U.S. Congressional Hearing on AI, Energy Demand, and Global Competitiveness

Good morning everybody. The committee will come to order. Welcome everybody of the

committee back. We appreciate everybody being back this morning for I think it's going to be an absolutely exciting

hearing. And I will recognize myself for five minutes for an opening statement. And I want to thank our witnesses for

being here and traveling long distance to be here. Um this kind of came from a library of congress this hearing from a

presentation that Dr. Smith put on his book Genesis that he wrote with Henry Kissinger, Henry Kissinger's last book.

And I walked away uh thinking we needed to have the entire Congress hear your presentation. And so we're doing it with

the entire energy and commerce committee because I think an author always wants to know when they write a book, will

somebody read my book? And then if they read the book, then will it have an impact? Well, today you and all the

witnesses are before the full energy and commerce committee. and our our dear colleague and and the dear husband of of

our colleague Debbie Dingle used to say that if it's moving its energy if it stops its commerce something to that

effect so we have a lot of jurisdiction I say it takes energy to move commerce I can't improve on chairman Dingle but

that's my version of it and so we're having a full hearing we typically do this in subcommittee but but this

touches all jurisdictions and I think everybody needs to hear it if you think about uh it's going to take enormous

energy to beat China to AI. We in doing that we have to protect the environment. Our telecom and privacy through our

commerce and telecom committees will be dealing with this and AI has particularly healthc care applications.

So it touches all of our jurisdiction and and Dr. Smith when I walked away from the Library of Congress and I read

your book uh it gave me a sense of mission and the mission that a direction I want to take this committee in the

time that I'm chairman. And to sum up what you said, it's the US versus China and who will win the war for AI. And it

it essentially I walked away this is as important as the dollar being the reserve currency in the world. It's that

important. That's what's before us. And and we what I what I hear from people in this space is that we have the brain

power and we have the capital. What we need is the energy and the correct regulatory framework. Um and we have an

example of what not to do and I believe you said should Europe in your presentation Europe has chosen not to

grow. So we can't look there as an example. We have to work through it our ourselves.

And and in Europe is the regulatory framework, their energy framework and the regulatory framework. Some of their

regulatory framework written specifically just to disadvantage American companies has made them

non-competitive and the Europe and the US had a similar size economy in 2008 and I've read that our economy is up

about 80% larger. So what do we need to do? And the reason we want to do a full committee is that we have to have broad

consensus on how we work together. It has to be Democrat and Republican. People who um tell me they

invest, it's tough to invest based on congressional cycles or presidential cycles that the rules are going to

change every two to four years. And so what I would like to hopefully we could do in this committee is come up with a a

regulatory framework and an energy policy that we can all or most of us can agree on at least build a broad

consensus on how we develop massive amounts of energy while protecting our environment. And uh Dr. Schmidt you said

all energy resources are needed and then AI will develop solutions to deal with climate

change. And so Microsoft to put this in perspective, Microsoft data center can use as much power as a city of Seattle

is what I've been told. And so in the regulation side of it, we have to protect our privacy. Yesterday we had a

hearing or bills yesterday on on child children's privacy and children's safety. And we have to protect our

privacy. I think all of us want our privacy protected. We can't do it in a heavy-handed way that stifles

innovation. And as I said, we have to look at our friends across the Atlantic. But I think we need to more

intently look across the Pacific to a nation determined to win. China has specifically said they are

going to win the war on AI. And we are taking up the challenge to prove to them that the American entrepreneur and the

American intellect will win the war on AI. But they have to have the energy and the regulatory environment to do so. So

if this committee gets it right, this committee gets it right, America will win. It may win if otherwise, but we

need to be there to to to make that happen. And if you look at what if China wins, we just had a hearing an oversight

that a medical device from China had an embedded URL to the University of Beijing. So why did that mean a medical

device? Because we know they're using everything they can, everything they can to get information they need on us. So

we must win. We will win. And for the sake of the world, we have to win. And I am

determined through this hearing to the beginning that all of us will work together because all of us are dedicated

to winning. And I will yield back and recognize the ranking member for five minutes for an opening statement. Thank

you, Mr. Chairman. Under normal circumstances, today's hearing would be a bipartisan conversation on ensuring

America continues to lead the race on artificial intelligence or AI. However, these are not normal times. President

Trump is single-handedly destroying our economy. Since he unnecessarily instigated a global trade war, our

markets are in turmoil. Americans retirement savings is in freef fall and prices for everyday everyday goods are

spiking. In fact, Trump's tariffs are the largest middle class tax increase in at least 50 years on hardworking

American families. And our efforts to continue to lead the global race on AI innovation are seriously threatened when

Trump has just spiked the price on materials we need to compete such as steel, aluminum, and chips. Instead of

winning the future, Trump's economic turmoil could send America's tech leadership into a tail spin. There's no

doubt that the daily chaos and uncertainty that Trump is creating is not good for American business or for

the American people. Despite the unwillingness of the president and Republicans to acknowledge any of the

harm their actions are having on American families, I want to address the topic of today's hearing because it is

so important. As we have heard in every energy subcommittee hearing this year, increased energy demand is coming,

largely powered by data centers fueling artificial intelligence tools. And I firmly believe that this increased

demand can be a good thing, but it must be managed responsibly. We must make sure that AIdriven energy demand

increases don't make electricity unaffordable or unreliable for American families. We must also make sure that

consumers aren't stuck varying the costs for infrastructure investments made necessary by private companies. And we

must get a better understanding of just how much energy demand will increase in the coming years. The committee needs to

be talking about all these things. But instead, this week, House Republicans are poised to vote on a budget

resolution that would set the stage to repeal the energy tax credits incentivizing well over 90% of the

electricity generation poised to come onto the grid. The Trump administration and Elon Musk Doge minions are also

putting together a secret list of grants and loans that they want to cancel that would modernize our electric grid and

build new energy generation. Meanwhile, yesterday afternoon, Trump signed a several executive orders to allow

polluting coal plants to set for retirement to continue to operate, increasing prices and health risks for

