[House Hearing, 119 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
MEMBER DAY HEARING: HOUSE COMMITTEE
ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE,
AND TECHNOLOGY
OF THE
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED NINETEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
MARCH 11, 2025
__________
Serial No. 119-5
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Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
59-595PDF WASHINGTON : 2026
=======================================================================
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY
HON. BRIAN BABIN, Texas, Chairman
RANDY WEBER, Texas ZOE LOFGREN, California, Ranking
JIM BAIRD, Indiana Member
DANIEL WEBSTER, Florida SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon
JAY OBERNOLTE, California HALEY STEVENS, Michigan
CHUCK FLEISCHMANN, Tennessee DEBORAH ROSS, North Carolina
DARRELL ISSA, California ANDREA SALINAS, Oregon
CLAUDIA TENNEY, New York VALERIE FOUSHEE, North Carolina
SCOTT FRANKLIN, Florida EMILIA SYKES, Ohio
MAX MILLER, Ohio MAXWELL FROST, Florida
RICH McCORMICK, Georgia GABE AMO, Rhode Island
MIKE COLLINS, Georgia SUHAS SUBRAMANYAM, Virginia
VINCE FONG, California LUZ RIVAS, California
DAVID ROUZER, North Carolina SYLVESTER TURNER, Texas
KEITH SELF, Texas SARAH McBRIDE, Delaware
PAT HARRIGAN, North Carolina LAURA GILLEN, New York
SHERI BIGGS, South Carolina GEORGE WHITESIDES, California,
JEFF HURD, Colorado Vice Ranking Member
MIKE HARIDOPOLOS, Florida LAURA FRIEDMAN, California
MIKE KENNEDY, Utah APRIL McCLAIN DELANEY, Maryland
NICK BEGICH, Alaska JOSH RILEY, New York
VACANT
C O N T E N T S
March 11, 2025
Page
Hearing Charter.................................................. 2
Opening Statements
Statement by Representative Brian Babin, Chairman, Committee on
Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives.. 3
Written Statement............................................ 3
Statement by Representative Zoe Lofgren, Ranking Member,
Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of
Representatives................................................ 3
Witnesses:
Representative Bill Foster, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Illinois
Oral Statement............................................... 4
Written Statement............................................ 7
Discussion....................................................... 9
MEMBER DAY HEARING: HOUSE COMMITTEE
ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY
----------
TUESDAY, MARCH 11, 2025
House of Representatives,
Committee on Science, Space, and Technology,
Washington, D.C.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:03 a.m., in
room 2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Brian
Babin [Chairman of the Committee] presiding.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T9595.003
Chairman Babin. The Committee will now come to order. And
without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare recesses
of the Committee at any time.
Welcome to the Science Committee's Member Day Hearing for
the 119th Congress. And I recognize myself for 5 minutes for an
opening statement.
Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the House Science,
Space, and Technology Committee's Member Day Hearing for the
119th Congress. I appreciate our colleague's efforts today to
share his interests and priorities within the Committee's
jurisdiction. His willingness to voice his constituents'
concerns is critical in shaping our discussions and enhancing
our collective efforts. As I have said before, the spotlight is
on us, folks. The world has never paid as much attention to the
matters within this Committee's purview as it does right now,
and we are ready to lead the charge.
We have a full agenda ahead, and I'm confident that,
through collaboration, we will make significant progress in
maintaining America's leadership in science and technology.
This includes our commitment to propelling humanity into new
frontiers by advancing space exploration, driving scientific
discovery, and spearheading cutting-edge technologies in fields
like quantum computing and artificial intelligence (AI).
With several important hearings already behind us, we look
forward to advancing our legislative efforts soon. Together, we
will endeavor to ensure America remains a global competitor at
the helm of these crucial issues, so let's continue the great
work.
[The prepared statement of Chairman Babin follows:]
Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the House Science,
Space, and Technology Committee's Member Day hearing for the
119th Congress.
I appreciate our colleague's efforts today to share his
interests and priorities within the Committee's jurisdiction.
His willingness to voice his constituents' concerns is critical
in shaping our discussions and enhancing our collective
efforts.
As I have said before, the spotlight is on us, folks. The
world has never paid as much attention to the matters within
this Committee's purview as it does right now, and we are ready
to lead the charge.
