IT WAS DURING THE 1990s when the American leadership in shaping the future of the Internet became evident. Through that leadership America was also shaping its own future. At the forefront were the ambitious goals and vision of the executive branch. President Clinton and Vice President Gore saw the interconnected network of capabilities as fundamental to the development of the country. So much so that the term “information superhighway” was defined by the McGraw-Hill Computer Desktop Encyclopedia, published in 2001, as “a proposed high-speed communications system that was touted by the Clinton/Gore administration to enhance education in America in the 21st century. Its purpose was to help all citizens regardless of their income level. The Internet was originally cited as a model for this superhighway; however, with the explosion of the World Wide Web, the Internet became the information superhighway” (Wiki n.d.).

In his address at a 1994 conference in South America, Vice President Gore started his speech by reflecting on the words of Nathaniel Hawthorne, which VP Gore had read when he was still in high school. The words were: “By means of electricity, the world of matter has become a great nerve, vibrating thousands of miles in a breathless point of time. The round globe is a vast … brain, instinct with intelligence!” (Gore 1994). VP Gore explained that Hawthorne was inspired by the development of the telegraph, and he foresaw what America was now poised to implement. VP Gore then asked the participants their help to create a global information infrastructure.

Those were the years when the executive branch created grand visions, and America trusted and was inspired by those visions. What followed was the greatest economy any country has ever seen. As the century turned, a new industry took shape and changed the course of human history. However, if we truly consider the words of Hawthorne, he touched on two concepts—the “interconnectivity” and the “intelligence.” The Internet, for all its transformational power, could address interconnectivity—and could bring intelligence augmentation in terms of people acquiring knowledge and wisdom—but not become intelligent itself. For that to happen, something much more advanced than the Internet was needed. Something that VP Gore and the three administrations after his did not consider as part of the analysis. It was AI.

THE EXECUTIVE MESSAGING

In January of 1992 President George H. W. Bush gave his third and final State of the Union address, which was also his fourth and final address to a joint session of the US Congress. In that speech he talked about rebuilding schools to upskill Americans in computer science and suggested a tax credit for emerging technologies. He stated, “We must encourage research and development. My plan is to make the R&D tax credit permanent, and to provide record levels of support, over $76 billion this year alone for people who will explore the promise of emerging technologies” (Bush 1992). While this was a general reference to an emerging change in the economy, two years later President Clinton in his first State of the Union address to the nation gave a clear and powerful transformation plan.

President Clinton described Al Gore's vision for launching the Internet and said, “And the Vice President is right, we must also work with the private sector to connect every classroom, every clinic, every library, every hospital in America into a national information superhighway by the year 2000. Think of it: Instant access to information will increase productivity, will help to educate our children. It will provide better medical care. It will create jobs. And I call on the Congress to pass legislation to establish that information superhighway this year.” President Clinton was right. Productivity increase did happen.

But notice the profound difference between how the two leaders—President Bush and President Clinton—talked about the transformation. One simply acknowledged that some change is taking place, while the other gave an entire plan, set a clear goal, and established the framework around which he could galvanize the nation. He used the term “information superhighway”—which helped with the branding and the messaging. It was descriptive yet mysterious. It combined two words that people already knew and could use their own imagination to envision a powerful future from the fusion of the two words. He didn't lay out the governance issues, the Internet safety issues, the values issues, the Internet ethics issues as the precursor to launching the vision for the Internet revolution. He didn't scare people about the downside of the Internet. He didn't begin his transformation pitch with fear-infusing narratives. He presented a vision for America that Americans were able to not only understand but also believe in. What came out on the other end was electrifying energy that placed America at the forefront of the Internet revolution and gave America a competitive advantage that even today remains intact. As the executive office inspired and guided the nation, America responded and experienced one of the highest rates of economic growth in the history of the nation.

