Valley, we see a lot of companies, even in the United States, building on Chinese open-source models.
So I think the biggest difference, to a point, is perhaps a recognition that we need both. It is important that the world reflect democratic ideals in the way the technology is applied, and because the technology has so much promise. So coming up with ways to help more companies around them and countries around the world build on American models, recognizing that cost is often the factor should be a good part of the American strategy for AI. And I think that's one of the reasons that we've seen more U.S. companies start building open-source models because they recognize that for many countries and companies around the world, the appeal of open source, in that it is much lower cost, is real.
NADWORNY: Anne Neuberger is a former U.S. deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technologies. Thank you so much for being with us.
NEUBERGER: Really a pleasure to be with you, Elissa. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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