We have a full agenda ahead, and I am confident that
through collaboration, we will make significant progress in
maintaining America's leadership in science and technology.
This includes our commitment to propelling humanity into
new frontiers by advancing space exploration, driving
scientific discovery, and spearheading cutting-edge
technologies in fields like quantum computing and artificial
intelligence.
With several important hearings already behind us, we look
forward to advancing our legislative efforts soon. Together, we
will endeavor to ensure America remains a global competitor at
the helm of these crucial issues.
Let's continue the great work!
Chairman Babin. I now recognize the Ranking Member Lofgren
for 5 minutes for her opening statement.
Ms. Lofgren. Well, thank you, Chairman Babin, and for
today's hearing. I look forward to hearing from Members, I
think--or at least a Member--on priorities for the Science,
Space, and Technology Committee.
With science at the forefront, we do have a responsibility
and opportunity to support Federal R&D (research and
development) to help us build a bright future. We have to
continue to promote innovative solutions to challenges we face,
build our STEM (science, technology, engineering, and
mathematics) workforce, push for development and deployment of
new energy technologies, strengthen domestic manufacturing, and
explore the unknown.
These topics shouldn't be partisan issues, and I hope we
can continue the very long tradition in this Committee of
working toward bipartisan consensus. That is a tradition of the
Science Committee that goes back many decades, and it's really
the only way we can address these critical issues in a
meaningful and thoughtful way.
I would like to note, as we did last week, the loss of our
Member, Mr. Turner. He did not serve with us for a long period
of time on this Committee, but he served with us well.
Arrangements are being made this Saturday for his services, and
we will make sure that all the Members of the Committee have
that information. I know schedules are established far in
advance, but in case that is possible for anyone who wants to
honor him with their presence.
I would like also to note that we--we're serving here at a
tumultuous time, but the focus I have had on this Committee, on
three particular issues remain enormously important, not just
to me, but I think, to our future, and that is AI, quantum
computing, and fusion. And the three areas work in a
synergistic way. And if we actually succeed as we hope, they
will have a profound and positive impact on our world.
So with that, Mr. Chairman, I'm happy to yield back.
Chairman Babin. Thank you very much. And I also noticed the
flowers as well that my colleagues have displayed in memory of
our lost friend, Congressman Sylvester Turner, who we lost last
week. I'd like to reiterate how much I appreciated working with
Mr. Turner over the years while he was the Mayor of Houston,
and I looked very much forward to having him on this Committee.
He was a true gentleman, and I continue to pray for his friends
and loved ones during this tragic time, and we will miss him.
OK. Other Members are welcome to submit written statements
for the record.
And our colleague, Mr. Foster from Illinois, is now
recognized to present his testimony.
TESTIMONY OF THE HON. BILL FOSTER,
A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS
FROM THE STATE OF ILLINOIS
Mr. Foster. Sure. Well, thank you, Chair Babin and Ranking
Member Lofgren. And I echo your thoughts on Representative
Turner.
You know, and I also congratulate you on having your
turnout here. You have 100 percent of the Ph.D. physicists in
Congress to--will be presenting testimony here. And so I'd like
to start.
As most of you know, I spent 25 years at the national lab,
Fermi National Accelerator lab, and spent years as the Co-Chair
of the National Labs Caucus touring, taking Members of Congress
on tours of the national labs. We got more than halfway through
when COVID put a halt to it. But when Members actually see
what's at the national labs, it is transformative to the way
they think about the science enterprise of this country. And so
I'll be moving forward legislation to try to firm up the
infrastructure investments that are essential to that--to
making that go forward because without the critical
infrastructure that's frankly decaying in many areas, the
national labs cannot keep up their incredible work that they do
to keep the United States at the vanguard of scientific
discovery. And you had a very good hearing with the Directors
of several of the national labs, and that's an excellent start
to this.
The Ranking Member mentioned artificial intelligence, and
the staff of the Science Committee in particular had a huge
role in the AI Task Force that was really--you know, may end up
being one of the most important things that happened in the
last session of Congress, that this is coming at us, you know,
like a freight train, and we're not ready for it.
