    [House Hearing, 119 Congress]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

                    CONVERTING ENERGY INTO INTELLIGENCE: THE
                     FUTURE OF AI TECHNOLOGY, HUMAN DIS-
                   COVERY, AND AMERICAN GLOBAL COMPETITIVENESS

    =======================================================================

                                    HEARING

                                   BEFORE THE

                        COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE
                            HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                        ONE HUNDRED NINETEENTH CONGRESS

                                 FIRST SESSION

                                   __________

                                 APRIL 9, 2025

                                   __________

                               Serial No. 119-16

    [GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

         Published for the use of the Committee on Energy and Commerce

                       govinfo.gov/committee/house-energy
                            energycommerce.house.gov

                                    __________

                       U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
    60-129 PDF                  WASHINGTON : 2025

    -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

                       COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE

                            BRETT GUTHRIE, Kentucky
                                     Chairman
    ROBERT E. LATTA, Ohio                FRANK PALLONE, Jr., New Jersey
    H. MORGAN GRIFFITH, Virginia           Ranking Member
    GUS M. BILIRAKIS, Florida            DIANA DeGETTE, Colorado
    RICHARD HUDSON, North Carolina       JAN SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois
    EARL L. ``BUDDY'' CARTER, Georgia    DORIS O. MATSUI, California
    GARY J. PALMER, Alabama              KATHY CASTOR, Florida
    NEAL P. DUNN, Florida                PAUL TONKO, New York
    DAN CRENSHAW, Texas                  YVETTE D. CLARKE, New York
    JOHN JOYCE, Pennsylvania, Vice       RAUL RUIZ, California
        Chairman                         SCOTT H. PETERS, California
    RANDY K. WEBER, Sr., Texas           DEBBIE DINGELL, Michigan
    RICK W. ALLEN, Georgia               MARC A. VEASEY, Texas
    TROY BALDERSON, Ohio                 ROBIN L. KELLY, Illinois
    RUSS FULCHER, Idaho                  NANETTE DIAZ BARRAGAN, California
    AUGUST PFLUGER, Texas                DARREN SOTO, Florida
    DIANA HARSHBARGER, Tennessee         KIM SCHRIER, Washington
    MARIANNETTE MILLER-MEEKS, Iowa       LORI TRAHAN, Massachusetts
    KAT CAMMACK, Florida                 LIZZIE FLETCHER, Texas
    JAY OBERNOLTE, California            ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ, New York
    JOHN JAMES, Michigan                 JAKE AUCHINCLOSS, Massachusetts
    CLIFF BENTZ, Oregon                  TROY A. CARTER, Louisiana
    ERIN HOUCHIN, Indiana                ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey
    RUSSELL FRY, South Carolina          KEVIN MULLIN, California
    LAUREL M. LEE, Florida               GREG LANDSMAN, Ohio
    NICHOLAS A. LANGWORTHY, New York     JENNIFER L. McCLELLAN, Virginia
    THOMAS H. KEAN, Jr., New Jersey
    MICHAEL A. RULLI, Ohio
    GABE EVANS, Colorado
    CRAIG A. GOLDMAN, Texas
    JULIE FEDORCHAK, North Dakota
                                     ------

                               Professional Staff

                         MEGAN JACKSON, Staff Director
                    SOPHIE KHANAHMADI, Deputy Staff Director
                   TIFFANY GUARASCIO, Minority Staff Director

                                 C O N T E N T S

                                  ----------
                                                                       Page
    Hon. Brett Guthrie, a Representative in Congress from the
      Commonwealth of Kentucky, opening statement....................     2
        Prepared statement...........................................     4
    Hon. Frank Pallone, Jr., a Representative in Congress from the
      State of New Jersey, opening statement.........................     6
        Prepared statement...........................................     8

                                   Witnesses

    Eric Schmidt, Ph.D., Chair, Special Competitive Studies Project..    11
        Prepared statement...........................................    13
        Answers to submitted questions...............................   206
    Manish Bhatia, Executive Vice President, Global Operations,
      Micron.........................................................    21
        Prepared statement...........................................    23
        Answers to submitted questions...............................   211
    David M. Turk, Distinguished Visiting Fellow, Center on Global
      Energy Policy, Columbia University School of International and
      Public Affairs.................................................    32
        Prepared statement...........................................    34
        Answers to submitted questions...............................   218
    Alexander Wang, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Scale AI....    50
        Prepared statement...........................................    52
        Answers to submitted questions...............................   221

                               Submitted Material

    Inclusion of the following was approved by unanimous consent.
    List of documents submitted for the record.......................   146
    Report of the Center for Strategic and International Studies,
      ``The Electricity Supply Bottleneck on U.S. AI Dominance,'' by
      Cy McGready, et al., March 2025................................   147
    Letter of April 9, 2025, from Tom Mapes, Founder and President,
      Digital Energy Council, to Mr. Guthrie and Mr. Pallone.........   164
    Report of North America's Electric Reliability Corporation,
      ``2024 Long-Term Reliability Assessment,'' December 2024.......   168
    Report of the CATO Institute, ``The Budgetary Cost of the
      Inflation Reduction Act's Energy Subsidies,'' by Travis Fisher
      and Joshua Loucks, March 11, 2025..............................   178
    Letter from Danielle Russo, Executive Director, Center for Grid
      Security, SAFE, to Mr. Guthrie and Mr. Pallone.................   198
    Report of the Environmental & Energy Law Program at Havard Law
      School, ``Extracting Profits from the Public: How Utility
      Ratepayers Are Paying for Big Tech's Power,'' by Eliza Martin
      and Ari Peskoe, March 2025\1\
    Article of April 8, 2025, ``Exclusive: Micron to impose tariff-
      related surcharge on some products from April 9, sources say,''
      Reuters........................................................   200
    Article of April 8, 2025, ``Why Trump's tariff and tax policies
      could derail efforts to boost US power supply,'' by Catherine
      Morehouse, PoliticoPro.........................................   201

    ----------

    \1\ The report has been retained in committee files and is included in
    the Documents for the Record at https://docs.house.gov/meetings/IF/
    IF00/20250409/118133/HHRG-119-IF00-20250409-SD095.pdf.

    CONVERTING ENERGY INTO INTELLIGENCE: THE FUTURE OF AI TECHNOLOGY, HUMAN
                 DISCOVERY, AND AMERICAN GLOBAL COMPETITIVENESS

                                  ----------

                            WEDNESDAY, APRIL 9, 2025

                      House of Representatives,
                              Committee on Energy and Commerce,
                                                        Washington, DC.
        The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:04 a.m. in the
    John D. Dingell Room 2123, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon.
    Brett Guthrie (chairman of the committee) presiding.
        Members present: Representatives Guthrie, Latta, Griffith,
    Bilirakis, Hudson, Carter of Georgia, Palmer, Dunn, Joyce,
    Weber, Allen, Balderson, Fulcher, Pfluger, Harshbarger, Miller-
    Meeks, Cammack, Obernolte, Bentz, Fry, Lee, Rulli, Evans,
    Goldman, Fedorchak, Pallone (ranking member), DeGette,
    Schakowsky, Matsui, Castor, Tonko, Clarke, Ruiz, Peters,
    Dingell, Veasey, Kelly, Barragan, Soto, Schrier, Trahan,
    Fletcher, Ocasio-Cortez, Auchincloss, Carter of Louisiana,
    Menendez, Mullin, Landsman, and McClellan.
        Staff present: Ansley Boylan, Director of Operations; Clara
    Cargile, Professional Staff Member; Marjorie Connell, Director
    of Archives; Jessica Donlon, General Counsel; Andrew Furman,
    Professional Staff Member; Sydney Greene, Director of Finance
    and Logistics; Jay Gulshen, Chief Counsel; Emily Hale, Staff
    Assistant; Kate Harper, Chief Counsel; Brittany Havens, Chief
    Counsel; Megan Jackson, Staff Director; Daniel Kelly, Press
    Secretary; Patrick Kelly, Staff Assistant; Sophie Khanahmadi,
    Deputy Staff Director; Alex Khlopin, Clerk; Brayden Lacefield,
    Special Assistant; Giulia Leganski, Chief Counsel; Mary Martin,
    Chief Counsel; Joel Miller, Chief Counsel; Ben Mullaney, Press
    Secretary; Elaina Murphy, Professional Staff Member; Kaitlyn
    Peterson, Policy Analyst; Brannon Rains, Professional Staff
    Member; Evangelos Razis, Professional Staff Member; Seth
    Ricketts, Special Assistant; Jake Riith, Staff Assistant;
    Jackson Rudden, Staff Assistant; Chris Sarley, Member Services/
    Stakeholder Director; Peter Spencer, Senior Professional Staff
    Member; Kaley Stidham, Press Assistant; Dray Thorne, Director
    of Information Technology; Matt VanHyfte, Communications
    Director; Hannah Anton, Minority Policy Analyst; Rasheedah
    Blackwood, Minority Intern; Tiffany Guarascio, Minority Staff
    Director; Lisa Hone, Minority Chief Counsel, Commerce,
    Manufacturing, and Trade; Kristopher Pittard, Minority
    Professional Staff Member; Emma Roehrig, Minority Staff
    Assistant; Kylea Rogers, Minority Policy Analyst; Harikrishnan
    Sanil, Minority Press Intern; Andrew Souvall, Minority Director
    of Communications, Outreach, and Member Services; and Tuley
    Wright, Minority Staff Director, Energy.
        Mr. Guthrie. The committee will come to order.
        Welcome, everybody, the committee, back. We appreciate
    everybody being back this morning for, I think, what is going
    to be an absolutely exciting hearing.
        And I will recognize myself for 5 minutes for an opening
    statement

     OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. BRETT GUTHRIE, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
               CONGRESS FROM THE COMMONWEALTH OF KENTUCKY

        And I want to thank our witnesses for being here and
    traveling a long distance to be here.
        This kind of came from our Library of Congress, this
    hearing, from a presentation that Dr. Schmidt put on his book
    ``Genesis'' that he wrote with Henry Kissinger--Henry
    Kissinger's last book.
        And I walked away thinking we needed to have the entire
    Congress hear your presentation, and so we are 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 dear colleague and the dear husband of our
    colleague Debbie Dingell used to say that if it is moving, it
    is energy; if it stops, it is 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 Dingell, but that
    is my version of it. And so we are having a full hearing. We
    typically do this in subcommittee, but this touches all
    jurisdictions, and I think everybody needs to hear it.
        If you think about it, it is 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
    particular healthcare applications, so it touches all of our
    jurisdiction.
        And Dr. Schmidt, when I walked away from the Library of
    Congress and I read your book, it gave me a sense of mission,
    and the mission--a direction I want to take this committee in
    the time that I am chairman. And to sum up what you said, it is
    the U.S. versus China, and who will win the war for AI. And
    it--essentially, I walked away, this is as important as the
    dollar being the reserve currency in the world. It is that
    important, and that is what is before us.
        And we--what I hear from people in this space is that we
    have the brainpower and we have the capital. What we need is
    the energy and the correct regulatory framework. And we have an
    example of what not to do, and I believe you said 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 ourselves.
        And Europe's regulatory framework, their energy framework
    and the regulatory framework, some of their regulatory
    framework written specifically to disadvantage American
    companies, has made them noncompetitive. And Europe and the
    U.S. had a similar size economy in 2008, and I have read that
    our economy is up about 80 percent 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 tell me they invest, it is tough to invest based
    on congressional cycles or presidential cycles if the rules are
    going to change every 2 to 4 years. And so what I would like
    to--just hopefully what we could do in this committee is come
    up with 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 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 the City of Seattle, is what I
    have been told.
        And so in the regulation side of it, we have to protect our
    privacy. Yesterday--we had a hearing on bills yesterday 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. They may win if--otherwise, but we
    need to be there to make that happen. And if you look at what
    if China wins--we just had a hearing of--an oversight--that a
    medical device from China had an embedded URL to the University
    of Beijing. So why does that mean--a medical device? Because we
    know they are 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.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Guthrie follows:]
        [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Mr. Guthrie. And I will yield back and recognize the
    ranking member for 5 minutes for an opening statement.

    OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. FRANK PALLONE, Jr., A REPRESENTATIVE
                IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW JERSEY

        Mr. Pallone. 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 freefall, and prices for everyday goods are spiking. In
    fact, Trump's tariffs are the largest middle-class tax increase
    in at least 50 years on hard-working 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
    tailspin.
        There is 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 AI-
    driven energy demand increases don't make electricity
    unaffordable or unreliable for American families. We must also
    make sure that consumers aren't stuck bearing the cost 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 percent of the
    electricity generation poised to come onto the grid. The Trump
    administration and Elon Musk's 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 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 a
    speech to the joint session of Congress, Trump threatened to
    repeal the CHIPS and Science Act, which invested $52 billion to
    ensure more semiconductors are produced right here in the U.S.
        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 are taking make it appear as if they are
    purposely trying to lose that race to China.
        And we should also discuss the tremendous effects AI will
    have on our everyday lives. We have 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 will
    harness the transformation power of AI while safeguarding the
    rights and well-being of all Americans.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Pallone follows:]
        [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Mr. Pallone. And with that I yield back. Thank you, Mr.
    Chairman.
        Mr. Guthrie. 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 would also remind Members that, once we get to the 5-
    minute questioning, we will have to strictly enforce that. We
    have a 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 witnesses for being here today.
    It is--and you are taking time to testify before this
    committee. It is greatly appreciated. You will have the
    opportunity to give an opening statement, followed by a round
    of questions from Members and our witness.
        I will read the witnesses, and I will call on you
    individually 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
    the chief executive officer and chairman of Google. In addition
    to serving as executive chairman and technical advisor, his
    time at Google would turn the company into the global tech
    giant we know it today. In 2021 he founded the nonpartisan
    Special Competitive Studies Project to strengthen America's
    long-term competitiveness regarding AI and America's future,
    and also the author, as we have said, of--and a Library of
    Congress spokesman of the book ``Genesis'' he wrote with Dr.
    Kissinger.
        So thank you for being here.
        Dr. Manish Bhatia. Mr. Manish Bhatia, executive vice
    president of global operations with Micron Technology. Mr.
    Bhatia has been with Micron since 2017, and has 25 years of
    engineering and operations experience. He has previously held
    positions at Western Digital Corporation, SanDisk 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 and Public Affairs. Mr. Turk served as the Deputy
    Secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy during the Biden
    administration. Before his time as Deputy Secretary, Mr. Turk
    spent several years at the International Energy Agency.
        Thank you for being here, as well.
        And Mr. Alexandr Wang, the founder and chief executive
    officer of Scale AI. Mr. Wang founded Scale AI as a 19-year-old
    student at 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. 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 5
    minutes for your opening statement. Thank you.
        And you will see--before you get started--there are--you
    will have a green light, and when it gets to 4 minutes, I think
    a light turns yellow, so it will kind of give you a warning in
    front of you, you have a minute, and when it turns red it will
    be--wrap it up, so we can make sure we get all our questions
    in.
        So Dr. Schmidt, your 5 minutes, you are recognized.

     STATEMENTS OF ERIC SCHMIDT, Ph.D., CHAIR, SPECIAL COMPETITIVE
      STUDIES PROJECT; MANISH BHATIA, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT OF
        GLOBAL OPERATIONS, MICRON; DAVID M. TURK, DISTINGUISHED
       VISITING FELLOW, CENTER ON GLOBAL ENERGY POLICY, COLUMBIA
      UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF INTERNATIONAL AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS; AND
      ALEXANDR WANG, FOUNDER AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, SCALE AI

                    STATEMENT OF ERIC SCHMIDT, Ph.D.