President Clinton and Vice President Gore could have said that we would link local area networks with others such that we have a network of globally connected computers—and that would have meant nothing for the masses. They could have simply ignored the topic, or like their predecessor they could have just touched upon it lightly and vaguely as some emerging technology. They could have delegated it to some agency or created a special report-generation office to take ownership. They could have ignored the diffusion and industrialization potential of the Internet. But they owned the vision and led the change. The clarity, vision setting, planning, and communication not only gave America a new vision for transformation to the Internet economy, but they also inspired a nation to become the world's leading economic power by an order of magnitude. Even today, America remains the uncontested leader and the American control of and participation in the Internet owes a lot to the flawless execution of the government.

EXECUTIVE LEADERSHIP DROPPED THE BALL

The lesson learnt is that the passion and the energy with which a vision is communicated to the people are directly proportional to the results and participation of the masses. If the vision can inspire confidence, get commitment, and excite a large number of people, it can create a powerful technological revolution. This also shows that if we have leadership at the helm, we can accomplish great things. Most importantly, if we truly wanted to be the global leader in AI, we would have seen strong executive leadership—but what we saw was complete obliviousness to the greatest opportunity ever presented to America.

And if we consider AI to be bigger than the Internet, as Senator Ted Cruz reminded us in his Senate hearing on AI, we should expect even greater and stronger leadership from our presidents. But we saw none of that. In President Trump's over 56,000 tweets, we were not able to find a single reference to artificial intelligence and in State of the Union addresses there were no references to artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning, or intelligent automation. President Biden's record is a little better but only slightly.

Let us look at the complexity and extent of the situation once more. AI is the most powerful technological, scientific, and mathematical revolution ever experienced by humankind. It is literally designing intelligence. It will determine the competitive potential of countries, companies, supply chains, and sectors. It is the ultimate competitive advantage. It is the greatest form of capital that blends human, physical, and knowledge capital all in one. It is what will stimulate discovery, innovation, and research and development. It is what will secure the nation and create national security. It is what will keep America great or build back better. But despite all that, our presidents (and vice presidents) did not have the time, the vision, or the inclination to inspire America to embrace and advance this powerful transformation. They could not tweet or author articles about this. They could not give speeches about it. They could not come up with a plan to industrialize it. They could not give a roadmap to a community college in rural America to train the next generation on AI. They did not even bother to learn the basics about machine learning and its potential. They could not even talk about it as a layman.

The narrative coming from the presidents was neither motivational nor inspirational. In fact, it was nothing. It was equivalent to complete silence on a topic where America needed to be informed. And whenever conversation about AI arose, it was always somehow conditioned on or stitched to the governance and safety message. AI was presented as something to fear, something to be wary of, and something to be scared about. Why would anyone attach any importance to a fearful thing? No wonder Google employees staged a walkout because of Google's work with the Department of Defense. AI capabilities were not being viewed as essential for American success and prosperity or for national security. They were something to be worried about. This was not the case during World War II, when teams and teams of Americans and allies worked day and night to counter the German technology. With AI, there was no sense of nationalism. It is quite likely that if the AI messaging were done as a national need and in response to an existential threat, Google's employees would have viewed it entirely differently. They may have not staged a walkout. How a narrative is presented makes all the difference. The AI narrative somehow got mixed up in the ideological war going on in America.

TRUMP'S AMERICAN AI

In 2020 when President Trump visited the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, he reminded the world about his uncle being a super genius. The president said, “You know my uncle was a great — he was at MIT. He taught at MIT for a record number of years. He was a great super genius, Dr. John Trump.” Then the president shifted his attention to himself and tried to establish that his uncle's scientific talent could have been a family trait. He continued, “I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it. Every one of these doctors said: ‘How do you know so much about this?' Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president” (Zilber 2020).

Whether President Trump was predisposed to be a scientific super genius would be hard to determine, but it is true that after two years of being in office he signed an executive order about AI. When it comes to a certain type of messaging, no one can beat President Trump. He has a gifted ability to communicate with his base. He can make his base feel as if they are running the White House with him and are participating in policymaking. But when it comes to major policy areas or to mobilize national resources, the Clinton/Gore team has no parallel. Al Gore had an uncanny ability to take on complex problems, break them down into meaningful solutions, develop narratives around them, and then present them in simplified messaging format to get public support behind those ideas. He did that with the climate change messaging and with promoting the information superhighway (Internet). And President Bill Clinton had incredible charismatic communication power that could inspire even his enemies.