If you just look at what--the announcement recently about
the Google co-scientist that really, you know, outperformed a
small research group and--the work output of years of a small
research group in 36 hours and came up with new ideas for
future research. The thing that you thought would be the last
bastion of human creativity was--actually appeared to be
outperformed. And this is an early version of AI agents that
will be not only executing the hands-on work of science but
actually doing the strategic planning of it.
And so we cannot be in second place on this because the
country that wins AI is going to have an infinite supply of
very smart, very well-educated at-home remote workers is one
way to think about it. But they're also going to have robotics
to execute the hands-on research. And it's a big deal. And I
think NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology)--it
may be that the oversight over NIST, which has traditionally
been the lead institution on this, is maybe the most important
thing that you have to look at.
You shouldn't overlook traditional things like NASA
(National Aeronautics and Space Administration) because, you
know, I think we've learned in the last decade that when we
have sort of comfortable incumbents with large market share,
they don't perform efficiently, and I think we may be in danger
of having a near monopoly on launch coming up again. You
shouldn't let that happen. You know, you're going to have to
take a hit in short-term economic efficiency to make sure you
have multiple competitive vendors and keep an eye on that one
because you don't want to just replace one, you know, not-too-
productive incumbent with another.
This--one of the big things that you struggle with on this
Committee is that you're an authorization Committee and that
you get thwarted by appropriators. You know, we saw an example
of this with the CHIPS and Science Act, which was--the concept
of that was we're going to double the science budget over a
decade or so and that, because of the additional budget that
was available under that hypothesis, you could increase the
scope of things like the National Science Foundation (NSF). And
so you--we--you know, we authorized a number of new missions,
and in fact, mandated that they do it, but then, in fact, we
did not double the budget.
And so this is viewed, frankly, by a lot of Members of--you
know, scientists who work under NSF, the--that this was viewed,
in the end, as a net negative for--the CHIPS and Science Act
was viewed as a net negative for NSF-supported scientists
because it was an unfunded mandate, basically. You had to do
all these new missions on a flat budget. And it was as
destructive as when, geez, 20 years ago, I guess, George Bush
came in and showed up at NASA unannounced and said, hey, we're
going to Mars on a flat budget. Because one of the most
destructive things you can do to any organization is to give
them--you know, give them a goal that they really want to
accomplish and then not give them the resources to do it. It's
just--you know, it's sort of a soul-crushing thing to watch all
of your milestones fail to be met and so on.
So one of the things that you should be thinking about is
how to reclaim the authority from the Appropriations
Committees. You know, if you look at why the United States
spends such a small fraction of money on science, it is not
because we do not authorize the spending. It is because we do
not appropriate it. And I think there's actually a cultural
problem between the Authorization Committees, you know, that
look at a field every 10 years and say, where should this field
be in 10 years, a long-term view of things. The appropriators
are all about, you know, what goodies can I give out this year.
And so they have a very short-term view of things that causes
us to systematically underfund long-term things like education
and science. And so you have to--we have to, as an institution,
learn to fight back against that tendency.
And I believe I am now out of time, happy to answer any
questions on any of these issues.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Foster follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Babin. Yes, sir. Thank you very much, appreciate
that.
And our next--I recognize myself for questions for 5
minutes. And, of course, you're the only witness we have in
here today, Dr. Foster, so this will be directed to you for
your testimony here today.
I appreciate your comments on modernizing the Department of
Energy (DOE)'s National Laboratory infrastructure. The Energy
Subcommittee just held a hearing with several of the National
Lab Directors last month. Having NASA's Johnson Space Center in
my district, I understand the importance of maintaining key and
aging Federal research facilities. In your testimony, you
mentioned a legislative effort to address your concerns in this
area. How would that effort align with the already-established
Science Laboratories Infrastructure program at DOE, the SLI?
Mr. Foster. Well, it's a--boy, I have to go--it is--I
actually don't have the specifics of that in front of me. It--
you know, there are--there have been a number of efforts to
just specifically look at--let's see how to say this. This gets
into a discussion that's similar to the discussion about the
overhead that should be charged for Federal grants, that you
have a core mission, and then you have to--if you're at a
university or national lab, you have a core mission with
specific projects, and then you also have the need to maintain
the flywheel of this so that between the boom-and-bust cycles
of getting this project approved and having it sort of fade
away and the funding complete, it is difficult to manage your
workforce, and it's difficult to manage your infrastructure.