American families. And just last month, during his speech to the joint session of Congress, Trump threatened to repeal

the Chips and Science Act, which invested 52 billion dollars to ensure more semiconductors are produced right

here in the US. Semiconductors are critical to the advancement of AI. But right now, the overwhelming majority are

produced outside the United States, and the Chips and Science Act is boosting production of chips here. And now Trump

wants to repeal the law. So, Republicans constantly talk about winning the AI race. But the actions they're taking

make it appear as if they're purposely trying to lose that race to China. And we should also discuss the tremendous

effects AI will have on our everyday lives. We've seen an explosion of AI systems and tools that have been trained

on massive amounts of Americans personal information without our knowledge and consent. Right now, sufficient

guardrails do not exist to protect Americans and our data from harmful AI systems that violate our privacy,

provide false information, or make unjustifiable discriminatory decisions. Because many of these systems are

trained on massive amounts of data that big tech has collected on all of us. The lack of nationwide protections around

what data companies can collect, use, and sell to train these AI systems should concern every American. Clearly

defined privacy and data security rules are critical to protect consumers from existing harmful data collection

practices and to safeguard them from the growing privacy threat that AI models pose. So I strongly believe that the

bedrock of any AI regulation must be privacy legislation built on the principle of limiting the amount of

consumer data collected, used and shared. It is the best way to address the aggressive and abusive data

collection practices of big tech and data brokers, ensure our children's sensitive information is protected

online, and put consumers back in control of their data. So, I look forward to hearing from today's

witnesses and intend to continue to focus on developing policies that harness the transformation power of AI

while safeguarding the rights and well-being of all Americans. And with that, I yield back. Thank you, Mr.

Chairman. Thank you. The gentleman yields back and we now conclude with member opening statements. The chair

would like to remind members that pursuant to the committee rules, all members opening statements will be made

part of the record. I'd also remind members that once we get to the fivem minute questioning, we will have to

strictly enforce that. Uh we have time constraints with some of our witnesses and I want everybody to have the chance

to ask their questions. I would like to thank the the witnesses for being here today. It it is

and you're taking time to testify before this committee is greatly appreciated. You will have the opportunity to give an

opening statement followed by a round of questions for members and our witness. I'll read the witnesses and I'll call on

you individually to to read for your opening statement. So, first we have Dr. Eric Schmidt, chair of the special

competitive studies project. Dr. Schmidt previously served as a chief executive officer and chairman of Google. In

addition to serving executive chairman and technical adviser, his time at Google would turn the company into the

global tech giant we know it today. In 2021, he founded the nine part nonpartisan special competitive studies

project to strengthen America's long-term competitiveness regarding AI and America's future and also the author

as we said in a library of congress spokesman of the book Genesis he wrote with Dr. Kissinger. So thank you for

being here. Dr. Manish Batia, Mr. Mesh Batia, executive vice president of global operations with Micron

Technology. Mr. Batia has been with Micron since 2017 and has 25 years of engineering and operations experience.

He has previously held positions at West Western Digital Corporation, Sandis Corporation, and Matrix Semiconductor to

name just a few. The Honorable David Turk, a visiting fellow with the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia

University School of International Public Affairs. Mr. Mr. Turk served as the deputy secretary of the US

Department of Energy during the Biden administration. Before his time as deputy secretary, Mr. Tur Turk spent

several years at the International Energy Agency. Thank you for being here as well. And Mr. Alexander Wang, the

founder and chief executive officer of Scale AI. Mr. Wang founded Scale AI as a 19-year-old student in MIT focusing on

the concept of humanity first artificial intelligence. Currently, Scale AI has a team of over 900 and is valued at nearly

14 billion dollars. At 24, he is the youngest self-made billionaire in the world. So, I thank you all for being

here today and I will call on each of you and I will begin with Dr. Schmidt. You have five minutes for your opening

statement. Thank you. And you'll see I'm before you get started there. You'll have a green light when it gets to four

minutes. I think a light turns yellow. So, it'll kind of give you a warning in front of you. you have a minute and when

it turns red it'll be wrap it up so we can make sure we get all our questions in. So Dr. Smith your five minutes

you're recognized. Um thank you Mr. Chairman and thank you ranking member. Thank you all for being here. This is

incredibly important. I'm here to tell you that I honestly believe that the AI revolution is

underhyped. And here's why. The arrival of this new intelligence will profoundly change our country and the world in ways

we cannot fully understand. And none of us including myself and frankly anyone in this room is prepared for the

implications of this. What's happening at the moment in our industry is that we're very very quickly for example

developing developing AI programmers and these AI programmers will replace uh traditional software programmers. We're

building in the next year AI mathematicians that are as good as the top level graduate students in math.

This is happening very quickly. You can look at this in a number of the uh products today. You think of AI as chat

GBT, but what it really is is a reasoning and planning system that we've never seen before. The implication of

this is profound. Um, in terms of the way the algorithms work, they're going to need a lot more computation than

we've ever had. They're going to need a lot more energy, and I'll talk about that. What does the industry need? We

need high skills immigration. We talk to you about this every day. uh light touch regulation around cyber and bio threats.

We can talk about that and most importantly we need the energy and the numbers are profound. Um what we need

from you if if I may say that directly is we need energy in all forms um renewable non-renewable whatever it

needs to be there and it needs to be quickly. I and others are investing in things like fusion which are incredible

but they're not going to arrive soon enough for the need. And I'll frame this at the end by my comments about China.