President Trump had different strengths, and most likely his AI strategy was not his own idea or thinking but a result of what was communicated to him by the people who surrounded him. This included the OSTP (Office of Science and Technology Policy), an office in the White House that ran (and runs) the American AI strategy. Regardless of whether President Trump formulated the national AI strategy or not, his push to launch the AI efforts demonstrated his commitment to confront China. His role became even more prominent when America deployed plan B for Chinese technology containment. The Trump administration did not back down from placing several Chinese companies on the Entity List, blacklisting others, and asking Americans to stop investing in certain Chinese firms. President Trump also encouraged American allies to stop certain Chinese firms from entering their countries or doing business there. He went after the funds that had invested in or were planning to invest in Chinese tech firms. He forced firms such as TikTok to keep data in America and then pushed Americans to stop investing in Chinese tech firms. The Trump strategy on plan B was so effective that President Biden had no choice but to continue that, and Biden's Chinese technology containment strategy simply became an extension of the Trump plan.

On the domestic front, after two years of taking office President Trump reinvigorated American AI by signing an executive order about AI. At that time in 2019 there was still optimism about America's leadership in AI, and the positioning was about “maintaining” America's leadership.

A conference organized in May of 2018 became the precursor to the executive order. It was attended by over 100 people and brought together people from the government, industry research labs, and academia. The idea was to share research and development needs. In various breakout sessions, information was shared. But the large part of the conference, as documented in the OSTP report, contained remarks by Michael Kratsios, deputy assistant to the president for technology policy. In his remarks he pretty much repeated the so-called plan that represented the anchoring bias of the OSTP. The plan was composed of:

• American AI leadership: In this Kratsios bragged about how America has great AI schools and that he visited Pittsburg where he saw Robotics Row start-ups that are part of the ecosystem surrounding Carnegie Mellon University.

  Mr. Kratsios claimed that America is a leader—a statement that will soon be challenged by another committee report (discussed in Chapter 8). Then he touted that he, along with OMB Director Mulvaney, wrote a memorandum that directed the agencies: For the first time in history, the memorandum prioritized R&D investment in autonomous systems, machine learning, and quantum computing. This “first time in history” seemed to have been used excessively by the OSTP during the 2018–2020 time period. Most of these “first time in history” pat-on-the-back statements were either a stretch of the truth or meaningless in terms of their impact to successfully launch the AI revolution in America. They were a stretch because seven out of the eight strategies pursed by the OSTP were developed in the 2016 plan developed under the Obama administration. So much for the first time in history! They were meaningless because why brag about something that eventually led to the decline of American leadership in AI.

• American workers: Kratsios then pointed out that the policy wanted to focus on American workers and to build the STEM potential. There was plenty of talk about the American workers, but no concrete plan was given to either retrain or protect the American workers.
• R&D: He then focused on R&D, funding R&D, and building national capacity for research. Again, this was an area that represented the primary function of OSTP.
• Regulations: He then talked about how the Trump administration would remove hurdles from research activities. He said:

As we're making great strides within the Administration, to the rest of America often the most significant action our government can take is to get out of the way.

Our Administration is not in the business of conquering imaginary beasts. We will not try to “solve” problems that don't exist.

To the greatest degree possible, we will allow scientists and technologists to freely develop their next great inventions right here in the United States. (OSTP 2018)

This cliché of “the best thing the government can do is to get out of the way” is often used to signify that the government will not impose unnecessary regulations or that the agency does not have a mechanism, capability, or information to meet the needs of the target audience (researchers, private sector, others).

Mr. Kratsios also declared that he represented the United States in the G7 meeting where he recommended investing in R&D. His stance and message to the G7 validated that he and the OSTP were viewing the AI strategy from an extremely limited dimension of making R&D investments. He was pushing the concept of build it, and they will come.

In the same conference it was announced that to align interagency R&D priorities, a new committee known as the Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence would be formed.

In that conference, President Trump's message was straightforward. He said:

We're on the verge of new technological revolutions that could improve virtually every aspect of our lives, create vast new wealth for American workers and families, and open up bold, new frontiers in science, medicine, and communication. (OSTP 2018)

What he did not know was that his own OSTP would become the greatest barrier to innovation.