And so one of the ways to do that is to fill in the boom-and-
bust cycle with infrastructure improvements on that. And that
is--that's sort of the idea behind this--these legislative
efforts.
Chairman Babin. Absolutely. Thank you. And I now recognize
the Ranking Member for 5 minutes for her questions.
Ms. Lofgren. Well, thanks very much, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Foster, as you mentioned, you are 100 percent of our
physicists here in the House. You also----
Mr. Foster. I used to be 33 percent----
Ms. Lofgren. I remember that well.
Mr. Foster. We had Vern Ehlers and Rush Holt.
Ms. Lofgren. That's correct. But now we have you, and we're
glad that we do. You worked at one of the Nation's premier
national labs, Fermilab. And as someone who was part of that
high-skilled scientific workforce, I wonder if you could
comment briefly on the long-term effects, if any, that could
result from the chaos that is currently happening at our top
science and technical agencies like DOE, NIST, NSF, and NIH
(National Institutes of Health), where people are randomly
being fired, rehired, apparently, now targeted for potentially
more firings. Will this cause lasting damage to our ability to
innovate in your judgment?
Mr. Foster. Well, you know, the tough thing is, when you're
deciding where to place your career, if you're a young,
talented, and well-educated scientist, you know, you have your
choice. You know, you can go and work in private industry. You
can work at national labs. You can work other places. And if
national labs or the government generally turns out to be a
place where you can't have a secure future, then that makes it
really hard to hire people. You know, if you find that all of a
sudden you're raising a family near the--near an institution,
and then all of a sudden it's announced that, oh, we're going
to move you into the middle of nowhere or you lose your job,
you know, that's pretty--makes it pretty hard to raise a family
when that happens. It's fine if you, you know, over time,
reposition your workforce. You have to do that. But jerking it
around randomly and rapidly and without, frankly, a lot of
thought, is very destructive because then people just, you
know, say, OK, I will take my other options here. And that's
going to--it's going to make it hard.
The thing that--one of the things that worries me the most
is, you know, what happened to the NNSA (National Nuclear
Security Administration) where they had--you know, these are
people that have devoted their lives. And, you know, when--one
of the things that happened when I looked behind the wall as
part of the National Labs Caucus, you went and visited the
weapons labs, and you saw these scientists who had given up--
you know, brilliant people who had given up the possibility of
having tenured jobs at top universities to make sure that we
had a reliable weapons system.
And then when you see that those sort of people, and
particularly the young people who decided to go into that are
threatened with having their jobs ripped away, you know, why
would you possibly do that in the future? And it means that
when we have really critical weapons systems where you have to
spend your life working in secret on them, why would you do
that? And it's already a tough sell when you're trying to get
the weapons labs to hire top scientists, and this has made it
incomparably worse.
But the other thing--workforce thing that really worries me
is the attitude that--toward immigrants that seems to be just
permeating our country right now. You know, we talk about, oh,
how great it is, you know, the Apollo program, you know, good
old American knowhow, like good old Americans like Dr. Wernher
von Braun and all the brilliant German engineers that actually
built the Apollo program or at least guided it. You know, we
have this--you know, we're looking at SpaceX by that--should I
say it, Mr. McCormick, or not? When you referred to the leader
of SpaceX is an African American, but he's a--anyway, that was,
I thought, quite amusing.
But it was--but this was--you know, I mean, we are--our
scientific enterprise, particularly, is built by immigrants
because when people around the world, you know, are the
smartest kid in their class in the middle of some country that
doesn't have a scientific enterprise, their dream is to come to
America--used to be to come to America. Now, they look to
Europe. You know, we've seen that in high-energy physics where,
a decade ago--now, probably 30 years ago, the United States
was--you know, we were in the process of planning and building
the Super Collider, which maybe those of you from Texas may
remember. And then that was canceled because of things that
happened in Congress, frankly. And, as a result, the next
generations of high-energy particle physics--physicists now
want to work in Europe instead. And so these are fragile
operations, and we have to treat them with respect and give
them some continuity.
And I know that there's a danger that scientists end up
coming to you like just another special interest group. It's a
little bit different because of the long-term benefit that they
provide our country.