        Dr. Schmidt. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you,
    Ranking Member. Thank you all for being here. This is
    incredibly important.
        I am here to tell you that I honestly believe that the AI
    revolution is underhyped, and here is 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 is happening at the moment in our industry is that we
    are very, very quickly, for example, developing AI programmers,
    and these AI programmers will replace traditional software
    programmers. We are 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 products. Today you think of AI as ChatGPT, but
    what it really is is a reasoning and planning system that we
    have never seen before. The implication of this is profound.
        In terms of the way the algorithms work, they are going to
    need a lot more computation than we have ever had. They are
    going to need a lot more energy, and I will talk about that.
    What does the industry need? We need high skills immigration.
    We talk to you about this every day. 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.
        What we need from you, if I may say that directly, is we
    need energy in all forms, renewable, nonrenewable, 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
    are not going to arrive soon enough for the need. And I will
    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 1 gigawatt. How many nuclear power plants can
    we make in 1 year, where we are planning this 10-gigawatt data
    center? It gives you a sense of how big this crisis is. Many
    people think that the demand in--of--energy part that our
    industry takes will go from 3 percent to 99 percent of total
    generation. One of the estimates that I think is most likely is
    that data centers will require an additional 29 gigawatts of
    power by 2027, and 67 more gigawatts by 2030. It gives you a
    sense of the scale that we are talking. These things are
    industrial at a scale I have never seen in my life.
        In the terms of energy planning, the current model is
    mostly natural gas, peaker plants plus renewables. And that is
    probably going to be the path we are going to have to follow,
    right, to get there, and for all the reasons that you can
    imagine. We have a bunch of regulatory issues around fixing the
    energy grid. It 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. 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 is
    within 3 to 4 years. Then, after that, you have something
    called superintelligence, and superintelligence is the
    intelligence that is 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 are leading in some 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 are clever and they are smart. They have
    industrial programs, huge grants going into these companies,
    and they are weaponizing up in the sense of competition. If you
    look at DeepSeek, DeepSeek showed up, right, nobody expected
    this. It turns out it is on par now with some of the top
    models. Welcome. China has arrived into the competition.
        What would happen if China beat us? Let's think about it.
    The path to intelligence, that superhuman intelligence, think
    of the national security implications of that competition. This
    is why I believe--and I will say it directly to you--that
    although everyone is concerned about Taiwan, I am much more
    concerned about this. Because if they come to
    superintelligence, the 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.
        [The prepared statement of Dr. Schmidt follows:]
        [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Mr. Guthrie. Thank you. Thank you for that sober
    assessment. It is why we wanted to have this hearing. We
    appreciate that very much. Now we will recognize Mr. Bhatia.
        You have your 5 minutes for your opening statement.

                       STATEMENT OF MANISH BHATIA

        Mr. Bhatia. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member
    Pallone, and members of the committee. My name is Manish
    Bhatia, 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 U.S. patents
    granted. And Micron is America's only manufacturer of memory
    chips, and the only U.S. 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 manufactured 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
    $100 billion 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 will serve domestic demand
    for other industries, and drive U.S. 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 increased domestic
    manufacturing. The success of our investments will keep the
    U.S. at the forefront of the AI revolution, strengthen the
    economy, and make America more secure.
        To make our historic U.S. 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, low-cost power. And in Virginia, where
    we have been operating for two decades, grid reliability has
    been critical to our operations. Each of these full-scale fabs
    built here will run 24/7, 365 days a year and consume, at full
    build-out, about 400 megawatts of power. By 2040 we expect our
    U.S. energy demands to reach 2 gigawatts. This demand comes
    from a variety of highly complex manufacturing process steps,
    including using extreme ultraviolet lasers to create advanced
    nanoscale features on our chips.
        Beyond scale, we also need power to be reliable. Even
    fractions of a second of power loss or even just power sag or
    droop forces us to reset equipment, check for inconsistencies
    and deviations in the material, and ultimately can cost tens or
    even hundreds of millions of dollars. Reliable power is
    critical to our U.S. 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 are now seeing significant electricity
    demand growth, and supply may struggle to keep pace. By one
    estimate, U.S. electricity demand could rise by 128 gigawatts,
    more than 15 percent 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 that U.S. 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 U.S.
    semiconductor companies building and operating fabs in the U.S.
    experience cost deltas with our Asian competitors of 35 to 45
    percent. To ensure U.S. 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 Guthrie'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.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Bhatia follows:]
       [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Mr. Guthrie. Thank you. Thank you for your testimony.
        Mr.--the Honorable Mr. Turk, you are recognized for your 5-
    minute opening statement.

                       STATEMENT OF DAVID M. TURK

        Mr. Turk. Chairman Guthrie, Ranking Member Pallone, 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 has spent a lot of time in windowless rooms,
    including giving my last 4 years as Deputy Secretary of the
    U.S. Department of Energy, let me clearly state my bottom line
    up front: 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 guardrails and protections.
        As the title of this hearing suggests, we need to quickly
    and affordably convert energy into intelligence. The best
    numbers I have found come from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab,
    in terms of what we need to prepare for. In 2023, data centers
    used 4.4 percent of the overall electricity in the United
    States. By just 2028, data centers' total usage will increase
    to between 6.7 to 12 percent.
        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
    tech-neutral tax credits would also increase prices on average
    U.S. 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
    percent 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 Barrasso-Manchin 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 guardrails 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 have made some progress, including
    voluntary cooperation with companies, but we must do more and
    we must make this a requirement. Safeguards against
    misinformation, deepfakes, 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 will 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 eloquently with his opening statement. To win, we
    must all work together, and we cannot take any tools off our
    toolbelt 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.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Turk follows:]
       [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Mr. Guthrie. Thank you. I appreciate your testimony.
        Mr. Wang, you are now recognized for 5 minutes for your
    opening statement.