The Trump executive order resurrected the AI focus, which had been absent in the first two years of the Trump presidency. The bill was introduced as follows:

The Trump Administration is committed to strengthening American leadership in artificial intelligence (AI). Recognizing the strategic importance of AI to the Nation's future economy and security, the Trump Administration established the American AI Initiative via Executive Order 13859 in February 2019. This initiative identified five key lines of effort, including increasing AI research investment, unleashing Federal AI computing and data resources, setting AI technical standards, building America's AI workforce, and engaging with international allies. (Trump 2019)

In the typical promotional style of the Trump administration, the action steps included doubling the AI research investment, establishing the “first-ever” national AI research institutes, setting AI technical standards, providing regulatory guidance, establishing federal use guidelines, and creating new international alliances.

In January of 2021, the president authorized the creation of a National AI Initiative Office under the White House OSTP. This office was tasked with implementing the US national AI strategy. It was charged to coordinate policymaking and to bring government, private sector, academia, and other stakeholders together.

The executive action increased spending on AI 2021 budget 6% over 2020 budget to $142.2 billion in federal research and development. President Trump saw himself as the first president in American history who included AI as R&D investment. The National Science Foundation allocated an additional $50 million for AI—which took AI R&D at the NSF to more than $830 million. The Department of Energy invested an additional $125 million, the US Department of Agriculture $100 million, and the National Health Institute $50 million for new research on chronic diseases. On the defense side, DARPA was investing $459 million in AI R&D and the Department of Defense's Joint AI Center $290 million.

That was the time when the American AI Initiative was launched by President Trump – and which eventually became the United States national strategy for AI leadership.

The American AI Initiative directed federal agencies to prioritize artificial intelligence in their annual budget requests. The NSF, the White House, and the Department of Energy announced that $1 billion of awards would be used to establish AI and quantum information science institutes across the country. Six universities were tasked with the research. They included the University of Oklahoma at Norman, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Colorado at Boulder, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of California at Davis, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The national strategy was composed of only two drivers—invest more money and carry out more research. This was the professors' solution to a complex national capability-building strategy. From their perspective, all that America needed was more research, and all they needed to do was to open the banks.

Kudos to President Trump for supporting the bold investment plan for at least pushing the AI agenda. Clearly, what he pushed, however, was the OSTP agenda and not an American AI agenda. There was no link between the so-called plan and industrialization, adoption, diffusion, and productivity growth in America. It was all about research. The OSTP, which is run by professors and technologists, must have convinced President Trump to back up their agenda, and President Trump complied. Once again, it was hoped that the “build it, and they will come” mindset would win the day. The history of innovation shows that it never happens that way.

The Initiative also called for the development of the first-ever agency-by-agency report of nondefense AI R&D spending. This report identified $1 billion in nondefense R&D for FY 2020, establishing a benchmark for measuring nondefense AI R&D budgets in the future.

Despite President Trump's claimed genetic superiority to understand science, it is likely that the plan he implemented and approved did not come from him. Knowing President Trump's business background, had he really developed the plan, he would have certainly questioned how the R&D spending would drive returns on investment and how the technologies would find their way into industrialization, and that would have led to developing an actual plan. But that did not happen. This leads us to believe that President Trump did not spend much thought on the plan or critically analyzed it; instead, he must have relied on the OSTP to come up with a plan. Two years into the Trump administration, the OSTP must have known how to get President Trump to agree on things. The OSTP must have understood the internal workings of the new White House and would have known how to get the agenda approved. The art of the deal with President Trump would have been simple: praise him and show him how he could make his legacy—forming several claims of “first ever in American history”—and that would get him to pass anything.

The OSTP got its wish list, but America suffered. An R&D plan became a national strategy. Devoid of a corresponding industrialization, commercialization, and economic strategy, the agenda of the scientists became the face of AI. There was no corresponding business, economic, commercial, and industrialization strategy. All of that was shoved into a hypothetical public-private partnership where miracles would transpire and the R&D investment would somehow miraculously diffuse across the nation because a few business leaders, the OSTP, agency heads, and academics met twice a year to wine and dine and talk about AI. A disaster was taking shape. The fate of American future was being authored as its epitaph.