Ms. Lofgren. I just don't--my time is up, but Idaho labs
did an analysis and said that, in their judgment, roughly 85
percent of GDP (gross domestic product) growth was directly
connected to science and technology innovation. We don't need
to lose that.
Mr. Foster. Oh, absolutely.
Ms. Lofgren. I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Babin. Thank you. I now recognize the
representative from Georgia, McCormick.
Mr. McCormick. Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's refreshing----
Mr. Foster. My apologies for outing you on that. I thought
it was just--we need some humor in this.
Mr. McCormick. You know, sometimes that's the only thing
that keeps me going. In the military, we use humor to deal with
our depression all the time. And Elon Musk is indeed an African
American by all rights.
One thing I wanted to point out is it's actually refreshing
to work with a Member of Congress who's so well educated.
Sometimes we forget that in Congress it's supposed to be our
best and our brightest, the people who are innovators, the
people who have real ideas. You're actually one of my favorite
people on the other side of the aisle to work with because I
think you have some really refreshing ideas that solve real
problems that actually we can agree on.
One of the things I loved about your ideas was your digital
ID, your--basically, whether it be biometrics or however you
wanted to do that where we could actually have voter
accountability and solve fraud at the same time. It's a
bipartisan issue.
Mr. Foster. Yes.
Mr. McCormick. Nobody should be against that. And I think
that's one of the things I really love about you. You approach
it from a pragmatic, realistic, scientific, and factual basis,
which we can all agree on. I think we all want to do something
that matters and have everybody count in the way that they're
supposed to and make sure we have progress. And I actually like
what we just talked about. This is the real growth area we can
have not only for accountability and saving a lot of waste,
fraud, and abuse but also in real growth of economy.
Mr. Foster. Yes.
Mr. McCormick. What couldn't we like about that? So I'm
looking forward to working with you.
Mr. Foster. Yes, well, thank you. And I think McKinsey
estimated it was a little over 2 percent of GDP was the growth
when a country adopted a secure digital ID.
But it's also important to acknowledge NIST. You know, the
technology that enables that that's in your cell phone and
allows it to be presented and allows Apple and Android to work
together on this for things like digital driver's licenses or
the digital ID that every E.U. citizen is going to have, I
think, by the end of next year, that this technology was all
developed by NIST over a decade ago. And so it's an example of
these things where a relatively small group at NIST thought
about a problem that was going to be important in the future,
realized that you need technical standards and to just think
through how it was going to work. They set it up. They--and the
standards were adopted by NIST. Those were adopted by the
International Standards Organization, and then countries around
the world are using that.
Countries around the world are very envious of the--of
NIST. It's really interesting to talk to them. They said, I
wish in the E.U. we had something like NIST because we don't.
Mr. McCormick. Well, I look forward to working with you. I
hope you would learn to use small words so Marines can
understand it too, but I really enjoy this. Thank you.
Mr. Foster. Thank you.
Chairman Babin. Thank you. And now I'd like to recognize
the Representative from Maryland, Mrs. McClain Delaney.
Mrs. McClain Delaney. Thank you, Rep. Foster. I really
appreciate your comments. And, you know, I really think I agree
with our Chair. You know, I really like your commitment to
actually scientific thought leadership, and I agree with almost
every comment you made and noted. We do need to not only
authorize but appropriate thoughtfully and strategically. And I
actually say this because I was--I served in the last
Administration and was No. 2 at NTIA (National
Telecommunications and Information Administration), and we did
a lot of research and innovation as well on the spectrum arena
and also with our data protocols.
Actually, just kind of lifting up, I am--I really think
that we need payoffs and innovation in driving public
partnerships. And in Maryland 6 I do represent NIST, which I
think is one of our Nation's jewels and around the world is
respected, as well as, you know, parts of NIH and the National
Institute of Cancer, and Fort Detrick.
And I am so concerned about potential cuts and freezes to
staffing because, actually, as I look ahead and, you know,
proactively thinking about how commerce looks at these, you
know, it will really actually impact our national security and
some of our innovation.
Two things I'd really like to see. How do we better
interface, do you think, as authorizers and appropriators with
some of these agencies in terms of figuring out ways to drive
innovation strategically over the long term? Because you see
China as these, you know, 50-year plans. How do we figure out a
best means to really invest in some of these agencies and
researchers and scientific thought leaders so that we can
really support them, but also use those to drive public
partnerships--public-private partnerships.