                       STATEMENT OF ALEXANDR WANG

        Mr. Wang. Chairman Guthrie, Ranking Member Pallone, and
    members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to be
    here today to discuss the steps that must be taken to ensure
    U.S. leadership in AI.
        My name is Alexandr Wang. I am 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 compute 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 U.S. 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 has 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+ 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 are finding
    ways to catch up on compute and building out their physical
    infrastructure; and lastly, they are 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 U.S. 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 charter 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 U.S. 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
    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
    should require each agency to set up at least one flagship
    agentic 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 to promote U.S.
    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 Age. AI is the next frontier, and, with your
    assistance, I am confident we will lead again.
        Thank you for the opportunity to be here today, and I look
    forward to your questions.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Wang follows:]
        [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Mr. Guthrie. Thank you. Thank you for your testimony, as
    well. We will now begin questioning, and I will recognize
    myself for 5 minutes for questions.
        So Mr.--Dr. Schmidt, you talked about we need all available
    sources of energy, and I think you said in the Library of
    Congress we can use AI to solve climate change. If we are 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 though wind, solar, and batteries are
    important, 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?
        Dr. Schmidt. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        As we discussed, 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 is 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 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.
        Mr. Guthrie. Thank you for that. And also, you said in the
    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 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 are doing and copy it. What should we not
    do that Europe has done?
        Dr. Schmidt. Europe is a wonderful place to visit, but it
    is not growing. It has great human values, but it is not
    growing. As a result, everyone is unhappy. The standard of
    living between the United States and Europe has now diverged.
    The U.S. 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.
        Mr. Guthrie. Well, thanks. So you were talking about
    better--so what kind of things have Europe--decisions European
    leaders have made that we need to avoid?
        Dr. Schmidt. Well, the primary issue is overregulation. We
    have a similar problem in America in that the overlapping set
    of local-Federal-State rules, which were done with good
    intentions, have the property that they are slowing things
    down. Our competitor, China, is not a democracy, it is an
    autocracy, whatever you want to call it, and they just decide.
        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
    superintelligent opponent where we are not as intelligent as
    they are.
        Mr. Guthrie. Thanks. So in your article I have here on The
    Atlantic--or the Foreign Affairs, I am sorry, the Foreign
    Affairs, you wrote, essentially, technological advances in the
    next 5 to 10 years will determine the country that gains the
    upper hand. I have a couple of minutes. Could you kind of
    explain militarily what this means?
        And then, what--because you wrote about what they can do
    militarily. And then this is--we need to act now.
        Dr. Schmidt. So in the framing in China and Taiwan, which
    is discussed a great deal, everyone assumes that it is a battle
    of missiles and aircraft carriers. That is not correct. It will
    be a battle of swarms of drones. Those drones will be highly
    intelligent, highly planned, and they will 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 am 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 is important
    that we get there first. If you take a look at Ukraine and
    Russia right now, you see the future of war.
        I am assuming, by the way, that China would start by cyber
    attacks and so forth. There is evidence that these new systems
    will be able to come up with zero-day exploits that we cannot
    foresee. A zero-day exploit is something we have never seen
    before and we can't anticipate. There's lots of people who were
    worried that biological attacks can be done, and there is a
    lot--there is a report from the Emerging Biothreats Commission
    this week with the great details, and there is a classified
    version that all of you should take a look at. There is plenty
    of evidence that these things are possible.
        Mr. Guthrie. So Mr. Wang, I see you are shaking your head.
    I only have about 30 seconds, but if you would like to make a
    comment on what he was--that comment.
        Mr. Wang. I agree with Dr. Schmidt that the potential
    implications on national security are incredible. As he
    mentioned, I think the place we are going to see this first is
    in cyber. I think we are going to see agentic cyber warfare in
    which we will see 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----
        Mr. Guthrie. Thanks. I am at zero on my time, and we are
    going to try to stick to it, so I have to hold myself to that.
    So I appreciate that, and we will get more answers.
        I will yield back and recognize the ranking member for 5
    minutes.
        Mr. Pallone. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 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 and America needed to build AI tools in the U.S.
    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 would ask unanimous consent, Mr. Chairman, to insert
    into the record an article from Politico entitled, ``Why
    Trump's tariff and tax policies could derail efforts to boost
    US power supply,'' if I can.
        Mr. Guthrie. Without objection, so ordered.
        [The information appears at the conclusion of the hearing.]
        Mr. Pallone. Thank you.
        So Mr. Turk, 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 would also like to talk about the
    harm that he is doing to our major universities like Columbia,
    but that is for another committee, so I can't ask you that
    today. But tell us about the harm that he is doing to our AI
    competitiveness, if you will.
        Mr. Turk. Well, thanks, Ranking Member Pallone. Let me
    start with the tariffs, just because that is the news of the
    day and the week.
        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. 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 is also injecting an immense amount of uncertainty.
    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 worst if you want to bring
    on additional data and additional energy for data centers.
        Secondly, the uncertainty of the incentives, the tax
    incentives, the grants and the loans, all that Congress has
    worked on in recent years, 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 agrees that
    we need to have.
        Mr. Pallone. All right.
        Mr. Turk. We also need to be 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 percent in 2025 will be renewables and storage. So
    we need to focus on a wide variety of energy sources.
        I 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, loans.
        Mr. Pallone. And then what about--I am going to ask you to
    be quick, if you will, but--because I have a couple of
    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 is that going to
    make energy more expensive for American families in an era of
    increased energy demand, if you would?
        Mr. Turk. Well, we not only have additional energy demand,
    electricity demand for data centers, we have it for additional
    manufacturing, electrification of buildings. So the demand for
    electricity is going up now when it has been flat for about 15,
    20 years. 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, 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 is just
    going to increase that cost for everybody.
        Mr. Pallone. And what are--lastly, do you agree that we
    need sensible guardrails to ensure that the privacy and
    security of Americans' personal information is not a casualty
    of the rapid development of these AI algorithms and leaky AI
    tools, if you will?
        Mr. Turk. Well, I absolutely agree, and certainly private
    companies, including those represented here, are going to be
    the ones who do this cutting-edge AI and bringing all these
    tools to help humanity.
        But they have a profit motive. They are 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
    weapons experts.
        We need democracy to step up. That is why I am so happy to
    be in front of you all, a committee that is taking this
    seriously to have a hearing after hearing and really looking to
    have that kind of sensible, thoughtful regulation, that balance
    that the chairman talks about.
        Mr. Pallone. Well, thank you. And I have to say again--I
    don't want to talk about Columbia and universities today
    because it is not in our jurisdiction, but I have to say that,
    you know, cutting all these research money for major
    universities, trying to get rid of--you know, today 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 are not going to have--you know, our
    universities aren't going to be able to do the work that is
    necessary to actually keep up competitively with China, and it
    is just really sad. But thank you.
        I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Guthrie. I thank--the gentleman yields back, and the
    Chair recognizes Mr. Latta for 5 minutes for questions.
        Mr. Latta. Well, thanks very much, Mr. Chairman, and thanks
    for witnesses for being here. This is extremely important.
        And just a few weeks ago, the head of Nvidia said--and I
    will 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 percent--or 94.5 percent gigawatts
    new--of power coming from cogeneration.
        And so what we are seeing is, across everything we have
    been talking about in this committee for quite a while, is that
    we are going to have to have more power.
        And Mr.--Dr. Schmidt, if I could start with you, you said
    something very interesting, something that has been brought up
    in this committee for a good number of years about light-touch
    regulation. And I have heard it from the Internet of Things,
    you name it, that--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?
        Dr. Schmidt. 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
    opponents are doing is important.
        With respect to the current U.S. companies, all of them are
    very well aware of these issues and are working very hard to
    mitigate them. I am 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 the Government is aware of
    what the companies are doing is probably a good thing. That is
    what I mean by a light touch.
        This innovation, this arrival of this new, alien,
    incredible intelligence will be done by the private sector. I
    want our U.S. Government to understand in detail its
    consequences and help it--and help us be successful as a
    nation.
        Mr. Latta. Let me follow up, because also you talked about,
    you know, we need energy in all forms. A couple of weeks ago in
    our Subcommittee on Energy, we had the RTOs 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 statement
    from all those companies?
        Dr. Schmidt. Well----
        Mr. Latta. Or all the ISOs and RTOs?
        Dr. Schmidt. I don't understand the structure of that part
    of the industry as well as you do, sir. From my perspective,
    the single most important thing to do is to have an all-energy
    strategy. It--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 are not going
    to be able to get the targets of gigawatts that we need without
    doing everything more, right? That includes permitting, as I
    think we have all talked about.
        Mr. Latta. Thank you.
        Mr. Bhatia, you mentioned that we need reliable power, and,
    really, we can't have disruptions out there in it. And, you
    know, one of the issues, again, is we have got to make sure,
    again, with--what the RTOs and the ISOs are all saying is we
    have got to have this power. Do you see us meeting that power's
    need in the very near future?
        Because again, when you are talking about, you know, we
    have to have permitting reform, what is going on in this
    country.
        Mr. Bhatia. You know, I think that we are behind. I think
    that we need to think long term but act now.
        For semiconductor manufacturing, power is essential. It is
    one of the highest input values, and it has incredible impact
    on 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, a
    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 power, that
    power--transmission lines are, 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 when we do site selection.
        Mr. Latta. 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?
        Mr. Bhatia. Well, I think one of the ways is being sure
    that we reduce the duplicative regulations that are in place
    between Federal and State.
        In, you know, one of our projects in New York right now we
    have to do similar filings in both the Federal and State level,
    even though the State-level regulatory requirements match the
    Federal ones. And so that just, you know, extends the timeline,
    creates more effort, and, 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.
        Mr. Latta. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. My time has
    expired right on the button.
        Mr. Guthrie. Thank you.
        Mr. Latta. And I will also submit my questions, other
    questions, to the witnesses.
        Mr. Guthrie. Thank you. The gentleman yields back, and the
    Chair recognizes the gentlelady from Colorado, Ms. DeGette, for
    5 minutes.
        Ms. DeGette. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman, and my
    questions follow very closely on what Mr. Latta 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
    tremendous use of energy by AI up until that time.
        I think that this issue is a really ripe issue for
    bipartisan solutions. However, I am concerned sometimes when we
    talk about cutting red tape or eliminating these proposals,
    sometimes that is a code word for partisanship. But we have
    had--as several people have pointed out, we have had bipartisan
    suggestions. Mr. Peters from this committee has worked on some
    with people from your side of the aisle. They have had them in
    the Senate. So, you know, 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 is
    tremendous potential for us to work on this in a bipartisan
    way.
        I want to talk about an issue, though, that Mr. Pallone
    raised, which is--and also Mr. Turk raised--which is really a
    concerning issue of today, and that is these tariffs. All of
    the witnesses here today can stipulate that we are going to
    need a large increase in all types of energy to not just deal
    with current demands of consumers, but AI. Does anybody
    disagree with that?
        No, no one disagrees with it.
        So Mr. Turk, so if we are going to build more transmission
    infrastructure, we are going to have to have raw materials like
    steel and aluminum. Is that correct?
        Mr. Turk. Yes.
        Ms. DeGette. And 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?
        Mr. Turk. Yes.
        Ms. DeGette. And Mr. Bhatia, just yesterday, in fact,
    Micron announced that they are going to have price increases on
    some products today, starting today doing--due to President
    Trump's tariffs. Isn't that correct?
        Mr. Bhatia. We did--we--you know, memory market is----
        Ms. DeGette. No----
        Mr. Bhatia [continuing]. By many different factors----
        Ms. DeGette. I mean, didn't you announce yesterday that
    Micron is going to impose tariff-related surcharges on some
    products from April 9?
        Mr. Bhatia. The tariffs are an evolving situation, and we
    are communicating with our----
        Ms. DeGette. OK. Well, Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous
    consent to put into the record a Reuters article which says,
    ``Micron to impose tariff-related surcharge on some products
    from April 9.''
        Mr. Guthrie. And without objection, so ordered.
        [The information appears at the conclusion of the hearing.]
        Ms. DeGette. Thank you.
        Now, Mr.--Dr. Schmidt, you just talked about--and I agree
    with you--that we need more energy in all forms, and that is--
    and also, that is likely the way that this market is going to
    develop. Is that right?
        Dr. Schmidt. Yes, correct.
        Ms. DeGette. 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 a part of this
    process. Is that right?
        Dr. Schmidt. Yes. Yes, ma'am.
        Ms. DeGette. Now, so Mr. Turk, I want to ask you: Without
    guardrails, how is it that we are going to be able--without
    guardrails that protect consumers, how is it we are going to be
    able to develop centers, data centers for AI, at the same time
    we can ensure average Americans can get the electricity that
    they need at decent prices?
        Mr. Turk. Well, I think we need to do two things at the
    same time. We need to bring on those electrons as quickly as we
    can, including to streamline permitting but to do it on a
    bipartisan basis. Bipartisan means durable. It means making
    sure things work, actually, in the real world.
        And then secondly, we do need to have the guardrails. With
    all due respect to the other witnesses, we got phenomenal
    talent in the U.S. We are lucky to have that talent working on
    AI. But we also need to have the Government step up. We need to
    have sensible, thoughtful guardrails to protect everyone's
    privacy. That is your jobs.
        Ms. DeGette. And if we don't have those guardrails, what is
    going to go--what is going to happen for energy prices for
    consumers?
        Mr. Turk. Well, energy prices will go through the roof and
    we will lose trust for AI by the American people as well, which
    isn't going to help our competition with China either.
        Ms. DeGette. Thank you.
        I yield back.
        Mr. Guthrie. The gentlelady yields back. The Chair
    recognizes Mr. Hudson for 5 minutes for questions.
        Mr. Hudson. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank
    you for holding this very important hearing today. This topic
    is crucial to future generations in ensuring the resources for
    healthcare facilities, banks, universities, our national
    security, including our warfighters.
        I thank the witnesses for your very important testimony, it
    is very informative. The bottom line is we must maintain our
    place as a global leader on AI, and I think we can all agree on
    that.
        North Carolina, where I live, is a State that leads in
    innovation, and that includes in AI. There is no doubt we will
    continue to incorporate AI in many of our industries, but we
    must ensure we have the resources necessary to advance and
    sustain AI. I represent Fort Bragg. We call it the epicenter of
    the universe, home of the Airborne and Special Forces. At Fort
    Bragg we use AI. AI benefits the warfighter by anticipating
    what is next, adjusting to situations, and connecting our
    soldiers.
        It is absolutely critical to our national security that we
    stay ahead of our near-peer 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 be the leader. And I
    certainly don't want us to face a near-peer adversary that has
    a superior AI technology.
        I have also seen threats to our energy sources, whether it
    is the rolling brownouts we saw in California but also
    including when two substations in my district were attacked in
    my home county, causing a multiday power loss. Nearly 4,000
    people were without power for almost a week. Hospitals faced
    blackouts, schools and businesses closed, restaurants and
    grocery stores lost their inventory, stop lights were dark,
    cell 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. I would ask--I will start
    with Mr. Wang, but if anyone else wants to, jump in--can you
    please share, from your opinion, how an unreliable or a
    nonresilient grid would impact investing--investment planning
    and existing commercial activities?
        Mr. Wang. First of all, I want to just echo many of your
    statements. They are spot on. First of all, we need advanced AI
    for our national security. We need our Department of Defense,
    our warfighter, to have advanced AI capabilities. That is
    absolutely critical for this next phase. And that is dependent
    on energy, as we have discussed here in the--over the course of
    today.
        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 both train advanced AI systems
    and keep them running. If we have an unreliable energy grid in
    any sort of, you know, competitive or conflict scenario, if the
    adversaries have the ability to take down our grid through
    cyber attacks or other forms of attacks, then that greatly
    impacts our ability to be competitive or to be able to fight in
    that battle. So it is absolutely critical we have a reliable
    energy grid. It is important that we secure this energy grid.
    It is important that we are able to protect against cyber
    attacks and other forms of attacks and we have consistent
    power.
        Mr. Hudson. Does anybody else want to weigh in?
        Mr. Bhatia?
        Mr. Bhatia. I think that, you know, the President, as well
    as Congress, is behind the strong growth in manufacturing
    across many different sectors, including semiconductors. And
    energy has always been an advantage for this country, due to,
    you know, abundant natural resources. And we have invested in
    all different technologies over time, and that has just stalled
    over the last 10, 15 years, as some of the other panelists
    noted.
        And so I absolutely believe that investing in energy is
    going to help to fuel this manufacturing renaissance, and in
    particular the semiconductor renaissance that, you know, we all
    know is so important to winning in AI.
        AI, you know, just to co-opt some of the words of Mr. Wang
    on the panel here, you know, it is about data. And data needs