The mission of the OSTP did not call for developing a national strategy for something as profound as AI. This is how the OSTP describes its mission:

The mission of OSTP is threefold; first, to provide the President and his senior staff with accurate, relevant, and timely scientific and technical advice on all matters of consequence; second, to ensure that the policies of the Executive Branch are informed by sound science; and third, to ensure that the scientific and technical work of the Executive Branch is properly coordinated so as to provide the greatest benefit to society. The Director of OSTP also serves as Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and manages the NSTC. (White House 2016)

The OSTP plans were being architected by coalescing the wish lists of bureaucrats and politicians on one hand and technologists and scientists on the other hand. What was missing was the industrialization concept of AI.

VIRTUE SIGNALING

While this was going on, another influential segment of the society jumped into the AI debate, and a third influencer group was created. This included the futurists, ethicists, AI governance champions, and values signalers.

There were many legitimate reasons to have these influences. First, there are genuine risks associated with AI, and having governance is an absolutely legitimate concern. Second, a society must reflect on ethics in every decision it makes and especially when a change as great as the AI revolution is taking place. Third, it is important to include different segments of society—especially social scientists—who can guide the development of technology beyond what technologists and scientists can envision or what politicians may desire. But all of that needs to be done sincerely, prudently, and with context. The way the OSTP led the social narrative of how AI was being created, it made AI appear evil, undesirable, and malevolent. No serious efforts were made to stop Big Tech from abusive policies related to AI. After all, it was Big Tech from which most of the AI ethics problems were coming. Whether it was gender or ethnic discrimination, exploitation to increase extremism, encouraging genocide in certain parts of the world, manipulation to buy products and services at higher prices, exploiting internal data to promote own merchandise at the expense of other sellers, and launching copycat AI products by copying them from smaller start-ups who shared their confidential information in hopes of partnering or getting acquired by the larger tech firms—all of these ethical violations were being done by the same firms who were in bed with the OSTP. The OSTP conferences were sponsored by the large tech firms, and in some cases executives from these large firms directly advised the OSTP. Even the semblance of propriety and independence was lost. The tech firms funded research programs in universities, where professors held private commercial interests in tech businesses, and the same universities were setting the strategy for investment in AI. The ethics and governance should have started at home first. The OSTP should have required governance and ethics from Big Tech before giving them a seat at the table.

PRESIDENT BIDEN AND AI

In July of 2019, during his election campaign, presidential candidate Joe Biden said the following in New York:

I'll invest in research and development. The cornerstone of my presidency will be just that, so the United States is leading the charge for innovation around the world. There is no reason we should be failing or falling behind anyone, China or anyone else when it comes to energy, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, 5G, high-speed rail.

Folks, we have the greatest research universities in the history of the world. We have more of them here than anywhere in the rest of the world combined. That we cannot ensure that our people are ready for this transition that will inevitably accompany any new technology would be a disaster. We need the most agile system to accommodate these changes. (Biden 2019)

Here candidate Biden was making a commitment to invest more in emerging technologies, including AI. He points to the fearful trend of “failing or falling behind” China or anyone else. His words show that the concern had started to mount. But it also shows that President Biden, much like President H. W. Bush about the Internet or President Trump about AI, was treating AI as one of many emerging technologies, and his solution against failing or falling behind was to invest more. This implied that the only thing that was failing was the understanding that AI is not just any technology—it is the underlying force of all innovation, all economic and financial activity, all scientific discovery, and all national security. More importantly, America's falling behind and failing could not have been fixed by pouring more money into it.

Candidate Biden then quickly brought the issue of AI and 5G being tied to promote greater democracy and our shared prosperity. While it is understandable that for America this messaging had double value—on one end it showed that American AI technology is for good and will be used for good, and on the other end it created a perception of Chinese or foreign AI as evil or bad—this narrative also created a competitive differentiation for the American technology while providing a cover or an excuse for America falling behind in technology. One could now claim that the reason we are behind is because we take privacy, democracy, and human rights seriously and we do not approve of blatant solution-building using people's data for subversive purposes. This allowed the narrative of AI for good or responsible AI to flourish.