Mr. Foster. Well, I think there's a structural problem in
Congress. If you look at the--our modern economy and the
structure of Congress, they just--you know, we're like a
snapshot of what our economy looked like 100 years ago. You
know, for example, information technology just passed financial
services as a fraction of the GDP, and shortly, it's going to
pass healthcare to be the largest single sector. And yet, we do
not have a full standing Committee on information technology.
And so that, if you just would look at our economy now, you'd
say, well, healthcare, that's 20 percent of GDP, full standing
Committee; science and energy, 20 percent, that's a full
standing Committee; information technology, you know, financial
services, you know, a set of hunks that are 20 percent of GDP
would make sense.
And--you know, and in contrast, if you look at--well, I'll
pick on agriculture. You know, agriculture is under 1 percent
of GDP, and yet, to put it in congressional terms, they have
all the good office space. And so it just--you know, we are not
mapped onto the modern economy properly. Well, there's a second
structural problem is that there's a Byzantine association of
authorization and Appropriations Committees, and that doesn't
even get to the Senate.
So I think that what's needed there to make us more
effective is to just have a bipartisan group set up and say not
what we're going to do next year, but where do we want to be 10
years from now so that people can plan their careers in
Congress and the Senate, to map their seniority onto where they
want to be. So if you got elected because you care about
healthcare, you have a home for that. If you got elected
because you care about science and energy, there's a home for
that, or financial services, or wherever you want to be, that I
think that something like that, it's not going to fix things
next year, but if there was a--if everyone knew that, 10 years
from now, we will have a rational organization, that would make
us be the single biggest step forward. And everyone 10 years
from now will really thank us.
Mrs. McClain Delaney. Leading on, is there any investments
you think that we--particularly the AI and quantum computing
fields as--because I see--and I note Rep. Lofgren had said that
Idaho labs, my home State of Idaho, you know, 85 percent of GDP
is growth from these types of issues. Like, what do you--what--
how would you envision--and I know at NTIA--and I do know that
NIST is doing a lot in that arena. How can we better support
that, do you think, on the Hill?
Mr. Foster. Well, I think it's going to be very difficult
for the Federal Government to put the--an amount of money
comparable to what the private sector is putting into AI.
That's just a fact, and we have to plan around that. What we--
--
Mrs. McClain Delaney. And the bumpers and safeguards as
well.
Mr. Foster. Well----
Mrs. McClain Delaney. That's----
Mr. Foster [continuing]. And--right, but it is the--it is
the bumpers and safeguards, you know? I think that the--you
know, ultimately, the end point, personally, where we have to
get with AI is that we're going to have to have an AI that's on
your side, that every person is going to have their dozens of
startups that are making personal AIs, but the difficulty is
that that when you say, how are you going to make money, and
they say, oh, it'll be like Google. We're going to get everyone
to trust our AI product, and then we're going to abuse that
trust to steer people into crappy, overpriced products, which
is sort of what happened to Google in a very--you know, I love
Google, but there--you know, there's some truth to what I just
said.
And so this is a commercial incentive. And if we can set up
a set of commercial incentives for an AI that's on your side,
where it's--where someone has a right--I mean, Sam Altman calls
this universal basic computer, something like this, but you--
some--every citizen of the United States would have the right
to have an AI whose interests were aligned with themselves. And
that's a--and that is something that government can do because,
you know, free enterprise won't do it by themselves. But you
could really--you know, a lot of the arguments we get into over
things like consumer protection would not be necessary if every
person had an AI that made sure you weren't being screwed by
whoever it was you were transacting with. Anyway----
Chairman Babin. OK.
Mr. Foster [continuing]. Long discussion there but----
Mrs. McClain Delaney. Well said. Thank you.
Chairman Babin. The gentlewoman's time has expired.
Mrs. McClain Delaney. I yield back.
Chairman Babin. Thank you very much.
I'd like to now recognize the Representative from Colorado,
Mr. Hurd.
Mr. Hurd. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Foster, welcome. It's very good to meet you.