So people are planning 10 gigawatt data centers. Now just to do the translation, an average nuclear power plant in the

United States is one gigawatt. How many gig how many nuclear power plants can we make in one year where we're planning

this 10 gawatt data center? Gives you a sense of how big this crisis is. Um many people think that the demand in of

energy part that our industry takes will go from 3% to 99% of total generation. One of the estimates that I think is

most likely is that data centers will require an additional 29 gawatts of power by 2027 and 67 more gigawatts by

2030. Gives you a sense of the scale that we're talking. These things are industrial at a scale I have never seen

in my life. the in the terms of energy planning the current model is mostly natural gas eer

plants plus renewables and that's probably going to be the path we're going to have to follow right to get

there and u for all the reasons that you can imagine we have a bunch of regulatory issues around fixing the the

energy grid takes on average 18 years to get the power transmissions and so forth to put these things in place we need to

find federal ways to preempt that and make it happen faster in order to deal with the needs. Many of these data

centers, by the way, are in the heartland. Um they have a huge economic impact positively on areas that

typically do not have the kind of growth that they would like. Now, why is this all important? When you build these

systems, you have intelligence in the computer and then eventually human level intelligence. Some people think it's

within three to four years. Then after that you have something called super intelligence and super intelligence is

the intelligence that's higher than of humans. We believe as an industry that this could occur within a decade. It is

crucial that America get there first. What is China doing? They're leading in something open source. They are very

close behind us. You all have done a great job in doing chip restrictions and things like that to try to slow them

down. They're clever and they're smart. They have industrial programs, huge grants going into these companies and

they're weaponizing up in the sense of competition. If you look at DeepSeek, Deepseek showed up, right? Nobody

expected this. It turns out it's on par with some of the top models. Welcome. China has arrived in the competition.

What would happen if China beat us? Let's think about it. The path to intelligence, that's superhuman

intelligence. Think of the national security implications of that competition. This is why I believe and

I'll say directly to you that although everyone is concerned about Taiwan, I'm much more concerned about this because

if they come to super intelligence, this strong form of intelligence first, it changes the balance of power globally in

ways that we have no way of understanding, predicting, or dealing with. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank

you. Thank you for that sober assessment why we wanted to have this hearing. We appreciate that very much. Uh now we'll

recognize Mr. Batia, you have your five minutes for for your opening statement. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ranking member

Palone and members of the committee. My name is Manish Batia and I serve as executive vice president of global

operations at Micron. Micron was founded in 1978 in Boise, Idaho, and over the last several decades has become one of

the world's most innovative companies with more than 58,000 US patents granted. And Micron is America's

only manufacturer of memory chips and the only US semiconductor company with worldwide technology leadership today.

Micron is truly a national treasure. Micron has become fundamental to America's economic competitiveness

because our fabs manufacture the world's most advanced memory chips and are at the heart of the AI revolution. For each

AI chip that Nvidia sells, there are 96 high bandwidth memory chips integrated with it. Without our chips, there simply

is no AI. Micron is the only company planning to invest more than a hundred billion

dollars over the next 20 years to build leading edge memory fabs here in the United

States. These investments will power America's AI leadership. They'll serve domestic demand for other industries and

drive US semiconductor exports. Our investments are projected to create 11,000 high-paying direct micron jobs,

9,000 construction jobs, and ultimately between direct and indirect 80,000 new jobs created across our expansions

planned in Idaho, New York, and Virginia. The president and Congress have made clear that the United States

needs to continue to lead on AI and increase domestic manufacturing. The success of our

investments will keep the US at the forefront of the AI revolution. strengthen the economy and make America

more secure. To make our historic US investments, we need reliable and

affordable energy. One of the most important factors that made upstate New York and Boise, Idaho attractive for our

planned investments is reliable, lowcost power. And in Virginia, where we've been operating for two decades, grid

reliability has been critical to our operations. Each of these full-scale fabs built here

will run 24 by7 by 365 days a year and consume at full buildout about 400 megawatts of power. By 2040, we expect

our US energy demands to reach 2 gawatt. This demand comes from a variety of highly complex manufacturing process

steps, including using extreme ultraviolet lasers to create advanced nanocale features on our chips.

Beyond scale, we also need power to be reliable. Even fractions of a seconds of power loss or even just power sag or

droop forces us to reset equipment, check for inconsistencies and deviations in the

material and um ultimately can cost tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars. Reliable power is critical to our US

expansion. Historically, the United States has maintained low electricity prices due to

the abundance of energy resources and its all of the above approach from oil and natural gas to solar and nuclear.

This was a bright spot for Micron as we built here at home and is one of America's key competitive advantages in

manufacturing. However, after years of matched supply and demand, we're now seeing significant electricity demand

growth and supply may struggle to keep pace. By one estimate, US electricity demand could rise by 128 gigab

gigawatts, more than 15% over the next 5 years alone. This risks the United States losing leadership in AI and in

the technologies that enable it. Meeting this energy demand means the federal government needs to take an all

of the above approach and cut through red tape to bring generating projects to life. We also need to invest in energy

equipment and supply chains. When I visited the Idaho National Lab last month to discuss their cutting edge work

on advanced nuclear technologies, it became clear how much investment is needed in uranium fuel supply chains and

other new technologies. Beyond generating capacity and energy supply chains, we need to

ensure the US transmission infrastructure is fit for the 21st century. Without new and updated

transmission infrastructure, new generation won't deliver won't be able to be delivered to customers like us.

This is why permitting reform to accelerate transmission infrastructure is so

important. Taking a step back and looking at manufacturing and AI more broadly, this also means continued

investment in manufacturers that enable the AI revolution. Micron and other US semiconductor companies building and

operating fabs in the US experience cost deltas with our Asian competitors of 35 to 45%.