But there was a cost associated with that. Not only did it slow down the progress and make smaller companies question their solutions, but it also created a general fear of AI. The preexisting bias among the population about the killer robots got reinforced. People began thinking about AI as some type of a control device being launched by the government to control them. Hence, whatever the government was trying to accomplish by pointing out that our AI is more ethical than their AI did not do much—at least for the American audience. Would the Chinese believe that their AI is more evil than the American AI? Would foreign populations embracing Chinese technology believe that the Chinese AI is anti-democracy and does not deliver shared prosperity? That remains to be seen. But what we do know is that while the American AI strategy had a direct impact on Americans, it would not affect Americans to the point of them caring about the Chinese evil AI. Reminding Americans about the demerits of AI, about the risks, about the fears, about the evil potential was not helping in developing a positive or motivational perspective of the technology. Candidate Biden said:

When it comes to technologies for the future like 5G, artificial intelligence, other nations are devoting national resources and dominating their development, determining how they will be used.

We have to ensure that 21st century technologies are used to promote greater democracy, shared prosperity, not to curve freedom and opportunity either at home or abroad. As new technologies shape our economies and societies, we have to ensure that these engines of progress are bound by laws and ethics. We have done it at every technological turning point in our history. (Biden 2019)

A year later in July 2020 Mr. Biden again revisited the topic in Pennsylvania. There he promised to allocate $300 billion in his first four years to “sharpen America's competitive edge in the new industries where global leadership is up for grabs, like battery technology, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, clean energy” (Biden 2020). Clearly, Mr. Biden recognized that America was now no longer a leader in AI. His messaging from 2019 had changed. In 2019 he was merely pointing out the risk of America failing or falling behind—but by 2020 he was convinced that the global leadership was now up for grabs. America was no longer a leader.

And after getting elected, he kept that message intact. In January 14, 2021, he gave a speech in Delaware on Covid and the economy and again mentioned America making historical investments in technologies such as AI—where the leadership was “up for grabs” and repeated the “up for grabs” term in a Washington, DC, speech a week later.

In the Munich Security Conference that took place on February 19, 2021, President Biden emphasized another dimension of AI:

We have to ensure that the benefits of growth are shared broadly and equitably, not just by a few. We have to push back against the Chinese government's economic abuses and coercion that undercut the foundations of the international economic system. Everyone—everyone—must play by the same rules. U.S. and European companies are required to publicly disclose corporate governance to corporate governance structures and abide by rules to deter corruption and monopolistic practices.

Chinese companies should be held to the same standard. We must shape the rules that will govern the advance of technology and the norms of behavior in cyberspace, artificial intelligence, biotechnology so that they are used to lift people up, not used to pin them down. We must stand up for the democratic values that make it possible for us to accomplish any of this, pushing back against those who would monopolize and normalize repression. (Biden 2021b)

President Biden's messaging about technology had now taken a China angle. Now the original narrative of good AI vs. bad AI was once again invoked but with the focus on China. The Chinese government was touted as abusers and Chinese companies as lacking governance and their technology not following behavioral norms. The problem with this narrative was that firstly behavioral norms for AI were not well defined at an international level and secondly America had no way to declare that our own AI was following the good norms. But regardless of dwelling on whose norms were good vs. bad, the most important insight was that once again the AI narrative was somehow connected with the evil AI storyline.

This mention of AI with reminding of ethics, values, and rights may have been a good strategy to create a competitive differentiation between American AI and Chinese AI, but it was stopping AI from being adopted and diffused in the population. It was a technology that came with anxiety and not fun. Imagine if at the launch of the auto industry the first introduction to cars would have come with a long list of cautionary requirements about drunk driving and its risks; it would have created social anxiety about cars.

The reality is that most of the evidence we have about AI being abused comes from our own Big Tech—and we have not been able to do anything to stop them. The Cambridge Analytica scandal did not happen in China or Russia, it affected America.

In March of 2021, President Biden held a press conference and declared that he is going to raise the research and science investment to close to 2% of the GDP vs. 0.7% because “China is out-investing us by a long shot because their plan is to own that future” (Biden 2021c). Clearly, the threat of China out-investing America was driving the Biden policy. A certain level of anxiety was evident.