Question about the Department of Energy National Labs. How
do we measure success when it comes to innovation in the work
being done in the Department of Energy National Labs? Are there
metrics that the public can look to or that we, as Members of
Congress, can look to in evaluating whether or not we are
directing resources effectively?
Mr. Foster. I think the--I was--wrestled with that question
for, you know, my entire career, and I come to the conclusion
the answer is no. You know, for example, you know, back in the
1990's we were programming neural networks, and it was just a
flaming disaster because neural networks weren't ready because
we didn't have the computing power, and no one had gotten
backpropagation to work and so on. But it was very nice in
retrospect that you had this set of very smart people arguing
about neural networks.
You know, for example, when we were trying to--thinking
about publishing papers that use neural networks, we ran into
what's now called the explainability problem, that if we were
to publish a paper that said we have discovered a subatomic
particle because our neural network says so, you know, how do
you even--you know, how do you even read such a paper? And then
the Financial Services Committee, where I also serve, I was the
Chair of an AI Task Force. And so the problem we have then is,
if an AI tells you, I'm sorry, your mortgage has been turned
down because our neural network says so, it's the exact same
problem. It's not an acceptable answer.
But having a large number of people in the national labs
thinking about every little corner that may not look promising
now, that I think the best thing--the best way to handle that
is to have really smart directors of the national labs and give
them a lot of autonomy and let them take responsibility for the
long-term scientific productivity or even the medium-term
productivity, and do it--handle it that way.
And it's a high-risk enterprise. You're going to find
someone who looks like a great candidate to run a national lab
and not be that good. You're going to see people who just drive
you nuts, and in retrospect, they accomplished something
incredible. And there's a history of that in national lab
directors. And so we need, I think, a little less bureaucracy
and more autonomy for the national labs--the leadership of the
national labs to do something great with each national lab, and
that's the way I'd move the needle on that. But it's not trying
to hold them to little bureaucratic numbers. It's a recipe for
gaming the system and not being scientifically productive.
Mr. Hurd. Yes. I think with science sometimes it can be
difficult to measure success because it seems to me--and you
would know better as the scientist, that failure is sometimes
integral to long-term progress----
Mr. Foster. Yes.
Mr. Hurd [continuing]. When it comes to science.
Mr. Foster. Yes, no, it's a--it's tough because the metrics
are developed over decades. And unfortunately, there's--you
know, every Member of the House, their time horizon is 2 years.
And unless you can, you know, say that you've, you know,
accomplished something great or cut the budget in 2 years,
it's--you don't have some--you don't have a talking point for
your reelection. So it's almost a fundamental design problem
with democracy that we have to overcome, that the political
incentives are short term, but in science, the gain is long
term, and we just have to systematically elect people who
understand that problem and are willing to take the short-term
political hit for what they believe to be the long-term best
interests of the country. And that's a tough one.
Mr. Hurd. That's very helpful context. Thank you so much,
Dr. Foster.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Chairman Babin. Yes, sir. Thank you very much.
And now, I'd like to recognize the gentleman from New York,
Mr. Riley.
Mr. Riley. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Dr. Foster.
I want to follow up on something you talked about, the
CHIPS and Science Act. And I've got to tell you, I am so sick
and tired of this place pulling the rug out from underneath
upstate New Yorkers. And so when the President of the United
States comes up here for a joint session next week and tells
this place to kill the CHIPS and Science Act, we're not going
to stand for it.
You know, we used to make stuff in this country. We took
pride in making stuff in America. Where I'm from in upstate New
York, Made in America is not just a political slogan. It's
literally who we are. In my hometown, Endicott, New York, we
had the world's biggest shoe company for generations. My family
worked there for a long, long time. They were tanners. My
grandma stitched boots. And I'm so proud of that because--not
just because we made stuff, and not just because it was made in
America, we made important stuff. During the World Wars, we
equipped American soldiers with American-made boots to go off
to Europe and stomp out fascism.
I mean, I just got here 2 months ago. I've barely decorated
my office, but aside from some family photos, the thing I've
got in my office are boots that were made in my hometown by my
great-great grandparents that were worn by our soldiers in the
World Wars.