To ensure US global competitiveness, we are calling for an extension and expansion of the expiring semiconductor

manufacturing investment tax credit. This will continue to enable the success of America's semiconductor manufacturing

renaissance. Finally, to echo Chairman Guthri's remarks, having consistent, reliable regulations, particularly in

energy and permitting, allows Micron to make long-term manufacturing investments at home so the country can lead in

manufacturing and in AI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. Thank you for your testimony, Mr. Tur, Honorable Mr. Turk,

you're recognized for your five-minute opening statement. Chairman Guthrie, Ranking Member Palone, and distinguished

members, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. More importantly, let me thank you for this committee's

concerted, sustained focus on both the opportunities and the risks surrounding artificial intelligence. As someone who

spent a lot of time in windowless rooms, uh, including given my last four years as deputy secretary of the US Department

of Energy, let me clearly state my bottom line upfront. Housing as many AI data centers as possible, especially

cutting edge AI training models within our country, is both an economic and a national security

imperative. There is no more powerful and transformational technology facing our world. I have also found that the

experts who understand AI the best are the ones who most forcefully stress the need for thoughtful effective guard

rails and protections. As the title of this hearing suggests, we need to quickly and

affordably convert energy into intelligence. The best numbers I found come from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab

in terms of what we need to prepare for. In 2023, data centers used 4.4% of the overall electricity in the United

States. By just 2028, data centers total usage will increase to between 6.7 to 12%. Let me share a three-part strategy

to satisfy this increasing electricity demand. First, we need to maintain the full range of tax incentives, grants,

loans, and other tools in our tool belt. Now is exactly the wrong time to make it more expensive to bring online new

electrons. Getting rid of just the technology neutral production and investment tax credits 45Y and 48E will

substantially raise the costs and delay our ability to power AI. A repeal of just these techneutral

tax credits would also increase prices on average US households between $140 to $220 each and every year. Grants and

loans, including from the bipartisan infrastructure law, are also vital. utility CEOs, developers, rural electric

cooperatives are all urging Congress to retain these important tax grant and loan

tools. Let us also remember that among others, the Independent Energy Information Administration predicts that

a full 93% of additional capacity added to our grids in 2025 will be with renewables

and storage. Finally, uncertainty, whether caused by

deliberations in Congress or President Trump's tariff policy, will also chill needed near-term investment to power

AI. Second, we need to redouble all our efforts to more quickly permit new power generation and new transmission in our

country without sacrificing important protections. Recent bipartisan efforts such as the

Baraso Mansion Energy Permitting Reform Act provide a promising foundation for further

progress. And third, we should more fully leverage public private partnerships, including with strategic

use of federal land for cutting edge AI, something advanced by both the Biden and the Trump administrations.

Ensuring cutting edge AI data centers remain in the United States also gives our democracy a fighting chance to

provide effective and efficient guard rails on AI technology. Companies by themselves

simply do not have all the requisite expertise nor do they have a perspective that takes into account all relevant

considerations. We need to fully leverage our biological, chemical, and nuclear

government experts to help companies red team new models to ensure they don't inadvertently empower terrorists and

rogue states. We've made some progress, including voluntary cooperation with companies, but we must do more, and we

must make this a requirement. Safeguards against misinformation, deep fakes, model hallucinations, and privacy

infringement must also be a top priority to protect public trust and democracy. Let me conclude by reiterating what I

heard from you very clearly, Mr. Chairman, and I think we'll hear again and again throughout this hearing. We

are in a global AI race. The stakes are too high for us to lose. I think Dr. Schmidt put it incredibly eloquent with

his opening statement. To win, we must all work together, and we cannot take any tools off our tool belt to quickly

power AI. Mr. Chairman, Mr. ranking member and other committee members. Thank you again for your diligent, your

bipartisan, and your urgent focus on AI. I look forward to your questions. Thank you. I appreciate your testimony. Mr. uh

Wang, you're now recognized for five minutes for your opening statement. Chairman Guthrie, Ranking Member Palone,

and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to be here today to discuss the steps that must be taken to

ensure US leadership in AI. My name is Alexander Wang. I'm the founder and CEO of Scale AI. Today's hearing is personal

for me. I grew up in Los Alamos, where my parents were physicists at the National Lab, the birthplace of the

atomic bomb. They taught me that America's leadership in science and technology is vital to our national

security and global strength. At MIT, I learned that progress in AI depends on three key elements: data, compute, and

algorithms. While most of my classmates pursued expertise in comput and algorithms, few were focused on the data

challenge. That inspired me to start scale. We deliver expert level data and offer technology solutions to leading AI

labs, multinational enterprises, and the US government and our allies. At scale, we keep humans at the center of

everything we do because AI should always work for us, not the other way around. Over the past decade, it's

become clear that the United States faces intense global competition in determining how AI should evolve and who

should lead. In 2018, the Chinese Communist Party's AI master plan started taking shape. They were already

developing advanced AI capabilities and using that technology to surveil and suppress their people. Fast forward to

today, their plan is more sophisticated and expansive. It includes four key areas of focus. First, the CCP is taking

a whole of country approach, having recently launched their AI plus initiative. Second, the CCP is

outinvesting us in data, spending billions on AI ready data and unlocking vast public data sets to fuel AI

systems. Third, they're finding ways to catch up on compute and building out their physical infrastructure. And

lastly, they're developing leading AI models and exporting them to the world. But we are not here today to just talk

about what China is doing, but to identify how the US can lead. Given how close the competition is across all

foundational elements, the policies this Congress promotes could determine the outcome. Global AI dominance is not

about trying to level the playing field by mimicking China's authoritarian way of government and AI adoption. Instead,

the United States must chart our own course, one that is anchored in American values. This is vital to our long-term

national security. This requires decisive action by the United States across four main themes. Dominate,

unleash, innovate, and promote. To dominate, we need to win on data. The US government is one of the largest

producers of data in the world, but currently most of that data is unavailable to advance American AI

leadership. There are three immediate actions that would move us forward towards data dominance. First, establish

a national AI data reserve. This resource should serve as a centralized hub for the government's AI work,

housing relevant government data and allowing it to be easily shared between agencies and enabling widespread AI

adoption. Second, make all government data AI ready and stand up AI data infrastructure to enable scaled

implementation. And third, Congress should invest to position data dominance as a national priority. The next theme

is unleash, meaning we must unleash AI technology and establish an agentic government. An agentic government is one

that uses AI under human supervision to enhance its operations. For example, federal agencies could leverage AI to

streamline veteran healthcare paperwork, improve improve fraud detection at the IRS, and boost efficiency and

information sharing across agencies. This will improve the lives of public employees and the American people.

Congress require each agency to set up at least one flagship agent government program.