In April 2021 President Biden addressed a joint session of Congress where he finally acknowledged that the competitive risk is real:

We'll see more technological change in the next 10 years than we saw in the last 50 years. That's how rapidly artificial intelligence and so much more are changing. And we're falling behind the competition with the rest of the world. (Biden 2021a)

President Biden in September 2021 made a statement related to security at AUKUS (a trilateral security pact between Australia, the UK, and the US), where Australian PM Scott Morrison and UK PM Boris Johnson were also present. At this point he was expressing the strategic deployment of AI on the defense side:

AUKUS will bring together our sailors, our scientists, and our industries to maintain and expand our edge in military capabilities and critical technologies, such as cyber, artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, and undersea domains. (Biden 2021d)

To counter China's growing footprint, President Biden was now reaching out to other partners and allies. Along the same lines, he announced at the United Nations General Assembly that America would work with its partners and that such work would ensure America's leadership in AI—and then he contrasted American technology ambitions with others who may use it to suppress dissent or target minority communities, most likely a comment directed toward China.

As new technologies continue to evolve, we'll work together with our democratic partners to ensure that new advances in areas from biotechnology, to quantum computing, 5G, artificial intelligence, and more are used to lift people up, to solve problems, and advance human freedom—not to suppress dissent or target minority communities. (Biden 2021e)

Later in the speech President Biden pointed out that he would not allow large and powerful countries to coerce smaller nations via technological exploitation.

Unlike President Clinton or VP Gore, President Biden did not seem to have a command on the technological revolution or that he wanted to understand AI in depth—but he clearly did know two things about it: first that AI will have a large impact on America's competitiveness and second that America was falling behind in it. But like his predecessors, his vision on how to fix the problem is limited by what he was told by the OSTP.

In July of 2021 President Biden had launched his version of the national AI initiative. This was now the third attempt to launch AI national initiatives by a president. The first was by President Obama in 2016. The unexpected results of the 2016 elections and its consequences implied a major reset where another attempt was made to launch a national AI strategy after what appears to be a two-year pause. That was under President Trump and where he signed the 2019 executive order. Before leaving office, President Trump augmented his February 2019 executive order by adding a layer of directives for responsible AI. After the Trump administration, President Biden launched the national strategy. The third time is the charm—but the path forward will not be easy.

But what do these “launches” and “relaunches” really mean? From an execution perspective, they meant that a website—usually composed of 5 to 10 webpages—is created, some committees are formed, the committees meet a few times, one or more reports are issued, and an associated legislation is often enacted or pushed. The committees are composed of the usual suspects—top university professors, Big Tech leaders, and government agency IT heads—all having a vested interest to make things appear better than they are. The OSTP provides the leadership for such initiatives. The committees meet and develop their own agenda—often based on their limited perception of the world or commercial interests—and then a request for information gimmick is employed to show participation and feedback from Americans. The plans are ratified based on feedback received from a handful of Big Tech firms, universities, and trade associations—all trying to push the singular agenda of “open the bank, and all problems will be solved.”

The fact that year after year America is “falling behind and failing” (in President Biden's words) does not influence the overall strategy of launching committees, setting small websites, signing executive orders, wining and dining, issuing a report, and disengaging. The utter failure to create any type of industrialization strategy does not bother the participants. Professors with deep relationships with commercial interests participate without disclosing their conflicts. It appears that Big Tech participates with the sole interest of avoiding or controlling regulation and having government release more money. And agency heads participate because they must. This symbiotic relationship resides at the core of destroying America's leadership.

Along the same lines, President Biden signed an executive order and established yet another initiative that resulted in the formation of AI.gov—a critically deficient website that does nothing for anyone except talks about the most recent committees. Reports don't create strong nations, pragmatic leadership does. Making commercialized professors and tech representatives heads of these initiatives is like having fox guard the henhouse. Not only will they not know what needs to get done, they will most likely mess up and destroy even what they are trying to achieve. And that is exactly what is happening.