    memory chips, and it needs the most advanced memory chips in
    order to be able to create all of the insights that are
    valuable in whatever circumstance or application that we see.
        Mr. Hudson. Well, thank you for your answers.
        Mr. Turk?
        Mr. Turk. Just--Congressman, if I could just say a word on
    grid, and I am just so pleased you mentioned the grid, it is
    just such a fundamental backbone of our infrastructure--for
    military bases, but for everybody else in industry.
        This is where I think it is so important to have all the
    tools in the tool belt. You all provided through the bipartisan
    infrastructure legislation $10.5 billion to improve our grid
    through a program called the GRIP program. 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 is what I am talking about of keeping all these
    tools in the tool belt.
        Mr. Hudson. Thanks, I appreciate that.
        Mr. Chairman, my time has expired, so I will yield back,
    but thank you to the witnesses for those answers.
        Mr. Guthrie. Thank you. The Chair will--the gentleman
    yields back, the Chair recognizes Ms. Schakowsky for 5 minutes
    for questions.
        Ms. Schakowsky. Thank you so much.
        Mr. Turk, I want to--did I do that wrong?
        No? OK.
        I have questions for you. Some go way back. We are talking
    about AI today, but I have to tell you that I and Gus Bilirakis
    on the Republican side have been working on the issue of
    privacy for a very, very long time, and even more before that
    with--in all kinds of tech interests. But we have never done
    anything to rein in Big Tech, nothing whatsoever. So we see
    families that have to give all kinds of information, which they
    do, all kinds of, I think, risks that go on.
        So, of course, we are talking about AI. But in the
    meantime, we have seen tech leaders apologize to consumers:
    ``Oh, we didn't mean to put children at risk, we didn't mean to
    do this or that, and yet we have done nothing at all.'' So what
    it seems to me is now we are talking about AI, and you talk
    about risk. You used that word, ``risk.'' So do we have to go
    back further, or let's--we--if you want to just talk about risk
    with AI, what exactly are we talking about?
        You mentioned that in your written statement, but I would
    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?
        Mr. Turk. Well, thank you, Congresswoman, for that
    question, and thank you for your focus on these issues for
    years and years. Your leadership has just been tremendous.
        I completely agree with something Dr. Schmidt said at the
    beginning in his opening statement about AI being underhyped,
    if anything. This is an incredibly powerful technology. What
    that means to me is--and I have 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 AI experts leave, which
    gives me concern with some of the firings and some of the other
    things that this administration, the Trump administration, is
    doing--but powerful technologies can not only be used for good.
    Powerful technologies, especially in terrorist hands, in rogue
    states' hands and other hands, once you get these models out
    there, it is incredibly difficult to bring them back in.
        So I will give you a specific example of a risk. And I know
    this is an unclassified setting, so I will just talk a bit in
    generalities. As smart as the folks are who work in Scale AI
    and OpenAI and Google and Meta and these other big tech
    companies, they are not nuclear weapons experts, nor should
    they be. I am not sure why you would be a nuclear weapons
    expert--and Mr. Wang mentioned his parents working at Los
    Alamos, which is just a phenomenal lab for us in our country.
        We need to make sure that, before a model goes out there in
    the public, that there is some red teaming, there is 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 is where I think they are--just as you suggest,
    it is who and how.
        The private sector will need to lead. They have an
    incentive to make sure that their models are safe, but they
    don't have all the expertise they need to red team and make
    sure that those models are safe.
        I would prefer that not to just be a voluntary 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 efficiently. It has to have the right balance that
    the chairman is talking about to make sure that the broad
    expertise that we have--the nuclear weapons experts, the chem
    weapons experts--are poking and prodding and making sure that
    these models aren't going to cause us harm. So that is one
    particular example.
        The other one that you mentioned, which I think is
    incredibly important as well, is privacy and making sure that
    information is not sucked up inappropriately to go into these
    AI models in the first place, and that these models aren't
    going to infringe on the privacy. I absolutely think consumers,
    citizens, Americans should control their information, and we
    should have guardrails. We should have regulations in place to
    ensure that that is the case. Again, this should be thoughtful,
    this should be efficient, this should be in a way that allows
    our companies to push the boundaries.
        I completely agree with everyone who has spoken that we
    need to win this AI race, but we need to do this thoughtfully
    and make sure that the democracy, the people's representatives,
    have some say here too.
        Ms. Schakowsky. So as part of the who, you are saying that
    the Congress of the United States should play a role?
        Mr. Turk. Absolutely. That is why I am so pleased that this
    committee is having multiple hearings, not just one-offs.
        Mr. Guthrie. Thank you.
        Ms. Schakowsky. Well, thank you so much, I appreciate it.
        I yield back.
        Mr. Guthrie. Thank you. The gentlelady yields back. The
    Chair recognizes Mr. Bilirakis for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Bilirakis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I appreciate it.
    Thanks for holding the hearing. I thank the presenters.
        Mr. Wang, to win the race against China, American AI
    companies need to succeed at home and abroad. However, we have
    seen our largest foreign trade partners, especially the EU,
    enact sweeping new AI data regulations that could be used to
    target U.S. companies. How can we address new and emerging
    digital trade barriers to ensure American AI companies can
    outcompete their Chinese competitors, again, on an even playing
    field?
        Mr. Wang. Thank you for the question.
        You know, it is certainly true that China, in particular,
    and the Chinese Communist Party has a strategy to win on data.
    This includes some of the things that you mentioned around, you
    know, being more loose around data privacy both domestically
    and internationally, as well as explicit programs that they
    have within their country to create tax incentives, you know,
    vouchers and other forms of large-scale government programs to
    win on data. That is why I actually think it is critical in the
    United States that we focus on exporting our technology
    globally, as well as exporting our standards globally.
        So one of the avenues that we have as a country to be able
    to do this is through NIST. You know, as the United States we
    have an opportunity to really define what are the standards for
    AI that will be adopted globally. And other countries are
    listening, and they--you know, through the global network of AI
    safety institutes, there is a global coalition of countries who
    are looking to us to help define what are the standards for
    safety and other provisions that they will--that we will all
    collectively utilize to define how we govern AI in the future.
    So we have a golden opportunity as a country to help set the
    global AI standards, and we need to take that and be very
    thoughtful about what we present.
        Mr. Bilirakis. Thank you.
        Mr. Schmidt--Dr. Schmidt, we have seen Chinese AI
    companies, DeepSeek, Alibaba, and now Manus AI debut powerful
    AI models in the past 2 months. Many are rightfully focused on
    these models' capabilities. But I am also concerned about how
    they were trained, potentially on Americans' personal data and
    by misusing access to American AI services.
        We should also be cautious about how Chinese AI will be
    used by American consumers and in potentially sensitive areas
    of the U.S. economy, such as healthcare. And I am very
    interested in that. We should act now, before China has a
    foothold on these emerging markets and controls AI data outputs
    to Americans' queries.
        What steps can we take to address these risks to American
    consumers and businesses?
        And first I want to talk to Dr.--if Dr. Schmidt can answer,
    and then if anyone else wants to chime in and I have some time,
    please don't hesitate.
        Dr. Schmidt. Not only is your question great, it is worse
    than you said. Sorry.
        The Chinese models are released in open source, which means
    that you can see how they work, and they are easily spread, and
    they are free. It is highly likely that the U.S. companies will
    be, by the time we are done, pretty well regulated by you all
    because of the importance of what they are doing. This is my
    personal opinion. I am not calling for it, but I think that is
    what is going to happen. It is very hard to regulate the open
    source movement coming out of China. We need to make sure we
    deal with that.
        The industry is struggling with your question because we
    have not figured out a way to deal with what is called
    distillation, where--and distillation is where you take one
    model and you ask it questions, and you get the answers. And
    the--there's lots of evidence that the Chinese did exactly what
    you said in your question using this distillation mechanism, so
    we don't really know.
        My own view is that the best answer is more offense, not
    more defense. And simply invest, invest, invest to stay ahead.
    In order to invest, as I mentioned in my opening statement, we
    need high skills immigration of key people because these things
    are essentially math problems. We need all the energy that we
    discussed.
        I think the American innovation system, which is the
    combination of the government, the venture capital industry,
    the private sector, and universities is phenomenal. It is
    important we not in any way slow down the universities in AI
    research.
        We can win this. It has to be an all-country effort. I am--
    my personal view is it is a national security issue for America
    against China.
        Mr. Bilirakis. Agreed, agreed. Yes, I don't have any more
    time left, so I will yield back.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Guthrie. Thank you. The gentleman yields back. The
    Chair recognizes Ms. Matsui for 5 minutes for questions.
        Ms. Matsui. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I want to
    thank all the witnesses for being here today. This is a
    critically important issue for the future of America and,
    really, for the future of humanity at large.
        Now, as coauthor of the original CHIPS Act, I know how
    critical this policy is to strengthen our national security and
    technological leadership. The CHIPS and Science Act is working
    as intended, leveraging its $50 billion of Government funding
    to spur a ninefold investment of $450 billion from the
    semiconductor industry. Yet President Trump threatened to
    abandon this once-in-a-generation effort to bring advanced
    semiconductor manufacturing back to America, and his tariffs
    are driving up costs to what we need to be competitive in AI,
    including aluminum, steel, semiconductors, and electronics.
    This administration's chaos and uncertainty will harm our AI
    leadership.
        Dr. Schmidt and Dr. Bhatia, how would dismantling or
    delaying the CHIPS and Science Act programs impact America's
    global competitiveness, especially in AI innovation?
        Mr. Bhatia. Thank you, Congresswoman Matsui, for your
    support of the CHIPS Act and our industry over your entire
    career.
        We are the only U.S. memory company, and our investments
    are--you know, bring tremendous value across leading-edge
    memory solutions, as well as across other industry--other
    segments like the automotive industry, aerospace, defense. So
    we believe our investments and our more than $100 billion plan
    over the next 20 years will bring tremendous value, and we are
    actually encouraged by the Executive order to create an
    accelerator program for large-scale projects through the CHIPS
    office, through the Department of Commerce to be able to ensure
    that our projects----
        Ms. Matsui. So you don't want any slowing down, right, no
    pausing.
        Mr. Bhatia. That is right, that is right. I think the
    accelerator's goal is to be able to make sure that the projects
    can be successful.
        Ms. Matsui. Dr. Schmidt?
        Dr. Schmidt. A number of us were very strong supporters of
    your legislation for the following reason. Twenty-five years
    ago we made a mistake, as a country, and we got out of this
    business. It costs money to get back into it. It costs money to
    build the factories, to train the people, and so forth. Ten
    billion of the 50 billion is in new R&D for new kinds of
    packaging, which will give America a possibility of leading
    globally in semiconductors. The other 40 is to allow us to have
    domestic production.
        Why do we need domestic production? Think national
    security. Just think about it. It is worth it to our Nation to
    have a supply chain of critical intelligence materials. That is
    literally the things that do the thinking under your control,
    Congresswoman.
        Ms. Matsui. OK.
        Dr. Schmidt. Thank you.
        Ms. Matsui. And Dr. Schmidt, I read your testimony. I was
    very impressed with it, particularly the part about our
    innovation power, the potent collaboration between government,
    private industry, and academia. The Government, you know,
    really provides the strategic direction, and the private sector
    driving innovation, and academia, which fuels a pipeline of
    foundational research and talent.
        I was wondering. You know, I think it is great to have this
    collaboration, but I am wondering because the Trump
    administration claims they are committed to American dominance,
    yet time and again their actions show the opposite. We should
    be training and recruiting talent to shape our AI leadership.
    Instead, more than 75 percent of U.S. researchers surveyed are
    considering leaving our country because of the chaos of the
    Trump administration. President Trump is firing experts in our
    agency, waging a war against science, and destroying our public
    research funding system.
        Mr. Turk, this dismantling of public research and
    reductions in the Federal workforce consistent with--is it
    consistent with strengthening U.S. leadership on AI and other
    emerging technologies?
        Mr. Turk. I think it is absolutely inconsistent. I think
    this is a huge threat going on right now, hollowing out the
    expertise in our national government, and I certainly got a
    chance to work with phenomenal experts, civil servants in our
    Department of Energy. We built that institution up for years
    and years, that kind of talent at our national labs. And to be
    haphazardly and chaotically firing people, losing that talent
    at the exact time that we need it, given the global competition
    we have got in AI and all these other critical technology
    areas--so I think it is exactly the wrong approach.
        Ms. Matsui. OK. There are other energy technologies the
    Republicans have historically supported. The Bipartisan
    Infrastructure Law--we created the Office of Clean Energy
    Demonstrations to help develop advanced nuclear, hydrogen,
    carbon capture, and long-duration energy storage. Mr. Turk,
    what is happening to the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations
    under President Trump?
        Mr. Turk. So it is one of the offices that has been
    decimated the worst. And you just mentioned----
        Mr. Guthrie. I am sorry----
        Mr. Turk [continuing]. The incredibly important areas that
    they are working on. Funding that has been provided----
        Mr. Guthrie. We need----
        Mr. Turk [continuing]. On a bipartisan basis from Congress.
        Mr. Guthrie. The time----
        Mr. Turk. And to see that being dismantled is just a
    travesty.
        Mr. Guthrie. We have to move on.
        Ms. Matsui. My time has--I have other questions I will
    submit for the record.
        Mr. Guthrie. Thank you. I thank--the gentlelady yields
    back. The Chair recognizes Mr. Palmer for 5 minutes for
    questions.
        Mr. Palmer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Dr. Schmidt, I read your book, and I have--one of my
    favorite quotes is from Henry Kissinger. He said the absence of
    alternatives clears the mind marvelously. I say it another way:
    Nothing brings clarity and focus quite so well as the absence
    of alternatives.
        My concern is that we are in an arms race with China for
    artificial intelligence and quantum computing, and that if
    China wins that race they will not be a superpower, they will
    be the superpower.
        I also continue to point out in this committee that there
    is not a single major refinery for rare earth elements in the
    Western Hemisphere. There's only nine in the world; eight are
    in China, the other one is in Malaysia. And I just want to ask
    you, Do you think this ought to be one of those moments of
    clarity that focuses Congress on meeting these demands, these
    needs?
        Dr. Schmidt. Thank you, and I do.
        If I told you with certainty that in 5 years China will be
    able to mount cyber attacks against American infrastructure
    that we have no defense of, would you act now? Yes.
        Mr. Palmer. Absolutely.
        Dr. Schmidt. If I told you that China was building an
    architecture for national security that was autonomous,
    robotic, attritable, et cetera, would you act now? Yes, you
    would.
        I am telling you those now.
        Mr. Palmer. So if we don't act on the mining, processing,
    and refining of rare earth elements immediately, we could find
    ourselves in the very position you just described.
        Dr. Schmidt. That is correct. We want full control of our
    own supply chain.
        Mr. Palmer. Absolutely.
        Dr. Schmidt. Energy, chips, the infrastructure that we
    need. It is an issue of national security for America.
        Mr. Palmer. Mr. Wang, in order to meet the demands that we
    have for power generation, what--how--what power generation
    capacity do we need to have to achieve dominance in AI and
    quantum computing? Do you have any idea of what that would be?
        Mr. Wang. Well, as was mentioned earlier, the scale of data
    centers that are being built require similar amounts of power
    as entire cities----
        Mr. Palmer. OK.
        Mr. Wang [continuing]. In the United States.
        Mr. Palmer. Well, Dr. Schmidt, I don't--you probably don't
    remember this. At the dinner at the Library of Congress, you
    and I had a brief discussion. One of the things that I continue
    to point out in this committee and other places is that there's
    100, 200 hydrocarbon power generation facilities that have been
    shuttered and dismantled.
        We know that we have these enormous power demands. I know
    there is a move now to go back to opening these back up on
    natural gas and coal. But what do you think about using small
    modular reactors to locate them on these facilities to meet--it
    is the quickest way, I think, to meet these power demands.
        And the good part of this is, with all due respect to my
    Democratic colleagues, we are not going to do it with
    renewables because we just don't have the time to build out
    everything you have to build out, including the transmission
    lines. Those transmission lines still exist at these shuttered
    power plants. We could literally--we could open them with coal
    or natural gas, but I think we ought to be thinking about small
    modular reactors that can plug into the existing transmission
    lines. How would you respond to that?
        Dr. Schmidt. One of my personal frustrations is the
    regulatory structure around nuclear NSMRs. SMRs are the right
    answer, so your instincts are exactly correct. Furthermore,
    they can be built in volume. How many SMRs are in use in
    America today? Zero.
        Mr. Palmer. Zero.
        Dr. Schmidt. How many--what is the most promising one? An
    initiative in Canada. Why----
        Mr. Palmer. And I am glad you brought that up, because they
    just licensed it, what, 2 days ago, or a week ago.
        Dr. Schmidt. And the typical supply--the ``fast'' approval
    time is considered to be 12 years. That defies logic. We need a
    new program around much faster permitting for safer and safer
    fission and fusion nuclear. SMRs are the correct path.
        One of the issues that is--sorry for the details--is 30
    years ago or 40 years ago, when--the standard for permitting in
    nuclear was set at a threshold below natural radiation. Alex
    can talk about this with great detail more than I can. At the
    end of the day, it was set too hard. It was a mistake. It needs
    to be fixed.
        Mr. Palmer. Well, the GE Hitachi--and I am not taking sides
    for any brand--it could be built in about 3 years.
        But you made another point there that I think is very
    important for this committee, and that is the economy of scale.
    If we were committed to building these out in scale, so much of
    it can be done in factories, so much of the testing can be done
    in a factory and then on site.
        I think it is extremely important that this Government move
    toward small modular reactors to meet the power demands that we
    have to have to even be competitive with China in the AI space.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
        Mr. Guthrie. The gentleman yields back. The Chair
    recognizes Mr. Castor for 5 minutes for questions.
        Ms. Castor. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is a very
    important topic, and we should be focused on bipartisan
    solutions to advance American innovation.
        The problem is there are so many new roadblocks right now,
    and President Trump has turned himself into the anti-innovation
    president. He is--has outright killed large new energy
    resources that were in line to come onto the grid. He has