Next, we must maximize the ability of companies to innovate. I believe the right regulatory framework is one that

allows for innovation while still creating proper guardrails. Congress should take three actions. First,

confirm a use case-based regulatory framework and conduct an analysis to address regulatory gaps. Second,

establish one single federal AI governance standard to avoid patchwork legislation at the state level. And

third, implement policies that enable American workers to become the AI workforce of the future. These policies

would provide the skills necessary to train, fine-tune, and evaluate AI systems. The final theme is promote,

meaning we need need to promote US technology globally. Countries around the world, what I call AI geopolitical

swing states, will soon be forced to choose between Western or CCP controlled technology. To help make sure they

choose western technology, Congress and the administration should empower NIST to complete all relevant measurement

science for AI and export it to the world through the global network of AI safety

institutes. America led the industrial revolution, the space race, the internet a and the internet age. AI is the next

frontier and with your assistance, I'm confident we will lead again. Thank you for the opportunity to be here today and

I look forward to your questions. Thank you. Thank you for your testimony as well. We will now begin questioning and

I'll recognize myself for five minutes uh for questions. So Mr. Dr. Schmidt, you talked about we need all available

sources of energy and I think you said in Library of Congress and use AI to stop climate change. If we're going to

try to build a broad coalition, we can't just go for energy without dealing with climate and we can't just do climate and

not have energy because even though wind, solar, and batteries are important, they don't they won't supply

the energy that we need. So what do you mean by all sources of energy and how do you think that we could solve climate

through AI? Um thank you Mr. Chairman. Um as we discussed the the the needs of our industry are so great that we cannot

cut down any of the sources of energy right now. Why does this make sense? Knowing that climate change is real and

knowing that it's a problem is that the intelligence revolution, the ability to do planning and discovery will allow us

as Americans to develop new materials, new energy sources and so forth because of the AI data data centers. So our core

argument is invest in the way we can now because the future will be so much cleaner and so much more efficient as a

result of these algorithms. Thank you for that. And also u you said in in Library of Congress that Europe has

chosen not to grow as we look to our competitor across the Pacific. I mentioned we look over to the Atlantic.

what what lessons learned do you think we need to look as we say a lot of times people look at Europe and want to see

what they're doing and copy what should we not do that Europe is done um Europe is a wonderful place to visit but it's

not growing uh has great human values but it's not growing as a result everyone is unhappy the standard of

living between the United States and Europe has now diverged the US lives much better than Europeans which is

annoying to my European friends there are so many reasons why economic growth is important. Growth solves every

problem in a democracy. Well, thanks. So you we were talking about that. So what kind of things have

Europe decisions European leaders have made that we need to avoid? Well, the primary issue is overregulation. Um we

have a similar problem in America in that uh the overlapping set of local, federal, state rules which were done

with good intentions have the property that they're slowing things down. Our competitor China is not a democracy.

it's an autocracy, whatever you want to call it, and they just decide. Um, in this fight, as I said before, if they

get there first, we will be very upset. All of us will be alive when this occurs. Every one of you will see it.

Imagine a situation where attacks that we cannot even imagine are unleashed by China in an adversarial thing. We have

no concept of having a super intelligent opponent where we're not as intelligent as they are. Good thing. So in your

article I have here on uh the Atlantic or the foreign affairs I'm sorry the foreign affairs um you wrote essentially

technological advances in the next 5 to 10 years will determine the country gains the upper hand. I have a couple of

minutes. Would you kind of explain militarily what this means and then what because you're right about what they can

do militarily and then this is we we need to act now. So u in the framing in China and Taiwan which is discussed a

great deal everyone assumes that it's a battle of missiles and aircraft carriers that's not correct. It will be a battle

of swarms of drones. Those drones will be highly intelligent, highly planned and they'll do maneuvers that no one can

anticipate. We collectively are not ready for that. Imagine a situation where China has invented new algorithms

for military attacks and defense that we cannot even conceive of. Remember, I'm discussing a world where humans have a

partner that is smarter than the collection of those people. As I said, this will happen in our lifetimes and

it's important that we get there first. Uh if you take a look at Ukraine, Russia right now, you see the future of war. Um

I'm assuming, by the way, that China would start by cyber attacks and so forth. There's evidence that uh these

new systems will be able to come up with zero-day exploits that we cannot foresee. A zero day exploit is something

we've never seen before and we can't anticipate. There's lots of people who were worried that that biological

attacks can be done and there there's lot there's a a report from the emerging biothreats commission this week with the

great details and there's a classified version that all of you should take a look at. There's plenty of evidence that

these things are possible. So Mr. Wang, you see you're shaking your head. I only have about 30 seconds, but if you'd like

to make a comment on what he was that comment. Uh I agree with Dr. Schmidt that uh the potential implications of

national security are in are incredible. Um, as as he mentioned, I think the place we're going to see this first is

in cyber. Uh, I think we're going to see agentic cyber warfare in which we will see um incredibly powerful AI and large

scale data centers being utilized to hack into our systems. One of the things that we were discussing previously is

how vulnerable our energy. I'm at zero on my time and we're going to try to stick to it. So, I have to hold myself

to that. So, I appreciate that and we'll get more answers. I'll yield back and recognize the ranking member for five

minutes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My my questions are of Mr. Turk. You laid out how

important it is that we keep our investment environment stable and attractive so AI data infrastructure and

energy companies can make the large investments in America needed to build AI tools in the US. But unfortunately,

the Trump administration is doing the opposite. Trump has frozen investments in energy infrastructure, is attacking

tax credits for energy generation, and put in place tariffs that are destroying our economy. And don't just take my word

for it. Others are saying it too. So I'd ask unanimous consent, Mr. Chairman, to insert into the record an article from

Politico entitled Why Trump's tariffs and tax policies could derail efforts to boost US power supply. If I can give

that without objection. Thank you. So Mr. Mr. Tur, can you talk about the harm that some of the Trump administration

policies will have on our AI competitiveness? I have to tell you I I' I'd also like to talk about the harm

that he's doing to our major universities like Colombia, but that's for another committee, so I can't issue

that today. But tell us about the harm that he's doing to our AI competitiveness, if you will.