If you are an entrepreneur and you want to understand how you can embrace AI to enhance your business, the website doesn't guide you. If you are a food distributor, a consumer goods manufacturer, a publisher—the site gives you nothing on how to embrace AI. There is nothing that helps the country become AI industrialized. All these websites offer is a lot of mumbo-jumbo about why America should just throw in more money in research and about the fearmongering side of AI ethics, values, and governance. This would lead critics of the OSTP, like us, to believe that the fearmongering is being used as a tool to control the narrative from AI truly becoming democratized and from technology becoming socially absorbed in America. That would shatter the existing power structure, which is based on wealth concentration and Big Tech power.

THE IMPORTANCE OF EXECUTIVE LEADERSHIP

At this juncture, when AI is emerging as the most important force in the world, the executive leadership is even more important. Run-of-the-mill solutions and lip service are not enough.

Unlike the vision setting undertaken by Al Gore and Bill Clinton—both presidents Trump and Biden simply became the puppet of signing what was placed in front of them. What was being ignored were the American interests. The private sector had no representation at the table. Average Joe or Jane had no participation in the plan. The AI machine was working in the back—supporting the agenda and power concentration of a few at the cost of the country's combined future. A new rust belt was being created, and this time it would spread from the East Coast to the West Coast—with $1000 guaranteed monthly income being proposed for the masses—sufficient to cover their social media costs. What else would a person need!

The lack of leadership trickled down at different levels in the nation. From agencies to companies, AI adoption became a tactical and poorly administered project-by-project pursuit. That is why when asked about AI, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin gave a count of projects being pursued in the Pentagon. Those 600 projects would have included simple AI projects, such as reading forms and robotic process automation bots uploading data. They would have included chatbots or simple automation projects that will have no impact on America's leadership or industrialization potential. Those 600 projects would have been implemented with no associated data or sensor strategy. So much so that it is likely that in the DoD RFPs, acquisition specialists would not even know how to source machine learning projects.

As the situation became dire in America, the nation needed more leadership and not less. There was a greater need to pierce through the complexities, understand the existential threat, and develop an appreciation for what the AI revolution meant for America. But America remained oblivious to all that.

A DIFFERENT AMERICA

Many would argue that Clinton/Gore got handed over an America that had already won the Cold War and that could now focus on itself. In fact, President H. W. Bush reminded Americans about that in his State of the Union address. Defeating the Soviet Union meant that America could focus on itself. Thus, it is fair to say that Clinton/Gore got the chance to build the American economy during a rare and opportune time when America stood victorious and jubilant. The 1990 Iraq War also left America proud and confident. The social noise was low. The force was working in America's favor.

Fast-forward to 2016, and we find an America that was tired and sick of never-ending wars. In Secretary Raimondo's words, “… economic woes also lead to extremism” (Raimondo 2021). Not only can such economic woes lead to extremism, but such frustrations can also be exploited by the opportunistic insiders and the adversarial outsiders.

But 2016 was a different year. AI, the most powerful technology ever created by humans, did not make it to the presidential debate. Instead, the size of the penises of the presidential candidates became an important issue. The lack of civility was mind-boggling. Major scandals had already increased Americans' mistrust in their government. With sexual misconduct of members of Congress and military generals to their active links with foreign countries, America seemed no longer in control. Infighting and bitterness were high. The Great Recession had devastated families, and millions were left behind. Two wars had taken their toll, and American attention was divided. Numerous social battles were raging—all enhanced and exploited by social media. Homes, offices, and businesses had become the battlegrounds. As if this were not enough, Covid landed in the midst of all that.

Clearly, Clinton/Gore got a nation that was far more at peace with itself, elated from a victorious hot war and the Cold War against the Soviet Union. That nation was receptive to change. But when Trump and Biden assumed presidencies, the nation's social psychological state was at a different level. Inspiring a nation to achieve greatness in AI would have taken a lot more than a mere mention in the State of the Union address. But the sad truth is that no attempt was made to even do that. It was as if the American leadership had accepted mediocracy at the strategic level.

When corruption becomes rampant in a country, the national will to achieve greatness diminishes. American will was broken, and the buck stops at the executive leadership at the helm.

REFERENCES

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