IBM was founded in my hometown, thousands of people in
Endicott and the Triple Cities making the circuit boards that
brought the world a technology revolution and put America at
the forefront of it. And my family, my friends, my neighbors,
they clocked in, they worked their hands to the bones, they
clocked out, they went home, they got up the next day, they did
it again. They did everything that anyone has ever asked of
them, and the only thing they asked out of this place in return
was a fair shot to get into the middle class.
And instead, what we've seen out of Washington for
generations are upstate New Yorkers getting the rug pulled out
from under them because a bunch of Washington politicians and
Wall Street bankers and corporate executives decided to ship
all of our jobs overseas, to China, to Mexico, just so that
they could make a quick buck. And I'm sure that was really good
for their bottom lines, but it was really, really terrible for
working people in this country and really terrible for blue-
collar towns like the one that I grew up in.
You get out of Washington, you get out of this place, you
go home to the American heartland, you go to upstate New York,
and you see that people are really hurting. I mean, the cost of
living is unacceptable, the utility prices, the rent. I mean,
my God, you go to the Wegmans in Johnson City, and eggs are
seven bucks a dozen. And meanwhile, wages in this country
haven't increased since we let China into the WTO (World Trade
Organization) 25 years ago.
So then, after decades of failed industrial and trade
policy, this place and this Committee finally got something
right, something really exciting, something good with the CHIPS
and Science Act. I mean, think about this. Instead of being
dependent on China for chips, we're going to make them in
America and make them in upstate New York. And that's sort of
obvious that we should do that for American national security.
Like, seriously, guys, how stupid is it that we're going to
rely on China for something as important as semiconductors?
Terrible for national security to do that.
But we also need this law to rebuild the middle class in
America and rebuild the middle class in upstate New York. The
trades unions that I represent, those are going to be great
jobs building those chip fabs in Poughkeepsie and in Clay.
We've got Menlo Micro is going to hire hundreds of people in
Lansing with really good advanced manufacturing jobs. We've got
in Rensselaer County some of the most exciting, some of the
best R&D. And the CHIPS and Science Act, for once, is a reason
to have some hope. It's a good law. It's an important law. It's
a reason to be hopeful.
And then the President comes up here last week in a joint
session and tells this place to kill that law. That is
absolutely unacceptable, and I'm going to be damned if I'm
going to sit here and let this place pull the rug out from
upstate New Yorkers again.
You mentioned this in your opening statement. Any advice
for us to make sure this law is not just on the books, but
actually doing what it's supposed to do and rebuild the middle
class?
Mr. Foster. Yes, well, they have--a bunch of things. You
know, I'm--first off, I'm best known as being the Ph.D.
scientist here, but I'm actually also a manufacturer. When I
was 19, my little brother and I started this company that now
manufacturers about 2/3 of the theater lighting control
equipment in the United States. So, you know, when the lights
go up on Broadway or rock and roll or whatever, 2/3 of the
time, it's our company's equipment.
And we have 13--1,500 employees now in Mazomanie and
Middleton, Wisconsin, if you heard of those places. And, you
know, it is--and we do, you know, hardware, software, sheet
metal, wiring harnesses, everything, customer support. And
we've kept those in the Midwest, and I'm very proud of it, but
it is damned hard. And part of that's unavoidable. You know,
with--it's technology, you know? The truth of the matter is,
you know, you--technology has lowered the competitive market
value of human labor. And that's true, and it's going to be
even more true when AI and robotics hit so that we have to--
there's--the national security imperative is to bring the
manufacturing back, and that will bring some of the jobs back,
but not all of them. And then we have to, you know, deal with
that problem honestly, and it's a really tough one.
And I think part of it is that we're going to have to--as
AI and robotics become more productive, we're going to have to
find a way to spread the wealth, frankly. This is--you know,
it's a problem that's not going to get easier in the near term.
Chairman Babin. The gentleman's time has expired.
Mr. Riley. Thank you. Thank you, Doctor. Sorry.
Chairman Babin. Thank you.
Mr. Riley. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Babin. Thank you very much. Any other Members wish
to ask questions? OK. Well, I want to thank Dr. Foster, 100
percent of our Ph.D. physicists here in the House of
Representatives, for being here today.
The record will remain open for 10 days for additional
comments and written questions from this--from our Members.
Thank you, Dr. Foster. Thank you, everybody. This meeting is
adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 10:40 a.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
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