Well, thanks uh uh Ranking Member Palone. Uh let me start with the tariffs just because that's the news of the day

and the week. Uh I can't think honestly of a worse policy right now if you want to bring on AI power quickly in our

country. Power for AI in our country. Uh not only is it increasing costs across the board for the AI and the data

centers itself, but for the power that goes into the data centers, but it's also injecting an immense amount of

uncertainty. Uh folks who are planning data centers don't want uncertainty. They want stability of policy so they

can plan going forward. So I think tariffs is absolutely the the worst uh if you want to bring on uh additional

data and additional energy for data centers. Secondly, the uncertainty of the incentives, the tax incentives, the

grants and the loans uh all that Congress has worked on in recent years. Uh repealing that and even the

uncertainty of whether provisions are going to be repealed or not is also going to have a chilling effect on the

investment for this power that I think all of our panel here uh agrees that we need to have. We also need to be uh

honest with ourselves. Right now, the quickest power, the most affordable power to bring onto our grids, including

for data centers, is renewables and storage. 93% uh in 2025 will be renewables and

storage. So, we need to focus on a wide variety of energy sources. Completely agree with folks, but if we want to put

urgency to it, the last thing we need to do is repeal these tax credits, grants, uh loans. And then what about I'm going

to ask you to be quick if you will, but because I have a couple questions. What about the repeal of these programs like

the inflation reduction act that you mentioned that was put in place by Democrats and the tax credits? How's

that going to make energy more expensive for American families in an area of increased energy demand if you would?

Well, we not only have additional energy demand, electricity demand for data centers, uh we have it for additional

manufacturing, electrification of buildings. So the uh demand for electricity is going up now when it's

been flat for about 15 20 years. uh that puts upward pressure on prices unless we have more supply coming on. And so to

increase the cost of more supply, more of those electrons coming on, makes it more expensive for AI data centers, but

it makes it more expensive for households. I mentioned $220 per household uh on average being increased

with just a couple of those tax provisions being revoked. If you get rid of more tax provisions, more grants,

more loans, it's just going to increase that cost for everybody. And what lastly, do you agree that we need

sensible guard rails to ensure that the privacy and security of Americans personal information is not a casualty

of the rap rapid development of these AI algorithms and leaky AI tools, if you will. Well, I I absolutely agree and

certainly uh private companies, including those represented here, are going to be the ones who do this cutting

edge AI and bringing all these tools uh to help humanity. Uh but they have a profit motive. their companies. They are

trying to make a profit. They don't have expertise. They don't have nuclear weapons experts. They don't have

biological uh weapons experts. Uh we need democracy to step up. That's why I'm so happy to be in front of you all,

a committee that's taking this seriously to have uh hearing after hearing and really uh looking to have that kind of

sensible, thoughtful regulation, that balance that the chairman talks about. Well, thank you. And I have to say

again, I don't want to talk about Colombian universities today because it's not in our jurisdiction, but I have

to say that you know cutting all these research money from major universities trying to get rid of uh you know uh

today uh he announced or yesterday that he was denying all the visas for foreign students at Rutgers University in my

district. I mean, I see that we're not going to have, you know, our universities aren't going to be able to

do the work that's necessary to actually keep up competitively with China, and it's just really sad. But thank you. I

yield back, Mr. Chair. Thank gentleman yields back and the chair recognizes Mr. Ladder for five minutes for questions.

Well, thanks very much, very much, Mr. Chairman. Thanks for witnesses for being here. This is extremely important. And

just a few weeks ago, the head of Nvidia said, and I'll paraphrase, in order for us to keep the model responsive, we have

we now have to compute 10 times faster, the amount of computation we have to do is 100 times more easily. Another report

had come out saying that in 2024 that said that China is looking at about a 94.5% or

94.5% gigawatts new power coming from co-generation. And so what we're seeing is across

everything we've been talking about in this committee for quite a while is that we're going to have to have more power.

And Mr. Dr. Schmid, if I could start with you, you said something very interesting, something that's been

brought up in this committee for a good number of years about light touch regulation. And I've heard it from the

internet of things that you named what we touch in this committee. But could you just talk a little bit about when

you talk about the light touch, what we have to be doing to make sure we stay competitive?

Um the first thing the government needs to do is to make sure the government understands at the secret and top secret

level what China is actually doing. So some variation of these safety institutes that is at the classified

domain that allows our government to understand the details of what our our opponents are doing is important. Uh

with respect to the uh current US companies all of them are very well aware of these issues and are working

very hard to mitigate them. Um I'm part of a group that actually talks about this informally every week to give you a

sense of it. And the companies are trying very hard to keep the models safe. Having an agreement for example

where um the government is aware of what the companies are doing is probably a good thing. That's what I mean by light

touch. This innovation, this arrival of this new alien incredible intelligence will be done by the private sector. I

want our US government to understand in detail its consequences and help it and help us be successful as a nation. Let

me follow up because also you talked about uh you know we need energy in all forms a couple weeks ago in our

subcommittee on energy. We had the RTO's and the ISOs here in this country about seven different ones. They all said this

exact same thing. We have to have more power and we shouldn't be taking generation offline. Do you agree with

that that statement from all those companies? Well, are all of the ISOs and RTO's I I don't understand the structure

of that part of the industry as well as you do, sir. Uh from my perspective, the single most important thing to do is to

have an all energy strategy. It as as honorable Turk said, it makes no sense to shut down the renewable stuff. We

need more renewables. We also need more natural gas. We need more of everything. We're not going to be able to get the

the targets of gigawatts that we need without doing everything more, right? That includes permitting as I think

we've all talked about. Uh thank you, Mr. Patia. You mentioned that we need reliable power and really we can't have

dis disruption disruptions out there in it. And uh you know, one of the issues again is we've got to make sure again

with what the RTO's and the ISOs are all saying is we've got to have this power. Do you see us meeting that power need in

the very near future because again when you're talking about you know we have to have permitting reform what's going on