    imposed these new import taxes and tariffs on everything we
    need to compete on AI: aluminum, steel, semiconductors,
    electronics. He is threatening to halt our investment in
    semiconductors in America. He is--has taken a hatchet to the
    academic and scientific workforce. This is all a gift to China
    at exactly the wrong time.
        But let's focus in on the challenges and the opportunities
    for energy and AI. Secretary Turk, it is good to see you. One
    of the challenges is the enormous need for new energy capacity,
    but I am very concerned for what this means for everyday
    Americans and their electric bills there.
        Mr. Chairman, I am going to offer--ask unanimous consent to
    submit for the record a new study from the Environmental and
    Energy Law Program out of Harvard Law School, where they
    highlight--they say they are skeptical of utility claims that
    data center energy costs are isolated from other consumers'
    bills. Rate structures, as well as secret contracts could be
    transferring Big Tech's energy costs to the public. How do we
    balance----
        Mr. Guthrie. Without objection, so ordered.\1\
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \1\ The report has been retained in committee files and is included
    in the Documents for the Record at https://docs.house.gov/meetings/IF/
    IF00/20250409/118133/HHRG-119-IF00-20250409-SD095.pdf.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Ms. Castor. Thank you.
        How do we balance these needs?
        Mr. Turk. So I think we have to, as I said in my opening
    statement, bring power on the grid--it could be behind the
    meter, as well--to power data centers, to power AI cutting-edge
    models.
        We also need to make sure we have downward pressure on
    prices. I don't know of any elected official anywhere in our
    country who shouldn't have affordability and the cost to
    consumers as job one, and everything seen through that lens. As
    you suggest, it doesn't seem like that is what the President--
    our President right now--has in mind.
        So even contemplating repealing the tax credits that puts
    downward pressure on prices across the board--technology
    neutral, right? Any technology can qualify for those tax
    credits if it meets certain thresholds. Getting rid of those is
    exactly the wrong thing to do right now.
        And I mentioned the analysis that has been done, a number
    of groups have done really good, cutting-edge analysis: $220
    more annually each and every year for an average household.
    Now, that goes up in some States to $400 more a year. If you
    happen to represent Missouri, Arkansas, Texas, New York, Iowa,
    and Kansas, watch out, it is $400 more per year just to repeal
    two of the tax credits, let alone the full panoply of what has
    been done.
        Ms. Castor. Yes, thanks.
        So one of the opportunities, however, is to work together
    on a much more efficient and modern electric grid across the
    country. It is kind of outdated, the way everything is
    structured and--right now. That is why yesterday I introduced
    my Advancing Grid Enhancing Technologies Act with Senators
    Welch and King that will implement shared savings incentives
    that promote the deployment of grid-enhancing technologies.
    That is the cheapest way to supercharge our grid. We have got
    to optimize the existing grid infrastructure to bring energy
    projects online more quickly and save consumers billions of
    dollars.
        Do you see hope here with our--with modernization of the
    grid and GETs?
        Mr. Turk. Well, thank you for your leadership, and thank
    you for focusing on GETs, grid-enhancing technologies.
        We have got such a range of technologies. Some we still
    need to reduce costs, but some, like GETs and reconductoring,
    make sense. We just don't have a utility industry now and the
    incentives for those technologies to be utilized at scale, to
    allow us to get more out of our existing grid.
        We of course need to build new transmission, as well, in
    our country to make sure that we are prepared for what we need
    in the future. So I am really pleased and thankful for your
    leadership in that area.
        I am also firmly one--and I agree with Dr. Schmidt and
    others--that Congressman Palmer was just talking about, small
    modular reactors. I think small modular reactors--I think we
    should be investing now in fusion so we have that as a
    solution.
        Enhanced geothermal is such a phenomenal resource in our
    country, taking advantage of the drilling expertise in the
    workers to drill 24/7 clean power, including for data centers.
    We should be investing even more now to try to bring that
    technology online very quickly.
        Ms. Castor. Thank you.
        I yield back my time.
        Mr. Guthrie. Thank you. The gentlelady yields back. The
    Chair recognizes Dr. Dunn from Florida for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Dunn. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. So exciting
    topics, from tech startups to energy, grid operators, internet
    service providers. Everybody is working to develop these new AI
    technologies, and America has always been at the forefront of
    technological innovation.
        But with AI, we are just not. We are not untouchable. We
    have competition. We are in a race with China to lead in this
    field.
        And it is promising to have two major American companies
    sitting before us today, Scale AI and Micron, who are leading
    the way. This global AI boom has prompted widespread industry
    adoption across all kinds of sectors. Healthcare is one of keen
    interest to me, but also finance, telecom, weather. This
    morning I met with NOAA. They are excited.
        However, this exponential growth of demand brings it with
    some substantial energy requirements. And as AI models grow in
    size and complexity, so does the infrastructure required to
    train and operate them. For instance, training large language
    models can take weeks of processing and high-powered GPUs, and
    the energy consumption can be staggering. At the same time, our
    telecoms infrastructure has to keep up with AI's growing
    demands. High-capacity networks are essential to ensure fast
    data transfers in these real-time AI applications such as
    autonomous driving, telemedicine, and smart cities and whatnot.
        As AI use grows, both the energy consumption and telecom's
    capacity required will grow commensurately with it. At the same
    time, the Chinese Communist Party is moving fast and hard with
    zero regulations and zero ethical restraints, so we have our
    work cut out for us.
        I also sit on the China--Select China Committee and the
    NATO Parliament, and I had a chance to discuss these issues
    with our European counterparts. And I met with the member of
    the European Parliament who led the current EU privacy bill.
    And she cautioned me, ``Whatever you do in Congress, don't do
    that. Don't do what we did. Don't do what we did.'' That was
    her words kind of from a--right from the horse's mouth, if you
    will. The expert witnesses here, I think, understand today that
    the EU bill has indeed restricted artificial intelligence
    development in Europe.
        With that, Mr. Schmidt, as these AI tools develop, their
    utility to each of us will be proportionate to their--our
    ability to access them. With that in mind, are we moving
    quickly enough to enable the deployment of broadband
    connectivity and commercial access to spectrum, Mr. Schmidt?
        Dr. Schmidt. On the spectrum side we need another round of
    a spectrum analysis and a new way in which the unused spectrum
    is allocated. I happen to believe in a situation where
    companies are able to buy the spectrum but they have to build
    it out, or they are given the spectrum and they have to build
    it out. I don't want people sitting on spectrum and not making
    it use. We need that bandwidth. However you all arrange that,
    it will be fine with us, I think.
        Mr. Dunn. Well, it is trickier than you think, but thank
    you for that. I am pleased that this--our members of that
    committee are sitting here with us today.
        Mr. Wang, it is good to see you again here in Washington.
    You are becoming a regular up here. I fear for your soul.
        [Laughter.]
        Mr. Wang. Today cutting-edge AI research is dominated by
    industry, partially due to the very high costs of computing
    needed to train these advanced models. Given the fast pace of
    the progress, how can we ensure our government or our pilot
    programs keep up with the rapidly evolving industry needs and
    standards?
        Mr. Wang. I think that the most useful framework here is to
    just think about what are the raw ingredients for these AI
    models. So it boils down to three major elements: computational
    power, which requires a lot of energy, as we have discussed a
    lot today; algorithms, the sort of instructions for the models,
    and that requires incredible talent to devise new algorithms;
    and then data.
        And oftentimes we really--and really, these AI models and
    progress in AI models boils down to progress in every one of
    these three underlying components. Oftentimes we don't consider
    enough our relative position on data with respect to the
    Chinese Communist Party. They have had a decadelong strategy to
    be dominant in data, to win on data. They have large-scale
    government programs. They have built their entire system and
    their entire country, their sort of civil-military fusion
    system, to be dominant on data.
        And we need to begin thinking as strategically on this
    front as well. We need a program, and we need thought around
    how we achieve data dominance as a country, how we utilize all
    of the incredible data that we have as a country to get out
    ahead. And our Government is one of the largest producers of
    data, and we need to leverage this advantage.
        Mr. Dunn. And do you think having a privacy law would help
    that? I mean a standardized privacy rule for the country.
        Mr. Wang. I definitely want to prevent this--the case where
    we have a patchwork of privacy laws--
        Mr. Guthrie. The gentleman----
        Mr. Wang [continuing]. Across every State in the----
        Mr. Guthrie. The gentleman is out of time. I am sorry.
        Mr. Dunn. OK. Just on that, sort of on the----
        Mr. Guthrie. The gentleman is out of time.
        Mr. Dunn. Mr. Bhatia, a similar question.
        Mr. Guthrie. The gentleman yields----
        Mr. Dunn. Coincidentally, the European----
        Mr. Guthrie. The gentleman is out of time, I am sorry, I am
    sorry.
        Mr. Dunn [continuing]. Announced yesterday----
        Mr. Guthrie. I am sorry, you are out of time.
        Mr. Dunn. I am out of time.
        Mr. Guthrie. I am sorry.
        Mr. Dunn. God, that one flew fast.
        Mr. Guthrie. The gentleman yields back.
        Mr. Dunn. I was having fun.
        [Laughter.]
        Mr. Guthrie. It does go fast, doesn't it?
        Mr. Dunn. All right.
        Mr. Guthrie. And Mr. Tonko----
        Mr. Dunn. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman--
        Mr. Guthrie [continuing]. Is recognized for 5 minutes.
    Mr.----
        Mr. Tonko. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Let me begin by
    acknowledging that just about every witness who has testified
    at the Energy Subcommittee this year, whether by invitation of
    Republican or Democrat, has agreed that we must make it easier
    to build transmission infrastructure to meet our Nation's
    growing energy demands and to be the global leader in AI.
    Today's witnesses are no exception, so I really hope this is an
    issue that the committee can get serious about.
        Dr. Schmidt, your testimony mentioned building more
    transmission, but you also called out the need to embrace small
    grid capabilities and grid-enhancing technologies. Why is it
    important to maximize our existing electricity system's
    efficiency and performance while we also work to build new
    infrastructure?
        Dr. Schmidt. One of the ways to think about the energy
    problem is that you are building things that last 40 years and
    that you are in a constant process of renewing things that were
    built 40 years ago. And in that sense we need an integrated
    plan to upgrade everything.
        I like what the Honorable Turk said, that you need all of
    it. My list was fusion, fission, especially SMRs, and enhanced
    geothermal, natural gas, renewable wind, and solar. We need all
    of it. In order to do that, the grid has to be more dynamic.
        You want to have the source of power be as close as
    possible to the consumer. The ideal scenario is you put your
    power plant next to your data center. The data centers need 5
    gigawatts. They are huge, right? You need 5 gigawatts of power,
    which is also huge. We can't do that. Therefore, we need to
    have the transmission to get them from one to the other.
        Mr. Tonko. Thank you. I appreciate that.
        And, Mr. Turk, your thoughts on this. If we can make some
    existing loads more flexible through demand response programs
    or deploy grid-enhancing technologies to get more out of our
    existing infrastructure, are these important tools to create
    the energy system conditions needed to win the race for global
    AI leadership?
        Mr. Turk. Well, I think they are absolutely indispensable,
    and there are no regrets, as well. Just as Dr. Schmidt was
    talking about, why wouldn't we take advantage? And I know you
    have been a leader on this for years in the Congress. Why
    wouldn't we take advantage of that infrastructure that we have
    built? Infrastructure is one of those things that is going to
    be around 40 years or even more. Let's get the most out of it.
        And we do have technologies these days, GETs technologies,
    reconductoring, using AI, using machine learning to help the
    grids balance loads a lot quicker. We started a program at the
    Department of Energy to use AI for permitting to make sure that
    we could do more permitting, including on transmission, to
    build out our transmission system even more quickly than we
    have been doing. It is a big challenge, but we have got to use
    all the tools.
        Mr. Tonko. Thank you, both of you gentlemen.
        And Mr. Bhatia, I want to first and foremost welcome you to
    upstate New York. I also want to thank you and recognize the
    important commitments that Micron has made to upstate New York.
    Today we are talking a lot about how we can build and operate
    our energy system to meet AI's needs, but we rarely talk about
    how AI and its enabling technologies can be developed to better
    fit within the reasonably foreseeable constraints of our
    system. And that is why it is critically important that we
    continue to invest in research.
        So Mr. Bhatia, your testimony mentioned that Micron is
    developing chips with much more improved energy efficiency. Can
    you discuss why this is a priority for Micron, and how
    important is a chip's energy efficiency to reduce the overall
    energy demands of these data centers?
        Mr. Bhatia. Certainly. Thank you for your comments,
    Congressman.
        And, you know, I really believe the semiconductor industry
    and memory chips are part of the solution. You know, the
    brilliance of Moore's Law, which is the governing law for the
    industry over the last--well, since its, you know, inception
    50-plus years ago, is that with every generation of technology
    that we introduce, 18--every 18 to 24 months, we are taking the
    same operation and doing it with higher performance, lower
    power, and less resources utilized to build that device,
    whether--in our case memory, cells. And so that scaling path by
    itself is part of the solution to being able to make all these
    tremendous AI innovations, these data-driven AI innovations
    come to life using lower and lower power as we progress through
    time.
        And Micron has actually been very focused on leadership in
    that way. For the last four DRAM generations, Micron has been
    first to market by several quarters, ahead of our Asian
    competitors. And that allows us to build chips that are lower-
    powered than those competitors. So for example, I mentioned in
    my prepared remarks that every one Nvidia GPU has 96 high
    bandwidth memory chips integrated with it. Our high bandwidth
    memory chips are 30 percent lower power, 30 percent lower power
    than our competitor's chips that go into those similar systems.
        So absolutely critical for us, and we look for all avenues
    to be able to continue to reduce power as we scale down the
    trajectory and improve the efficiency of our chips, including--
        Mr. Guthrie. Thank you.
        Mr. Bhatia [continuing]. Partnering with national labs----
        Mr. Guthrie. Thank you, the time----
        Mr. Bhatia [continuing]. To do research with----
        Mr. Guthrie. The time is expired, thank you.
        Mr. Tonko. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank
    you for the comments from----
        Mr. Guthrie. I appreciate----
        Mr. Tonko [continuing]. The witnesses.
        Mr. Guthrie. The gentleman yields----
        Mr. Tonko. I yield back.
        Mr. Guthrie [continuing]. Back, thank you, and the Chair
    recognizes Dr. Joyce for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Joyce. First I want to thank Chairman Guthrie for
    holding this critical hearing on the future of artificial
    intelligence.
        AI is the defining technology of the next several decades.
    It will have a revolutionary effect on all aspects of our
    lives. It will be integral in everything, from the high-level
    data analysis to the use of a search engine. In industries as
    diverse as energy production and healthcare, AI is already
    making significant inroads.
        As a doctor, we see AI integrated into innovative medical
    devices, helping to translate the information collected by the
    device into clinical guidance. In medical practices, AI can
    help streamline the administrative tasks, allowing doctors to
    ultimately spend more time with their patients. This is just
    the beginning of the capabilities that AI will give us, and it
    is why it is critical that the U.S. leads the way in the
    development and the deployment of this technology, just like
    the Space Race during the Cold War.
        However, our geopolitical rival is striving to catch up and
    overtake America so that they can dominate this new sector.
    Make no mistake, China is desperate to beat us in the field of
    AI. It is a national imperative that we do not allow this to
    happen. America and the free world can't afford to let the
    Chinese Communist Party win the race with AI.
        Fortunately, we have an advantage, and that advantage is
    the vast energy resources, the resources that are under the
    feet of my constituents in Pennsylvania. Energy is now the
    limiting factor for building the data centers that AI uses,
    which is why, to win the race for AI, we need to unleash
    American energy.
        We have already begun to see the new project development
    with data center agreements between AWS and Talen Energy at the
    Susquehanna Nuclear Generation Facility, and the reopening of
    Three Mile Island, thanks to the power purchase agreement
    between Constellation Energy and Microsoft.
        Another project in Indiana, Pennsylvania, was the
    announcement to repurpose the retired coal-powered Homer City
    Generating Station. This new facility, powered by
    Pennsylvania's abundant natural gas reserves, will be one of
    the largest power-generating sites in the entire country,
    capable of generating up to a staggering 4.5 gigawatts of
    electricity to power data centers and AI facilities on the
    site, attracting billions of dollars in investment to our
    region.
        These projects show that America's ability to lead the
    world in AI is directly tied to our Nation's energy production.
    We must continue to use our energy advantage in this global
    competition.
        Dr. Schmidt, in earlier public statements you had supported
    moving away from fossil fuel baseload power. Today it seems
    that you have a different view on the energy industry. Can you
    please explain why your views have evolved, and what that
    connects with your views on AI development?
        Dr. Schmidt. Let me also mention that 35 to 40 years ago,
    Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh invented a great deal of the
    world that we are talking about, so thank you to your State and
    to what they were able to do.
        We need all sources of power to accelerate because we don't
    have a choice. If you just assume that you can get there with
    baseload power, with renewables, you can get there--maybe 25,
    30 percent, we can debate it--you can't solve the whole power--
    the whole problem as we are laying out without an all-power
    solution. And that is why I am taking the position that I have
    today.
        Mr. Joyce. You mentioned renewables, but renewables do not
    provide that baseload power that is so necessary in the data
    centers. Correct?
        Dr. Schmidt. Not correct. I am sorry, sir. Renewables plus
    batteries are now roughly competitive with the price of new--
    natural gas, partly because the natural gas demand has gone so
    much.
        And so, again, from my perspective, the answer is yes to
    all. Let the market sort it out. Let everybody build
    everything. We need it all now.
        Mr. Joyce. And I think, ultimately, we need the nuclear and
    the natural gas to be able to allow those data centers to
    continue to develop and continue to grow.
        Dr. Schmidt. Yes, and let me--sir, may I just emphasize the
    importance of baseload power, which I think is what you are
    getting at?
        We need continuous--if you listen to Micron, these guys are
    superhuman. What they have done in America against the Chinese
    and the other Asian manufacturers is enormous. They need that
    baseload power. That is why your premise is correct.
        Mr. Joyce. Thank you very much. I think we can all agree
    that the baseload power is truly the key to moving forward with
    the development of AI in the United States.
        Mr. Wang, as I mentioned earlier, there are two data center
    projects in Pennsylvania that are colocating with nuclear power
    stations----
        Mr. Guthrie. I am sorry, we are beyond time. Sorry.
        Mr. Joyce. Thank you. I will----
        Mr. Guthrie. Do that for the record--
        Mr. Joyce [continuing]. Issue my questions for followup.
        I thank you again, Chairman Guthrie, for holding this
