Slotkin calls for Manhattan Project-like effort to win AI tech race with China

Michigan U.S. Sen. Elissa Slotkin called Friday for the U.S. government to pursue a Manhattan Project-like effort to unite the brightest minds on artificial intelligence, work with the private sector and "get our ass in gear" to win the tech arms race with China.

On national security, the Holly Democrat proposed reorienting the government to protect Americans at home from cyber attacks by training a Cyber National Guard and not being "scared" to use the country's sophisticated hacking tools to "hit our enemies where it hurts."

"If China is going to target our power grid and local water systems, we need to take offline the servers they are using to do so," said Slotkin, a former top Pentagon official who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

In a speech delivered at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, the Holly Democrat outlined a vision for national security that prioritizes economic security for the middle class. It's the second in a series of speeches in which she plans to lay out an alternative vision for the country's future, following remarks in Washington in June where she described the shrinking middle class the country's greatest existential threat.

Slotkin on Friday echoed that warning and called for treating critical supply chains as national security assets with the help of allies, proposing a "NATO-like body where countries agree to share export controls, tech and protection against Chinese coercion," she said.

Think a semiconductor chip alliance or one for lithium.

"In the world where we all need common things, but we don't have access to those common things, like lithium, you can see an assemblage of countries ― maybe a bunch of NATO countries, but not all. Maybe a bunch of the G7 countries, but maybe not all," Slotkin said in a moderated conversation following her remarks.

Slotkin also endorsed the U.S. issuing a global digital dollar, as China did in 2020, she noted, to help ensure the digital currencies of the future are tied to the dollar.

"The world is going digital, so we either kind of get in the game, or we shouldn't be surprised that it's all ceded to these private entities," she said.

On industrial policy, a "proper" Sovereign Wealth Fund should be set up to invest in technologies that usually "scare off" investors, Slotkin said. The U.S. also needs a Rare Earth Reserve to stockpile critical minerals, just as the country set up the Strategic Petroleum Reserve following the oil crisis in the 1970s, she said.

"It can be controversial in a room in New York, but the free market isn't perfect at preparing us for emergencies, for natural disasters and certainly for the technological risks that are coming at us right now," Slotkin said after the speech.

"I do think that some sort of reserve for the things that we need is essential. We just got to look at how to set it up correctly."

Slotkin proposed the military should follow the lead of Ukraine and adopt commercial technology that's already on the market when possible, and adapt it for military use. That's because it's taking too long (12 years) to bring newly conceived weapons systems online from idea to delivery, versus China doing so in just five years.

"We literally need to take a battle ax to the old way of doing business, where we spend excessive time and excessive money building the next big toy only to use it for just one threat," Slotkin said.

The U.S. is overdue for a reorganization of its national security apparatus, the senator added, operating under an approach set up after World War II that helped win the space race and Cold War. This should include undoing the silos between national security and economic security structures, she said.

"Trump is indeed burning everything down, but instead of snapping back to the old way of doing things, we have to build something new out of the ashes," Slotkin said, referring to Republican President Donald Trump.

mburke@detroitnews.com