in this country? You know I think that we are um uh we are behind. I think that we need to

think long term but act now. Um for semiconductor manufacturing power uh is essential. It's one of the highest input

values and it has um incredible impact on the the stability of the power, the reliability of the power has incredible

impact on the our ability to run efficient operations and to not have disturbances. I mentioned in my prepared

testimony that even a fraction of a second of power droop, not even loss, not even a second, fraction of a second

of power droop, can have tens of millions to hundreds of millions of dollars of impact in our fabs. So we

absolutely need to make sure that we have more uh more power that that power transmission lines are um you know built

for the 21st century. And in fact, everywhere where we operate our fabs, power reliability is absolutely, you

know, at the very top of our list. And we do sight select. Well, in my last 37 seconds, because you also mentioned we

need to cut through that red tape. How would you recommend to this committee that we cut through that red tape? I

think one of the ways is making sure that we reduce the duplicative uh uh regulations that are in place between

federal and state. Um, in you know, one of our projects in New York right now, we have to do uh similar filings in both

the federal and state level. even though the state level regulatory um uh requirements match the federal ones and

so that just you know extends the timeline creates more effort and um you know creates delays and I think the same

thing can be true for many many different energy projects and transmission projects around the

country. Oh thank you Mr. Chairman my time is expired right on the button and I will uh also uh submit my questions

other questions to the witnesses. Thank you. The gentleman yields back and chair recognizes the gentle lady from Colorado

Mr. Get for five minutes. Thank you so much Mr. chairman and uh my questions follow very closely on what Mr. La was

just talking about. I want to thank you for having this hearing. We had a hearing in the energy subcommittee in

2023 about AI and energy and many people hadn't even been thinking about the the tremendous use of energy by AI up until

that time. Um I think that this this issue is a really ripe issue for bipartisan solutions. However, I'm

concerned um sometimes when we talk about cutting red tape or or or um or eliminating um uh these proposals, uh

sometimes that's a code word for partisanship, but we have had as as several people have pointed out, we've

had bipartisan suggestions. Mr. Peters from this committee has worked on some with people from your side of the aisle.

They've had them in the Senate. So, you know, if if we try to well, if the Republicans on this committee try to go

this alone, then I think this is going to run into trouble. But I think there's tremendous potential for us to work on

this in a bipartisan way. Um, I want to talk about an issue though that Mr. Palone raised which is and also um Mr.

Turk raised which is is really a concerning issue of today and that and that's these tariffs. All of the

witnesses here today can stipulate that um we're going to need a large increase in all types of energy to not just deal

with current demands of consumers but AI. Um does anybody disagree with that? Well, no one disagrees with it.

So, Mr. Turk, um so if we're going to build more transmission infrastructure, we're going to have to have raw

materials like steel and aluminum. Is that correct? Yes. And um if if these tariffs actually go into effect, which

it seems like it might, won't those raw materials needed to add transmission capacity be more expensive? Yes. And uh

Mr. uh Batia, just yesterday, in fact, Micron announced that they're going to have price increases on some products

today, starting today, ding to pre due to President Trump's tariffs. Isn't that correct?

Um we did we um you know memory market is uh is different. I mean didn't you announce yesterday that Micron is going

to impose tariff related search charge on some products from April 9th that the tariffs are an evolving

situation and we are communicating with our customer. Well Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to put into the record

a Reuters article which says, quote, Micron to impose tariff related search charge on some products from April 9th.

And without objection, so ordered. Thank you. Now, um Mr. Mr. um doc Dr. Schmidt, you you

just talked about and and I agree with you that um we need more energy in all forms. Um and and that's and and also

that's likely the way that this that this market is going to develop. Is that right?

Yes. Correct. So when people say, "Oh, we need to drill baby drill." That we do need natural gas, but we also need to

make sure that we can upgrade our grid to deal with the renewable energy that is inevitably going to be part of this

process. Is that right? Yes. Yes, ma'am. Now, um so Mr. Turk, I want to ask you, without guard rails, how how is it that

we're going to be able without guardrails that protect consumers, how is it we're going to be able to develop

centers, data centers for AI at the same time, we can ensure average Americans can get the um electricity that they

need um at at decent prices. Well, I think we need to do two things at the same time. uh we need to bring on

those electrons as quickly as we can uh including to streamline permitting but to do it in a bipartisan basis.

Bipartisan means durable. Uh it means uh making sure things work actually in the real world. And then secondly, we do

need to have the guard rails. Um with all due respect to the other witnesses, uh we got phenomenal talent in the US.

We're lucky to have that talent working on AI, but we also need to have the government step up. We need to have

sensible, thoughtful guard rails to protect everyone's privacy. That's your jobs. And if we don't have those

guardrails, what's going to go what's going to happen for energy prices for consumers? Well, energy prices will go

through the roof and we'll lose trust for AI by the American people as well, which isn't going to help our

competition with China either. Thank you. I yield back. Gentle lady yields back. The chair recognizes Mr. Hudson

for five minutes for questions. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for holding this very important

hearing today. Uh this topic is crucial for future generations and ensuring the resources uh for healthc care

facilities, banks, universities, our national security, including our war fighter. Um thank the witnesses for your

very important testimony, very informative. Um bottom line is we must maintain our place as a global leader on

AI. I think we can all agree on that. North Carolina, where I live, is a state that leads in innovation and uh that

includes in AI. There's no doubt we'll continue to incorporate AI in many of our industries. Uh but we must ensure we

have the resources necessary to advance and sustain AI use. I represent Fort Bragg. We call it the epicenter of the

universe only with the airborne and special forces. At Fort Bragg, we use AI. Um AI benefits the war fighter by

anticipating what's next, adjusting to situations, and connecting our soldiers. It's absolutely critical to our national

security that we stay ahead of our nearpeer adversaries, particularly China, so that we maintain our superior

advantage. I never want my guys and gals in a fair fight. I want us to to to be the leader um and certainly don't want

us to uh to face a nearper adversary that has a superior AI technology. Um, I've also seen threats to our energy

sources, whether it's the rolling brown outs we saw in California, uh, but also including when two substations in my

district were attacked in my home county, uh, causing a multi-day power loss. Uh, nearly 4,000 people without

power for almost a week. Hospitals faced blackouts. Schools and businesses closed. Restaurants and grocery stores

lost their inventory. Stop lights were dark. Sell signals went down. Even gas stations had to close. One of my

constituents lost her life. Disruptions to our energy supply are dangerous and an attack like this has big implications

on our future AI capabilities. The threat only grows as AI is further incorporated in our everyday lives. Um,