    important hearing today.
        Mr. Guthrie. Thank you. The vice chair of the committee--I
    appreciate--yields back, and the Chair recognizes Ms. Kelly for
    5 minutes for questions.
        Ms. Kelly. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
        As my colleagues have noted, this hearing comes at a
    pivotal time. The Trump administration, led by Elon Musk and
    DOGE, are working to rescind key investments made under the
    Inflation Reduction Act, which you have heard, that have
    spurred unprecedented growth in clean energy generation while
    expanding domestic manufacturing opportunities. These
    investments have made a major difference in my district, which
    is urban, suburban, and rural. I go from the City of Chicago
    downstate, where I have 4,500 farms.
        Mr. Turk, given the expected growth in demand and
    significant investments that will be made to our grid's
    infrastructure, can you discuss the difference--the different
    responsibilities between States and Federal governments in
    regulating how these improvements will be paid for?
        Mr. Turk. Yes, absolutely. Luckily, we have got policies in
    place, tax incentives in place, grants in place, loans in place
    to make it more affordable to--for us in our country to build
    the kind of power that we need not just for data centers but
    for the rest of our economy as well. Repealing those tax
    credits--I hope I have been incredibly clear here at this
    hearing--repealing those tax credits, those grants, those loans
    will raise the price, will raise the costs, and will delay how
    quickly we can bring electrons onto our grid.
        So I think it is incredibly important for the Federal
    Government to play a strong role. Luckily, we have got those
    incentives in place, it is just a question of whether we take
    those off the table, take those tools off the table. And I just
    couldn't agree with you more strongly we need those tools on
    the table.
        Ms. Kelly. Well, thank you. I hope everyone is listening.
        Alongside the provisions in the IRA, it is imperative we
    continue working to invest in our Nation's critical supply
    chains. Supporting our capacity to develop and produce a high-
    tech revolution is essential for prosperity in this modern
    economy, which is why I was proud to join my colleague,
    Representative Dingell, in leading the Democratic Supply Chains
    Act last Congress. Vital provisions from this package were
    included in the Promoting Resilient Supply Chains Act, which
    was passed by this committee yesterday. Efforts like these--not
    unpredictable, unlawful funding cuts and across-the-board
    tariffs on our allies--will help the U.S. lead the way on AI
    while ensuring innovation continues to thrive in communities
    like mine.
        Mr. Turk, during your time as Deputy Secretary, how has the
    rapid growth of AI transformed future planning and
    considerations around grid reliability and resilience?
        Mr. Turk. So AI is an incredibly powerful technology. It
    can help on the grids. The grids are becoming increasingly
    complicated. We have got a complicated patchwork in our
    country. We need to not only have the local grids and the
    regions work, but we need interregional communication,
    interregional flows if we are going to be effective in terms of
    dealing with the challenges that we have got in front of us. So
    AI can be an incredibly powerful tool there.
        We also need an independent FERC to make sure that we have
    got good regulation, predictable regulation, regulation that
    has the certainty that folks can plan for going forward. So we
    need to have that regulatory environment in place too.
        Ms. Kelly. Thank you for your response.
        My district is poised to lead the charge by building an
    innovative quantum computing campus right in Chicago's
    southeast side. I am encouraged by the promise of world-class
    collaborations, exciting new technological advancements, and
    ensuring economic development returns to this community. With
    major projects like the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics
    Park and other large-scale data centers coming to the area, we
    must also work to bring new, clean energy generation online to
    help meet the projected load growth in the coming years. We
    could not simultaneously pull back from these critical
    investments while trying to lead on AI and critical
    manufacturing here in the U.S.
        Last question, Mr. Turk: What critical supply chain
    investments need to be made to ensure that we meet projected
    demand while ensuring reliability and affordability?
        Mr. Turk. So, again, we have got a whole panoply of tax
    incentives, grants, and loans. Let me give two specific
    examples.
        We talked about critical minerals earlier in this hearing.
    Because of those tax incentives, because of the grant money
    that we have been given--thank you for giving us that from the
    Congress, from the Department of Energy perspective--we have
    now made a real dent. We are on a pathway to diversifying
    supply chains.
        China holds 80 percent of the processing for critical
    minerals in our world right now. Because of the grants, because
    of the loans, because of the tax incentives, we are on a
    pathway to increase in the U.S. alone--of course, working with
    allies--2,100 percent lithium increase. I could give you a
    statistic for cobalt and other kinds of things.
        So we are on a pathway, but this is not the time to lean
    back----
        Ms. Kelly. Right.
        Mr. Turk [continuing]. To take these tools off the tool
    belt. We need to lean in on that front.
        Ms. Kelly. I am going to have to cut you off, out of
    respect for my time.
        So I yield back, Mr. Chair.
        Mr. Guthrie. The gentlelady yields back. The Chair will now
    recognize Mr. Weber from Texas for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Weber. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Schmidt, I am going to come to you and then, Mr. Wang,
    you are next.
        When discussing the power needs of the AI industry, it is
    important to look at the recent track record of investment
    decisions in generating facilities. Constellation Energy is
    investing 1.6 billion--with a B--dollars to restart Three Mile
    Island nuclear plant. Amazon Web Services paid $650 million to
    house a data center facility next to a nuclear plant. The Homer
    City Generating Station in Pennsylvania is investing 10
    billion--with a B--dollars to convert a natural gas plant.
        Billions of dollars of investment have gone into AI, and
    barely any is going to wind, solar, or battery storage. So I
    have got kind of a two-pronged question here.
        First of all--we will start this way--can you discuss--oh,
    well, let me--I--let me make this statement. Is it possible
    that those investment companies used AI in their decision on
    how to invest in energy? Let that sink in for just a little
    bit, OK?
        Can you discuss why AI--Mr.--I am coming to you--companies
    are investing billions of dollars into dispatchable and
    reliable generating resources. I know you had the conversation
    with Dr. Dunn, but we are talking about real companies, real
    businesses making real investment decisions based on risk. Your
    thoughts?
        Dr. Schmidt. So all of the data I have seen indicates that
    it is a fair choice now between renewables and batteries, and
    essentially natural gas and so forth. In other words, the
    answer is you want both. How they make those decisions are
    highly local, involving funding, permitting processes, and so
    forth.
        Texas--and what you are doing is phenomenal--if you look
    at--many of the new data centers are being built in Texas
    because of the environment that you all have created, and some
    of the largest ones are being created there.
        Mr. Pallone. Bigger than the country.
        Mr. Weber. I am sorry, I am getting invaded over here.
        [Laughter.]
        Mr. Weber. By a friendly fire.
        [Laughter.]
        Mr. Weber. Keep going.
        Dr. Schmidt. So Texas is a really good model of--as you
    know, you have your own electric grid, and it is highly
    unregulated. What I like about the Texas grid is that you see
    real power, real pricing power on a--essentially, a microsecond
    level.
        With respect to how people make these decisions, I hope
    that every company in America uses AI tools to make important,
    strategic decisions. They are natural allies in the business
    decision process.
        Mr. Weber. OK, I am going to actually jump off the
    questioning line I had.
        So AI--so what happens if China, who is so far ahead of us
    because we don't have our permitting process lined up right, we
    are so stupid that it takes so long to permit stuff that China
    doesn't have that problem, what happens if they intercept and
    take over our AI? What happens then?
        Dr. Schmidt. Well, I am not suggesting they will take over
    our AI. Our analysis is that China has very large power
    supplies compared to the United States. They do not have the
    power problem that we see--
        Mr. Weber. So they can't hold our AI hostage?
        Dr. Schmidt. As a technical matter, no. What they can do is
    they can--there are what are called adversarial attacks, where
    they can essentially go in and screw with the model, excuse the
    term, and basically screw it up.
        Mr. Weber. What if they have better AI than we do?
        Dr. Schmidt. That is a competitive issue. And the issue--
    one way to think about it is--and I will make an argument--if
    you and I are competitors, you are the good guy, I am the bad
    guy, and I am ahead of you, and I am 6 months ahead of you, you
    say, ``Oh, it is only 6 months.'' But if the slope of
    innovation is near vertical, it is almost impossible for you to
    catch me up.
        Mr. Weber. Right.
        Dr. Schmidt. It is a dynamically unstable----
        Mr. Weber. And that doesn't work when you are talking about
    America's security at risk.
        Dr. Schmidt. It puts----
        Mr. Weber. That analogy doesn't work----
        Dr. Schmidt [continuing]. Our core national security----
        Mr. Weber. I got you.
        Dr. Schmidt [continuing]. At risk.
        Mr. Weber. Let me move on.
        Mr. Wang, the Energy Subcommittee held a hearing on the
    role of AI and powering the American energy future October 19,
    2023. AI--during the hearing we discussed how AI can be used to
    improve the performance of the grid used in oil and gas
    production, and also some of the vulnerabilities of AI--like
    kind of you are alluding to, Mr. Schmidt. I have no doubt that
    there have been major advances in AI since that hearing, so I
    have got a couple of questions from you.
        What benefits would there be from integrating AI into our
    Nation's energy sector?
        And would you want that sooner rather than later, and all
    the permitting to be reasonably quick?
        Mr. Wang. I think what you have been alluding to through
    all of your questions is a very important point, which we, I
    think, have been grappling with in the AI industry, which is
    that AI has the ability to transform nearly every industry.
    What--we refer to this in the industry is how do you move
    towards more agentic systems, how do you move towards systems
    where AI are able to make more decisions more quickly, and
    result in an overall dramatically more efficient, more
    effective system? This will tackle every industry over time,
    but particularly in the energy sector it is critical.
        And the last answer is sooner rather than later.
        Mr. Weber. Got you.
        Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
        Mr. Guthrie. The gentleman yields back. The Chair
    recognizes Dr. Ruiz for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Ruiz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Consumer protection, data privacy, and artificial
    intelligence impact every American. But for me, I feel a deep
    responsibility to ensure that our Nation gets this right, not
    just as a lawmaker but as a father of two young daughters. I
    see how kids today are shaped by AI-powered platforms and
    digital relationships like never before.
        While tech can inspire creativity, it also poses real
    risks. Studies link heavy social media use, especially for
    young girls, to anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem. Too
    often, AI algorithms promote harmful content over healthy self-
    worth content.
        Dr. Schmidt, you have often cited the example of an AI-
    enabled teddy bear that learns and evolves with a child,
    highlighting the potential risks of such intimate AI
    relationships. As this scenario becomes increasingly plausible,
    what steps are companies taking to design systems that protect
    rather than exploit young users?
        Dr. Schmidt. So thank you. Every company is very concerned
    about the point you are making, and every company is trying to
    address this question of, let's call it, a rogue AI that comes
    out of themselves partly for moral reasons, but also it is just
    bad for business.
        As to whether the government will ultimately regulate that
    area, it is not clear to me. You do have some things that you
    could do right now. There is a law called COPPA, which has a
    13-year--you have to be 13 to be online. I have strongly
    recommend it to be raised to 16 for that reason. You can also
    look at section 230 and try to reduce some of the most
    egregious harms, and that has been discussed for some time in
    Congress. Those small changes would take the most extreme
    examples of harm and take them out of the market, which is
    probably a good thing.
        Mr. Ruiz. Thank you. You know, too often systems are
    designed to keep kids online longer to collect their data and
    serve them ads for profit. They are not designed to keep them
    safe, respect their privacy, or ensure age-appropriate content.
    That is why we need action, we need enforceable privacy
    safeguards and clear rules on how AI interacts with minors,
    because no algorithm should decide what is best for our kids
    without oversight.
        But we must also be honest about what could stand in the
    way. The sweeping tariffs proposed last week by the Trump
    administration risks slowing innovation, raising costs on the
    very tools needed to build safer online spaces and delaying
    efforts to hold tech companies accountable. They risk putting
    petty politics ahead of public good, and in doing so they leave
    our most vulnerable, our kids, exposed.
        Dr. Schmidt, as efforts to strengthen data privacy and AI
    safeguards move forward, how do you anticipate the 2025 Trump
    administration's tariffs will affect our ability to develop and
    deploy privacy-first technologies designed to better protect
    young users online?
        Dr. Schmidt. I don't know that I can make the combination
    in the question. I will have to think about it.
        I will tell you that tariffs are tax increases. Tax
    increases slow down progress, increase costs, lead to
    inflation, are generally bad.
        Mr. Ruiz. Deputy Secretary Turk, the Department of Energy,
    particularly through its national labs, has been deeply engaged
    in advancing AI safety and red teaming efforts. Can you speak
    to the importance of DOE's role in this space, and what the
    implications might be if that role were diminished or
    reassigned by the administration?
        Mr. Turk. Absolutely. We have got world-class experts at
    our national labs, nuclear experts, bioweapons experts. We need
    to make sure that that expertise is tapped into, those
    individuals are utilized for this red teaming, right?
        So before a model comes out, have those folks with their
    expertise working with the companies to make sure that those
    models--not purposefully, I don't think any company, certainly
    here, would purposefully put out a model that allows a
    terrorist to build a nuclear weapon, but they don't have the
    nuclear expertise to ensure that that is the case. That is why
    having these experts, these Government experts, these
    independent experts, are so important as part of that red
    teaming.
        Getting rid of those folks is absolutely a national
    security concern, would have serious national security
    implications not just for AI, but for everything that we need
    those experts for.
        Mr. Ruiz. Thank you. You know, we have the opportunity and
    the responsibility to get this right. We cannot afford to wait
    until we see another crisis in youth mental health, another
    generation struggling with digital addiction, or another data
    breach exposing millions of children's personal information. So
    I urge my colleagues, let's put families first.
        Thank you, and I yield back.
        Mr. Guthrie. Thank you. Dr. Ruiz yields back. Mr. Allen is
    recognized for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Allen. Thank you, Chair Guthrie, for hosting this full
    committee hearing examining AI and impacts--how it impacts
    development----
        Mr. Ruiz. They gave it----
        Mr. Allen [continuing]. With an all-out energy approach and
    the technology. And certainly, we have got to be competitive
    globally.
        In fact, you know, we wouldn't be hiring this--we wouldn't
    be having this hearing if President Trump were not in office,
    because he has said that his--part of his agenda is an all-out
    energy program. We need to dominate energy in the world. And of
    course, AI, we understand that race. And so--and everything
    that we are doing, our conference is doing, is to provide every
    opportunity for us to be the energy-dominant country that we
    were just 6 years ago. And so that is what is so critical, and
    that is why we are having this hearing today to find out, OK,
    what do we need to do to make that happen?
        I would like to thank you for being here, our witnesses.
        You know, with the emergence of AI, the U.S. has to be a
    global leader. To be a leader in AI, it is critical that our
    energy sector is equipped to meet the demands of--that AI
    poses.
        Dr. Schmidt, in about 2030, data centers can consume
    upwards of 9 percent of total U.S. electricity at the same time
    as we are seeing historic projections of electricity demand
    because of AI developments, and the Nation's bulk power system
    is already under incredible strains. In fact, the North
    American Electrical--Electric Reliable Corporation, or NERC,
    found in their last long-term reliability assessment that half
    the Nation is at risk of resource adequacy. We know in some
    States we are having brownouts. That is, half the Nation is at
    risk to blackouts during times of extreme weather.
        In my opinion, our Nation will need significantly more
    power to meet these demands, and fast. How can we balance the
    needs of everyday Americans to keep the lights on while
    simultaneously powering developments in AI models?
        Dr. Schmidt. The answer, of course, starts with our overall
    premise, which is more of everything. It also includes a more
    intelligent grid that is more flexible when bad things happen.
    That is now possible with AI and with grid modernization. You
    need both.
        Mr. Allen. Mr. Bhatia, last month we heard directly from
    the grid operators talking about grid who are charged with
    overseeing the reliability of our electric grid. And they
    highlighted one of the biggest issues facing the bulk power
    system is the premature retirement of baseload power plants,
    which has been mentioned quite often in this hearing.
        We also heard that places like New England, who do not have
    sufficient natural gas capability and longstanding opposition
    to nuclear energy, are not seeing the same uptick in new
    investments or data centers and manufacturing facilities.
        My home State of Georgia, which has been the best State to
    do business in 12 years in a row, has been a leader in
    investment in job-creating industries, largely because of our
    probusiness environment and diverse slate of baseload-
    generating resources. In fact, now we have just added to Plant
    Vogtle two more units, and it is the largest clean energy
    facility in the United States built in the last 30 years.
        Given your company's energy-intensive nature, how important
    is access to reliable, affordable electricity when deciding
    where to invest in U.S. manufacturing facilities?
        Mr. Bhatia. Thank you, Congressman, and I would like to
    just start by giving a call out to our research and development
    center that we have in your home State. And we have certainly
    found that, over time, that that has been a wonderful place for
    us to attract talent and grow our engineering capabilities
    there.
        Mr. Allen. Yes.
        Mr. Bhatia. In terms of your question on baseload,
    absolutely. I think many of the questions today have been
    focused on that.
        And for, you know, semiconductor operations, we have very,
    very consistent loads. We have, of course, high loads. And the
    reliability of the power is incredibly important, as I have
    mentioned earlier. So nuclear power, hydroelectric power, these
    are excellent fits for us. But we also agree with the other
    panelists an all-of-the-above approach is what is required.
        Mr. Allen. Good. I have a few--Mr. Bhatia, I have a few
    yes-or-no questions I am going to ask you.
        Do you agree that permitting reform is needed to meet, as
    you discuss in your testimony, our rising energy demand?
        Mr. Bhatia. Yes.
        Mr. Allen. Do you agree that it includes air permitting?
        Mr. Bhatia. Yes.
        Mr. Allen. The National Ambient Air Quality standards
    implemented by the Biden-Harris administration's EPA, for
    example, have proven to be a significant burden on the U.S.
    manufacturing base. These stringent regulations have made it
    difficult to permit and develop many of the facilities needed
    to support our next generation of industrial base. Whether it
    be PM 2.5 or ozone, EPA needs to be more flexible. No question
    about it.
        Mr. Guthrie. Your time is----
        Mr. Allen. My time has expired. I have an additional
    question for you. If you would answer that for the record, I
    would appreciate it.
        And I yield back.
        Mr. Bhatia. I would be----
        Mr. Guthrie. Thank you. The gentleman yields back. The
    Chair recognizes Ms. Clarke for 5 minutes for questions.
        Ms. Clarke. Thank you very much, Chairman Guthrie, Ranking