I would ask I'll start with Mr. Wang, but if anyone else wants to jump in, can you please share uh from your opinion

how an unreliable or a non-resilient grid would impact investing investment planning uh and existing commercial

activities? Uh first of all, I want to just echo many of your statements. Uh they're spot

on. First of all, we need advanced AI for national security. We need our Department of Defense, our our war

fighter to have advanced AI capabilities. Um that is absolutely critical for this next phase. And uh and

that is dependent on energy as as we've discussed here in the uh uh over the course of today. Um, one of the one of

the greatest risks if you think about the training of these large-scale AI systems, it requires a continuous source

of power to be able to uh both train advanced AI systems and keep them running. Um if we have an unreliable

energy grid in any sort of uh you know uh competitive or conflict scenario um if the adversaries have the ability to

take down our grid through cyber attacks or other forms of of attacks then that greatly impacts our ability to be

competitive or or to be able to fight uh fight in that battle. So um it is absolutely critical we have reliable

energy grid. It's important that we secure this energy grid. It's important that we're able to protect against cyber

attacks and other uh other forms of attacks and we have consistent power. Does anybody else want to weigh in?

I think that you know the um uh the president as well as uh Congress is um behind uh the strong growth in

manufacturing across many different sectors including semiconductors and energy uh has always been an advantage

for this country um due to you know abundant natural resources and we've invested in in all different

technologies uh over time and that has just stalled over the last um 101 15 years as some of the other panelists

noted and so absolutely believe that investing in energy is going to um help to to fuel this manufacturing

renaissance and in particular the semiconductor renaissance that um you know we all know is so important to to

winning in AI. AI is you know just to to um co-op some of the words of um uh Mr. Wang on the panel here. You know, it's

about data and data needs memory chips and it needs um the most advanced memory chips in order to be able to um create

all of the insights that u are are valuable in whatever circumstance or application that we see. Well, thank you

for your answers, Mr. T. Just congressman, if I could just say a word on grid, and I'm just so pleased you

mentioned the grid. It's just such a fundamental backbone of our our infrastructure for military bases, but

for everybody else in industry. Uh this is where I think it's so important to have all the tools in the tool belt. Uh

you all provided through the bipartisan infrastructure legislation $10.5 billion dollars to improve our grid through a

program called the GRIP program. Uh we have $23 billion in our loan program right now with a whole bunch more in the

pipeline to help utilities to strengthen the grid going forward. That's what I'm talking about of keeping all these tools

in the tool belt. Thanks. Appreciate that. Mr. Chairman, my time is expired, so I will yield back, but thank you to

the witnesses for those answers. Thank you. Uh the chair will gentleman yields back chair recognizes Miss Shakowski for

five minutes for questions. Thank you s so much. Um Mr. uh perk I want did I do that wrong? No. Okay. Um I

have questions for you. Some go way back. We're talking about AI today, but I have to tell you that I and Gus Bill

Rockus on the uh Republican side have been working on the issue of uh of privacy for a very very long time and

even be more before that with uh in all kinds of tech interests. But we have never done anything to reign in big

tech. Nothing whatsoever. So we see families um that have to give all kinds of information

which they they do all kinds of I think risks that that go on. So, of course, we're we're talking about AI, but in the

meantime, we have seen tech leaders um apologize to consumers. Oh, we didn't

mean to put children at risk. We didn't mean to do this or or or or that. And yet, we have done nothing at all. So

what it seems to me is now we're talking about AI and you talk about risk. You use that word risk. So do we have to go

back further or let's we if you want to just talk about risk with with AI? What exactly are are we talking about? You

you mentioned that in your written statement. Um, but I'd like to know who, and we can start with how do we address

the issue of risk, but who should be addressing the issue of risk? Well, thank you, Congresswoman, for that

question and thank you for your focus on these issues for years uh and years. Uh your leadership has just been uh

tremendous. Uh I completely agree with something Dr. Schmidt said at the beginning in his opening statement about

uh AI being underhyped if anything. This is an incredibly powerful technology. What that means to me is and I've had

the chance to work with a lot of our experts in the government and we need to make sure that we keep those experts in

the government. We need more AI experts in the government not letting uh AI experts leave which gives me concern uh

with some of the firings and some of the other things that this administration the Trump administration's doing. Um,

but powerful technologies cannot only be used for good. Powerful technologies, especially in terrorist hands and rogue

states hands, and other hands, once you get these models out there, uh, it's incredibly difficult to bring them back

in. So, I'll give you a specific example of a risk, and I know this is an unclassified setting, so I'll just talk

a bit in generalities. uh as smart as the folks are who work in scale AI and open AI and Google and Meta and uh these

other big tech companies, uh they're not nuclear weapons experts, nor should they be. I'm not sure why you'd be a nuclear

weapons expert. And uh Mr. Wang mentioned his uh parents working at Los Alamos, which is just a phenomenal lab

uh for us in our country. We need to make sure that before a model goes out there in the public that there's some

red teaming, there's some vetting by nuclear weapons experts to know what to look for to make sure that terrorists

can't take these models and help them develop nuclear weapons or biological weapons or chemical weapons. That's

where I think they're just as you suggest it's it's who and how. Uh the private sector will need to leave. They

have an incentive to make sure that their uh models are safe, but they don't have all the expertise they need to red

team and make sure that those models are safe. uh I would prefer that not to just be a voluntary uh kind of understanding.

I think it should be a requirement that before models come out there needs to be some vetting. Now that has to be done