    Member Pallone. And to our panelists for today's hearing, thank
    you to our witnesses for being here to testify.
        And let me just say that it is a pleasure to see Micron
    presented--represented on this panel, as Micron is making
    historic investments in New York that will transform our State
    and the semiconductor industry more broadly.
        Members of this committee are well aware that generative
    artificial intelligence has proven to be one of the most
    impressive technological advancements of this generation. But
    with a tool so expansive, it is up to us to ensure that AI
    systems are developed and deployed responsibly and with
    consumers in mind.
        Last Congress I had the honor of being appointed to the
    Bipartisan Task Force on Artificial Intelligence, which was
    established to ensure that the United States continues to lead
    in AI innovation, as well as examine appropriate guardrails to
    protect against emerging threats like those outlined in the
    2023 GAO Report on the Rapid Use and Growth of AI. I have been
    sounding the alarm on issues related to AI and algorithms for
    years, namely the potential for algorithmic bias.
        AI has only gotten smarter. And with its rapid development,
    consumers are faced with the increasingly acute potential for
    harm caused by algorithmic discrimination. For example, facial
    recognition technology, a tool used by both retail stores and
    law enforcement, has repeatedly shown an inability to
    accurately identify people of color, which has led to multiple
    instances of false identification and unwarranted harassment.
    And when it comes to home ownership, Black applicants are
    denied mortgages at higher rates, a decision that is
    increasingly made based on algorithms. In healthcare,
    algorithmic bias can lead to misdiagnosis, as the people of
    color are historically underrepresented in existing data sets,
    and algorithms are improperly tested for accuracy.
        My top priority with respect to the growing use of AI is
    simple. We need to make it abundantly clear to developers and
    deployers of algorithmic systems that Americans do not forfeit
    their civil liberties when they go online. That is why I have
    prioritized algorithmic accountability and have fought to
    codify and make explicitly clear that civil rights protections
    still apply in the digital realm, especially when AI is used in
    critical decision making.
        Lines of code remain exempt from our antidiscrimination
    laws and too often go unchecked. Every algorithm has an author.
    Every bias has an origin. Through proper regulation we must
    ensure safety, inclusion, and equity are top of mind in the
    deployment of automated, critical decision-making systems that
    affect Americans' lives.
        And while I am pleased with the final report of the
    bipartisan Task Force on AI and find that it serves as a
    productive framework to set guardrails on AI that includes
    civil rights and liberties, the conversation does not end
    there. It is up to this committee, my Republican colleagues,
    who seemingly have an aversion to the words ``civil rights,''
    to properly protect all Americans when they either electively
    or unknowingly use AI to make critical life decisions.
        I have one question, Mr. Turk: Do you agree that it is
    important to ensure that AI systems are rigorously tested for
    bias before they are deployed and on a regular basis
    thereafter?
        Mr. Turk. Well, let me first thank you for your leadership
    on the bipartisan task force and more generally, and I
    completely agree we need to have those kinds of protections in
    place. This is a powerful technology, an incredibly powerful
    technology, and we need to get this right.
        Ms. Clarke. Yes, I am just concerned that, you know, some
    biases get baked into our systems and that inaccuracy can be
    detrimental not only to communities but to our ability as a
    nation to be as strong as possible, particularly when guarding
    against adversaries that seek to do us harm.
        So thank you for your work, gentlemen. I appreciate all
    that you are doing.
        Young man, Mr. Wang, you are making it happen.
        [Laughter.]
        Ms. Clarke. We are proud of you. Much continued success.
        And I yield back the balance of my time.
        Mr. Guthrie. Thank you. The gentlelady yields back, and the
    Chair recognizes Mr. Balderson for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Balderson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for
    holding this hearing today, and I would like to thank all the
    witnesses for being here also today.
        Let me start with you, Dr. Schmidt.
        I represent Ohio's 12th Congressional District, which
    covers central and southeastern Ohio. Licking County, which I
    am proud to represent, has one of the largest clusters of data
    centers in the country. Google, Amazon Web Services, Meta, QTS,
    Vantage, and more all have data centers in central Ohio and my
    district. In total, power demand from data centers will reach
    5,000 megawatts in central Ohio by 2030, based on signed power
    agreements. Just last month, Williams announced a $1.6 billion
    investment to build new--two new natural gas-fired plants in
    Licking County with a combined capacity of 400 megawatts. This
    reliable baseload power generation is critical to meet growing
    demand in central Ohio.
        Dr. Schmidt, in order to alleviate strain on the electric
    grid, I am curious what role or involvement you think these
    tech companies should have in helping to bring in new
    generation to secure the massive amounts of power needed for
    their facilities.
        And how should these companies partner with grid operators
    or power providers to ensure we can properly account for
    tracking--growing tracking demand?
        Dr. Schmidt. So when I was at Google, we made a bet on Ohio
    and we built the largest data center at the time in the world,
    which was massive. And I used to go visit it. And so, oh my
    God, the data centers you are describing are 10 times larger
    than anything I ever built way back when I was doing this only
    7 years ago. So it gives you a sense of the scale of the
    investment in what you are doing.
        The best thing to do is to have a strategy within your
    State where everybody agrees to solve the energy power problem.
    We found in--working in Ohio that we were able to get access to
    the high-voltage lines that we could not get access elsewhere.
    We built our own substations, which are also massive. That is
    what it takes. That is what every one of you is going to have
    to do to have your States be a center for AI--the AI
    revolution.
        Mr. Balderson. Thank you.
        Mr. Bhatia, I will switch to you. I would also like to hear
    your thoughts on this. What is Micron doing to be proactive in
    securing the power needed for these chip fabs?
        Mr. Bhatia. So as part of our selection of the locations
    where we will be expanding, the power availability and the
    agreements that we could reach with local power companies was a
    key part of that criteria. As I mentioned before, nuclear
    power, hydroelectric power, both very good fits for us, and
    those are in strong availability in the areas where we
    selected, and we continue to work with the providers in those
    areas to be able to ensure that we can have more investments to
    be able to have long-term access to that affordable and
    reliable power.
        Mr. Balderson. Thank you. I will continue with you, sir.
    You note that one of America's strongest competitive advantages
    compared to markets in Asia is our reliable and affordable
    energy supply. I strongly agree with you, with this assessment
    that we must maintain this key competitive advantage by
    building out generating capacity to meet the expected short-
    term surge in energy demand after years of flat growth.
        However, right now we are seeing massive backlogs of
    generation project and grid operators, interconnection queues.
    Depending upon the region, power projects are sitting and
    waiting in interconnection queues for 5 years before they can
    even get studied and then ultimately built and connected to the
    grid. The build-out of AI and data centers isn't happening in 5
    years. It isn't happening now, and these facilities need power.
    Do you have concerns that the current process can take years
    and years just for new power generation projects to get through
    the queue?
        Mr. Bhatia. Yes.
        Mr. Balderson. Thank you. Do you think Congress can play a
    role in ensuring new generation is getting online and connected
    faster, given the historic increase in power demand?
        Mr. Bhatia. Yes.
        Mr. Balderson. Thank you very much.
        Dr. Schmidt, would you like to add anything to that?
        Dr. Schmidt. The interconnection queues are a very good
    example of something which is something that you all need to
    work on: basically, getting the system to be more flexible when
    the industry shows the demand.
        I mean, the delays are crazy, right? People--they have the
    money, they have the ability to get the power built, and they
    can't interconnect it. That is a good example of grid
    modernization. It applies to everybody.
        Mr. Balderson. So I encourage you--we have introduced some
    legislation called the GRID Act, and it is all about the
    interconnection queue.
        So with that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back. Thank you.
        Mr. Joyce [presiding]. The gentleman yields. The Chair
    recognizes the gentleman from California, Mr. Peters, for his 5
    minutes.
        Mr. Peters. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I do think it is great
    that the whole committee is hearing this.
        And I thought particularly, Dr. Schmidt, I want to
    compliment you on setting the table on this because we are
    caught up in a lot of little things, and you really gave us a
    very big perspective on how important and daunting this is.
        I had a bunch of questions from before. I am only going to
    ask one, which is about the Energy Permitting Reform Act, or
    EPRA, which was the Senate permitting deal at the end.
        Mr. Turk, can you talk a little bit about the importance of
    transmission and the importance of interregional planning and
    interregional transmission as a way to help deal with our
    energy needs?
        Mr. Turk. Well, put simply, we just need to make
    improvements. We need to get the most out of our existing
    transmission: grid-enhancing technologies, reconductoring,
    bringing AI and other tools to make sure that we are smart
    about these assets and they are flexible and they are smart.
        And then secondly, we do need new transmission, and it does
    take too long in our country to build transmission. We
    underwent a whole series of reforms in the Biden administration
    to try to improve that, and I think we made some significant
    progress, but we need to do more. And certainly, Congress has
    an incredibly important role here.
        Mr. Peters. Well, I am an advocate on this committee and
    the Energy Subcommittee for permit reform. We did a lot of work
    to get EPRA to the point it was. I think we should start with
    that and adopt it.
        I will say that this concept of all-of-the-above energy, I
    understand--I think sometimes it is all of the above as long as
    it is natural gas. The thing I would say is we--I was recently
    at a meeting with the energy company and some of my Republican
    colleagues, where they said now it takes 5 years to get a
    national--natural gas plant online, largely because of the
    supply chain constraints and getting turbines. But you can get
    solar within a year. And the company was begging us not to
    repeal the incentives for solar power and probably wind that
    are in the IRA. And I hope, when we talk about all of the
    above, we are really committed to all of the above and that we
    don't do something to shoot ourselves in the foot.
        With respect to natural gas, I am more than willing to work
    on natural gas. I have been saying like a broken record what I
    want out of that, from an environmental perspective, is some
    agreement on the regulation of fugitive emissions, methane
    emissions. It is an easy thing to do. It is something the
    industry is open to. If we did that here, it would solve a lot
    of--it would answer a lot of the questions we have about the
    use of methane or use of natural gas as a bridge fuel. I think
    that is an easy thing to follow.
        I would reiterate what some other people see, the need to
    invest in basic science is really critical here. China is more
    than keeping pace with us. They are outinvesting us by quite a
    bit. In my district a lot of that is in biotechnology, but a
    lot of it is in fusion. And I think that is something that we
    have to continue to invest in. It is--it would really solve a
    lot of problems, but it takes investment. And I think
    investment in energy in our universities, the best university
    system in the world, the best set of universities in the world,
    is really critical to this--for this country.
        I agree that our data is ridiculously unmanaged and
    uncoordinated. We saw this in COVID. I tried to deal with it in
    COVID. You can't draw conclusions from a data set that is so
    disparate and unorganized. I think that your comments were
    really wise about that, sir, and I think that Congress has a
    role in making sure that we get on top of that.
        I would--do not want to overlook the role of imports in
    this. I mean, we do not make solar panels here. We import a lot
    of things. We are making it more expensive. It is craziness. It
    is a craziness. And I think, for the Republicans who used to be
    such staunch supporters of free trade, and Democrats like me
    who supported both the Trans-Pacific partnership and the USMCA
    negotiated by Donald Trump, we can't forget the benefits of
    that international trading system and that the cost of inputs
    that we need to solve this problem are really being heightened
    by this trade war and this self-harm.
        I do want to say, too, that I think we should think hard
    about whether some of the calculations can be decentralized. We
    have taken for granted, we have taken as a given that there is
    a certain amount of energy we need. I have no doubt that it is
    a lot. I had actually heard 5 gigawatts for a data center, now
    I hear 10. That is a massive challenge. We ought to think about
    whether, as a--systemically, some of those calculations could
    be done on these handheld devices. It would take some of the
    power requirements away from those big facilities.
        And finally, I would--the other thing I would observe as a
    Californian is we can't let ourselves get into the situation we
    are in with privacy, where we have 38 different standards
    across the country. This committee has got to come to grips
    with the notion we have to do preemption. There is a Federal
    supremacy clause for that reason. This has got to be a national
    policy. We have got to set national standards. We have got to
    do it on privacy, we have got to do it on AI, and we can't be
    scared of using our power here.
        Thank you very much. We have a lot of work to do. Again,
    thanks so much for the witnesses. And I yield back.
        Mr. Joyce. The gentleman yields. The Chair recognizes the
    gentleman from Texas, Mr. Pfluger, for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Pfluger. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Dr. Schmidt, Mr. Bhatia, what role will LNG play in
    providing the power that is necessary for AI and data centers?
        Dr. Schmidt. I am sorry, LNG?
        Mr. Pfluger. Natural gas.
        Dr. Schmidt. So natural gas? It sure looks like natural gas
    is needed in most renewables scenarios because of, essentially,
    a peaker plant. It also looks like we just need more natural
    gas, more natural gas generation kind of everywhere.
        Mr. Pfluger. Mr. Bhatia, you mentioned that in your
    testimony----
        Mr. Bhatia. Yes.
        Mr. Pfluger [continuing]. Earlier today about concerns with
    intermittent power. So when we are looking at sourcing, what do
    you need, intermittent? Or do you need a reliable baseload?
        Mr. Bhatia. Well, so we have--obviously, we need reliable
    baseload power. Natural gas has the ability to be able to be a
    really good smoothing capability for the--and buffer,
    basically--for the ups and downs of the overall grid. And that
    is why I would agree with Dr. Schmidt that it is an important
    area, and it is an element--it is an area that the United
    States has, you know, a tremendous amount of capability in.
        Mr. Pfluger. The power providers were here. ERCOT testified
    last week, and they said that Texas alone is at a peak demand
    of about 80 to 85 gigs right now, and that is going to increase
    in the next 4 to 5 years to 150. So Mr. Turk, are you familiar
    with the study that DOE did last year--it actually started in
    2023--on LNG?
        Mr. Turk. I am.
        Mr. Pfluger. What was your role in the----
        Mr. Turk. So I was the----
        Mr. Pfluger [continuing]. Department of Energy?
        Mr. Turk. I was at that time the Deputy Secretary, the
    number 2 official.
        Mr. Pfluger. OK, did you----
        Mr. Turk. And I was very involved.
        Mr. Pfluger. You were involved with that report?
        Mr. Turk. I was.
        Mr. Pfluger. What was the title of that report?
        Mr. Turk. I don't remember what the title of the report
    was.
        What we did is we asked a number of our national labs to
    give----
        Mr. Pfluger. Let me----
        Mr. Turk [continuing]. Us an independent assessment.
        Mr. Pfluger. OK. When was that report released?
        Mr. Turk. We pushed our national labs to do it as quickly
    as possible, and----
        Mr. Pfluger. When did the Department of Energy release the
    report?
        Mr. Turk. I think we ended up releasing it late last year
    or early this year.
        Mr. Pfluger. OK. So you actually did release it?
        Mr. Turk. We did release it.
        Mr. Pfluger. Were there sections that were redacted?
        Mr. Turk. Not to my knowledge.
        Mr. Pfluger. That is----
        Mr. Turk. We believe very strongly----
        Mr. Pfluger. That is what was reported.
        Mr. Turk. We wanted an independent analysis to look at the
    cost implications, the environmental implications, and we did
    not suppress any information whatsoever.
        Mr. Pfluger. Were you aware of the 2023 study's findings
    prior to the January 26 decision to indefinitely ban new export
    authorizations under section 3 of the Natural Gas Act?
        Mr. Turk. So we didn't ban any--we did the study in order
    to take a step back because we have authorized so much. Up to
    half of our natural gas production right now is authorized to
    actually go abroad and to be sold, including to China.
        Mr. Pfluger. Why was----
        Mr. Turk. So what we did was take a pause----
        Mr. Pfluger. I will reclaim my----
        Mr. Turk [continuing]. Did the study, and then----
        Mr. Pfluger. I will reclaim my--Mr. Turk, thank you. Thank
    you. Pause, ban, we can debate this all day long, but why was
    the study not released immediately after it was done?
        Mr. Turk. So it was.
        Mr. Pfluger. So----
        Mr. Turk. We released the study--
        Mr. Pfluger. So do you----
        Mr. Turk [continuing]. Once the experts finished the study.
        Mr. Pfluger. Do you disagree that the study was more
    favorable to LNG than the Biden administration would have
    liked, and that is why there was a pause put on LNG exports?
        Mr. Turk. The study--the pause was so that we could do the
    study before making decisions.
        Mr. Pfluger. So--
        Mr. Turk. And to actually have our independent experts, and
    the independent experts in our national labs were the one who
    did the study.
        Mr. Pfluger. OK. So the study actually came out, was
    released by Secretary Wright, and----
        Mr. Turk. We released the study.
        Mr. Pfluger [continuing]. There was----
        Mr. Turk. The Biden administration released the study.
        Mr. Pfluger. In December of 2026--or December of 2024,
    excuse me. And it came out as a--pretty favorable with regards
    to emissions, but it was delayed by the Biden administration
    for months----
        Mr. Turk. It wasn't.
        Mr. Pfluger [continuing]. On being released. Well, that
    is----
        Mr. Turk. It wasn't. I was there. It wasn't delayed.
        Mr. Pfluger. It----
        Mr. Turk. That is how long it took because we wanted a
    thorough, independent analysis by several of our national labs.
        Mr. Pfluger. So do you agree that the emissions of natural
    gas were better and more consistent and actually more favorable
    than what you claimed and what Secretary Granholm claimed in
    the attempt to ban natural gas exports?
        Mr. Turk. So LNG exports have a very, very significant--a
    very significant greenhouse gas footprint. So just one project,
    we are talking 4 BCF per day. That project itself has more
    emissions throughout the life cycle--methane emissions, but
    CO2 combustion--when that gas is burned than 141----
        Mr. Pfluger. You haven't----
        Mr. Turk [continuing]. Countries in our world.
        Mr. Pfluger. You haven't answered my question, so----
        Mr. Turk. That is one facility, 141 countries in our world.
        Mr. Pfluger. So----
        Mr. Turk. That is a pretty significant footprint.
        Mr. Pfluger. So you stand by your decision to ban LNG
    exports.
        Mr. Turk. Again, we did a pause so we could do the study.
        Mr. Pfluger. And you stand by that.
        Mr. Turk. And so that any Secretary of State could have
    good, independent analysis----
        Mr. Pfluger. Your decision to do that is going to impact
    these guys right here. It is going to impact our ability to
    provide power for the AI data center--
        Mr. Turk. So again, that is LNG that is being exported.
        Mr. Pfluger. OK.
        Mr. Turk. This had nothing to do with domestic use of gas
    here.
        Mr. Pfluger. I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Turk. In fact----
        Mr. Pfluger. Thank you.
        Mr. Turk. In fact----
        Mr. Joyce. The gentleman----
        Mr. Turk [continuing]. The more we export, the more price
    pressure for our----
        Mr. Joyce. The gentleman yields.
        Mr. Turk [continuing]. Domestic.
        Mr. Joyce. The Chair now recognizes Mr. Soto from Florida
    for his 5 minutes.
        Mr. Soto. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        You know, listening to this hearing, I feel like we are in
    a time warp back to 2024. Biden was president, we had the
    strongest economy in the world, and we were free to debate the
    finer points of AI regulation, the IRA, and data centers. But
    it is April 9, 80 days into the Trump administration, and
    Trump's tariffs, chaos, and deportations have sent our economy
    into a freefall while our friends across the aisle just bury
    their heads in the sand and pretend this isn't happening. Or
    will you join us to help fix it?
        Speaker Johnson just today blocked any consideration of
    tariffs until September 30. He put a straitjacket on the U.S.
    House of Representatives to even try to address this issue.
    Meanwhile, AI data centers could see an estimated 30 percent
    increase in expenses to build, according to Fortune magazine
    this week. Air conditioning, liquid cooling systems,
    transformers, circuit breakers, cabling, routers, switches,
    construction materials, battery systems will all go up because
    of Trump's tariffs.
        So is the biggest threat to AI overregulation, or is it the
    tariffs? Duh.
        Mr. Turk, what do you think is the biggest threat right now
    to AI development, is it the overregulation, allegedly, or is
    it tariffs?
        Mr. Turk. I think tariffs increase costs, and they increase
    uncertainty, and that is damaging for AI being built in our
    country, but it is damaging across our economy.
        Mr. Soto. And then we--I am worried about demand and access
    to capital. I heard it in both Newsweek and in Fortune magazine
    this week: access to capital is in real jeopardy because major
    tech companies, the biggest investors in AI, see a potential
    recession on the way and their core businesses are threatened.
    Ad spending drops, the capital drops during a recession.
        Dr. Schmidt, we saw that the Google shares were at $200 a
    share when Trump took office, and now they are at $146, a 27
    percent drop in 3 months. No one celebrates that, that is
    awful. That would have a negative effect on future AI
    investments for Google right now. Isn't that true?
        Dr. Schmidt. Don't remind me of the stock price.
        Mr. Soto. Yes, I didn't mean that--I am not here to attack
    anybody, I was--but that--but how does that affect Google's
    investment in future AI?
        Dr. Schmidt. I can't speak for Google, but I can say in
    general the genius of the American financial system, aside from
    the fact that we are a reserve currency, is that crazy
    entrepreneurs can raise billions of dollars on a whim, on a
    risk. That is why we are leading. If that system breaks, the
    system that is the unification of the government, the private
    sector, and academics, and that money is not available, we are
    toast.
        Mr. Soto. Yes, we are the world's currency right now. But,
    you know, that is in jeopardy as we speak.
        Mr. Bhatia, we saw Micron take a thump too, from 109 per
    share when Trump took office to 65 today, a 41 percent drop.
    Again, no one likes this or celebrates this, but how does that
    affect your access to capital and the ability for you to
    continue to develop AI chips--AI microchips and technology?
        Mr. Bhatia. So, you know, we have--we take a long-term
    view, and the demand for growing, for memory--the demand for
    data, and therefore the demand for memory--continues to grow.
    It is a secular trend. And so we intend our investments to be
    for the long term, but we have to bring them online--in line
    with the demand trends that we see. And so we continue to
    expand in that way.
        But that shows the importance of--and these kind of
    volatile events will happen from time to time in our industry,
    and that shows the importance of us having a durable,
    predictable investment tax credit to be able to support our
    continued expansion here in the United States, where we are
    committed to building.
        Mr. Soto. We all want to make sure these stocks go back up
    and people's retirements are protected, and that is why this
    Congress needs to work together. We did work together on the
    bipartisan ADVANCE Act, which boosted nuclear, signed by
    President Biden, a bipartisan product from this committee.
        Mr. Turk, how does the speeding up of deployment and
    licensing of new reactors and fuels help, through nuclear, the
    future of AI?
        Mr. Turk. So I think it is a big deal, and thank you for
    the leadership on the ADVANCE Act. We need to not only get the
    most out of the resources that we have got, including those
    resources that can be brought on quickly to our grid--right now
    that is solar and storage and wind, those are the resources
    that allow us to bring electrons on quickly to power these AI
    data centers--but we absolutely have to work on clean baseload
    power. Nuclear is an incredibly important part of that
    equation. Enhanced geothermal is another incredibly important
    part. And so we need to have the research, we need to have the
    investment, and we need to have those tools as quickly as we
    can.
        Mr. Soto. Thanks.
        I yield back.
        Mr. Joyce. The gentleman yields. The Chair now recognizes
    the gentleman from Idaho, Mr. Fulcher, for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Fulcher. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Bhatia, in a different era back years ago, I was
    privileged to work for Micron Technology. Technically, I began
    with the startup phase. It was still in startup phase. I spent
    15 years there. I cannot tell you how proud I am of that and
    the education that I received personally, and the experience,
    life experience, that was truly unique. And I could not have
    higher regard for your company. And so please know that.
        At that time, as I say, things were different. But we sold
    ourselves, we positioned ourselves with customers and potential
    customers that most of our costs were fixed. And whether we
    produced one die or a million die, the costs were largely the
    same, and that gave us the ability to sell ourselves as an
    American supplier.
        Now, today you discussed how energy is one of the factors
    that has changed that business model. In those days it was all
    about die size, and could we stack the capacitors and make it
    efficient, and that was the secret sauce. And if we got that,
    we won.
        What has changed in today's business model, other than the
    energy that you correctly spoke about to change that strategy
    and business model in the framework that you are operating in
    today?
        Mr. Bhatia. Thank you. Thank you, Congressman, and thank
    you for your time in the early days of Micron and helping put
    the company on the track to where it is today.
        I think the biggest thing that has changed is the cost
    competitiveness of building and operating fabs in the United
    States over this last 25 to 30 years has become a widening gap
    between doing that in the United States versus Asian countries
    where we operate.
        Mr. Fulcher. Construction cost, just to be clear----
        Mr. Bhatia. Construction cost is one of the biggest gaps.
    It is probably the biggest gap between the Asian countries and
    where our competitors are versus the United States.
        In fact, the energy is an area that has been a bright spot
    for the United States, and it is an area that, you know, the
    focus of this hearing is to make sure that it continues to be
    an area of advantage for semiconductor industry, for Micron,
    but also for many other industries so that we are able to be
    able to make sure that all of these projects can come to
    fruition. And----
        Mr. Fulcher. Workforce?
        Mr. Bhatia. And the investments we are making in workforce,
    you know, we certainly believe that, in partnership with the
    many different universities that we are working with across the
    country, that we are going to be able to redevelop a pipeline
    of skills and capabilities that have been lost over the years
    as manufacturing left the country.
        We are also working with various different military exit
    organizations to be able to train veterans to come and work,
    because we think there is a really good overlap between the
    skills that they have from the military and the skills that
    they have to be able to operate and maintain fabs.
        And I think, you know, as I have mentioned before,
    expanding and extending the currently expiring investment tax
    credit for semiconductor projects is really, really very
    critical.
        Mr. Fulcher. Got it, and I am going to come back to you if
    I have time.
        Mr. Wang, I want to ask you a question. In your testimony
    you said there's three things Congress should do in order to
    move forward regarding AI. The second point you made was one
    Federal AI standard. We have had discussions about that on the
    committee. Dig that a little deeper. Peel that onion back.
        Specifically, what should those standards be, to the best
    of your advice?
        Mr. Wang. Yes. So first of all, just speaking as an AI
    company and being able to operate and innovate effectively, we
    need one Federal standard. We cannot afford a patchwork of 50
    different State standards----
        Mr. Fulcher. I understand.
        Mr. Wang [continuing]. That we have to execute against.
        Then peeling the onion back, we believe that we need to
    create a regulatory framework that enables innovation while
    still adding some level of guardrails. So our view is we need a
    use case, sector-specific regulatory framework, where in
    certain industries like medicine or financial services or
    insurance or others, where there should be heightened levels of
    scrutiny or heightened levels of controls for what AI systems
    can and should do, we should put those in place. But in other
    industries where we want the core technology to advance more
    rapidly and more effectively, we need to allow that to happen.
        Mr. Fulcher. OK. And I am about out of time, and I am going
    to submit some questions for the record, Mr. Chairman.
        But Mr. Wang, I do think you are a wealth of knowledge, and
    I would just say to you and the rest of the committee, as we go
    about--forward in setting or trying to set some Federal
    standards, please be careful what you ask for, because you just
    might get it. And we can be a friend, or we can be a very ugly
    big brother. And I say that because it is very difficult to
    identify the proper role of the Federal Government with these
    things.
        So thank you to all those who testified.
        Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
        Mr. Joyce. The gentleman yields. The Chair recognizes the
    gentlelady from Michigan, Mrs. Dingell, for her 5 minutes.
        Mrs. Dingell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thanks to Chair
    Guthrie and Ranking Member Pallone for convening this hearing.
        AI, as has been discussed today, is transforming every
    sector, from healthcare and transportation to manufacturing.
    But with rapid advancements come serious challenges such as
    data privacy risks, algorithmic bias, and the growing threat of
    foreign adversaries exploiting our vulnerabilities. And we
    cannot afford to let America's data and personal information be
    weaponized by China or other adversaries, or allow AI to spread
    unchecked through deep fakes, robocalls, and deceptive ads.
    That is why I was proud to help lead the TAKE IT DOWN Act,
    which passed out of the committee yesterday, to hold bad actors
    accountable for sharing nonconsensual deepfake content online
    and to protect survivors.
        AI, when paired with 5G and emerging technologies, is
    already transforming lives, streamlining public services,
    modernizing transportation, and improving healthcare outcomes.
    But to lead, we have to invest. That is what we were doing
    during the Biden administration. And quite frankly, I am very
    worried that we are now witnessing efforts to undo that
    progress.
        Programs that were signed into law through the Bipartisan
    Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS and Science Act, the Inflation
    Reduction Act, all of which provided funding that is crucial
    for the AI ecosystem, are being dismantled. And these
    investments aren't just about clean energy. That is what people
    don't understand. They are about global competitiveness, job
    creation, and securing the future of the American industry. The
    IRA has been critical to accelerating domestic manufacturing,
    especially in the auto sector--I admit that is one I care about
    deeply--which remains the backbone of the American economy.
        My Republican colleagues say we must outcompete China in
    AI. They are right. We must. I agree. But you don't win it by
    slashing your own tires. You can't lead by cutting funding,
    firing experts, and abandoning the public-private partnerships
    that fuel innovation.
        Secretary Turk, does cutting funding from agencies like the
    Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security, holding
    up CHIPS investments, threatening that they may not happen,
    firing technical experts at NIST keep the U.S. competitive in
    the global AI race, especially as China ramps up its
    investments?
        And what happens if we walk away from CHIPS and the IRA
    incentives?
        Mr. Turk. I think this is exactly the wrong time to walk
    away for those--from those incentives.
        Mrs. Dingell. OK, short.
        [Laughter.]
        Mrs. Dingell. Mr. Bhatia, what are the --I like it. It is
    wrong.
        What are the consequences of repealing the tax credits and
    public investments that are driving domestic industry growth
    and clean energy and advanced manufacturing?
        Mr. Bhatia. Well, Congresswoman, first I would like to just
    comment that I am proud to have been born and raised in
    Michigan. My first job in manufacturing was more than 30 years
    ago in the body shop, and that created my love of
    manufacturing.
        And, you know, a thriving automotive industry, as you said
    in your comments, is, I think, critical for the country's, you
    know, economic health, as well as for national security.
        I absolutely agree that we need to have continued support
    for investment tax credits for areas that are critical to AI,
    including, of course, semiconductor manufacturing. The tax
    credit that was passed is expiring, and this will create a
    challenge for continued investment, especially long-term
    investment, because this is not just a 5-year race. This is a
    15-, 20-year race that we are getting into, and we want to make
    sure we have leadership in technology and capacity together to
    be able to lead in creating the--in enabling the AI revolution.
        Mrs. Dingell. Thank you.
        Dr. Schmidt, do companies operating in the U.S. currently
    have meaningful incentives to protect consumer data and
    privacy?
        Are the current patchwork of State laws and voluntary
    standards sufficient, or would a comprehensive Federal privacy
    law with strong data minimization provide greater clarity and
    consistency for both consumers and the industry?
        Dr. Schmidt. I think there is a general view in the
    industry that a single privacy law would be a good outcome. I
    think it will be very hard to achieve. My own opinion is, given
    that it is hard to achieve, you are better off working on the
    most extreme cases, such as I fully support the bill you did
    yesterday. That is a good example of an extreme case. Maybe
    there's some other extreme cases that we could also handle
    through your good work.
        Mrs. Dingell. Well, more questions, and I want to dig into
    that too, Mr. Chairman, because I am out--I am going to have
    questions for the record, as some of my other colleagues do.
        But this is a very important issue, all of them are. Thank
    you, Mr. Chair, and I yield back.
        Mr. Joyce. The gentlelady yields. The Chair recognizes the
    gentlewoman from Tennessee, Dr. Harshbarger, for her 5 minutes.
        Mrs. Harshbarger. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to the
    witnesses for being here today.
        I will start with you, Dr. Schmidt. When tech companies are
    building the future of AI in the United States, we know these
    data centers use massive sums of energy. And for the most part,
    they are going to be running at maximum capacity 24/7. And this
    technology requires more baseload power--production, rather
    than renewables like wind and energy, where that production
    fluctuates.
        And my question is, How would it strengthen America's bid
    to lead the AI economy if we adopted a more friendly
    environment for natural gas and build out additional pipeline
    infrastructure?
        Dr. Schmidt. I agree with the need for more natural gas in
    the United States, more pipelines. I would also point out that
    you can achieve the same baseload goal with a combination of
    batteries and renewable. I think that the industry and the
    energy suppliers should make those on an economic basis, and I
    think the collective panel here is telling all of you----
        Mrs. Harshbarger. Yes.
        Dr. Schmidt [continuing]. All of more is better.
        Mrs. Harshbarger. Yes, all of the above.
        Dr. Schmidt. Yes.
        Mrs. Harshbarger. Mr. Bhatia, your testimony goes into
    great detail about the difficulties of navigating U.S.
    permitting law. Does the challenge Micron faces when building a
    facility like the one you are working on in New York--chip
    makers--would it make the chip makers reconsider the United
    States?
        And if so, how could the U.S. be--could it be leaving
    opportunities on the table by failing to update NEPA?
        Mr. Bhatia. So certainly we have, you know, experienced
    delays, and the duplicative nature of the process has----
        Mrs. Harshbarger. Yes.
        Mr. Bhatia [continuing]. Been challenged. And it is a
    challenge for, I think, any company who has to go through the
    NEPA process, whether in semiconductors or in other areas, and
    there will be other NEPA projects, including in--potentially in
    energy and other sectors where, you know, I think that there is
    a potential for some streamlining to have Federal and State
    processes to be harmonized so that we don't have to go through
    the extended time.
        Mrs. Harshbarger. Yes, it is duplicative. I mean, very much
    so. Thank you, sir.
        Mr. Wang, one thing I really love is government efficiency.
    And I was inspired by your testimony--by your recommendation of
    implementing AI applications for the Government. It could free
    up public employees to think more strategically and could
    reduce regulatory backlogs.
        So how could the administration use AI to lower taxpayer
    burdens and increase government efficiency?
        Mr. Wang. The opportunities for AI to aid in government
    efficiency are immense, and this is one of the areas where I
    think AI can have tremendous impact very, very quickly,
    actually.
        You know, this goes to one of the things that we are
    talking a lot about in the industry, which is moving towards an
    agentic government. So how can we enable AI agents to start
    speeding up and streamlining a lot of the processes that we
    have within the Government so that they go from years to weeks,
    or potentially even days?
        So a few examples of that. You know, I think about how we
    can use AI to cut down the time it takes to handle veteran
    healthcare paperwork, or an AI system that could vastly improve
    fraud detection at the IRS. And then, you know, I think the
    combination--you know, if you look at every single agency,
    there is immense opportunity.
        Mrs. Harshbarger. Yes.
        Mr. Wang. And you can go across--you know, we see this in
    the DoD, who we work very closely with. We were working with
    them recently, we have been deploying a system called Thunder
    Forge, which is a system to using--for using AI for military
    planning and wargaming, a process that currently is extremely
    manually intensive. And we all know that, to be competitive in
    the future, we need to be more efficient.
        So there is just a wealth of opportunity, which is one of
    the reasons why we recommend that, ideally, every Federal
    agency should have some flagship AI programs to start
    implementing and getting into the process of utilizing AI and
    AI agents to streamline more of their processes. And
    ultimately, if we do that today, we will reap the benefits in
    the years to come.
        Mrs. Harshbarger. You are right. I see that already in some
    of the things we have already found with fraud, waste, and
    abuse, and some other--we don't even communicate within an
    agency, for heaven's sakes. So AI would absolutely benefit.
        You keep doing your work, young man, OK?
        All right. With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
        Mr. Joyce. The gentlelady yields. The Chair recognizes Mr.
    Veasey from Texas for his 5 minutes of questioning.
        Mr. Veasey. Thank you, sir, and I think this is amazing
    that we are here having this conversation today.
        Right now in the Dallas-Fort Worth region, we are literally
    becoming a hub for advanced manufacturing and AI innovation,
    and you can see it in all the new facilities that are opening
    up. You know, we have had the Facebook data center for a long
    time now, but we just--we have groundbreaking on several other
    new centers in the Alliance Corridor near Crowley and near
    Benbrook in Fort Worth. And this is really amazing, because you
    can see the new facilities going up and the jobs that they are
    bringing along with them, which is very, very important. It is
    generational, and it is really helping the DFW area lead the
    charge in this area.
        But as we lean into the future, we have to be clear-eyed
    about what comes with it, because AI just doesn't run on code,
    and it runs on power, something that we talk a lot about on
    this committee. And with a massive growth of data centers and
    AI infrastructure that is happening right now, it is putting a
    tremendous strain on the grid. And we have to get ahead of
    this, or consumers could end up footing the bill on this
    through higher prices and tighter capacity and more volatility.
        And so we can't treat energy demand from AI like an
    afterthought. We have got to be smart. We have got to keep the
    lights on. We have got to keep the bills affordable, and we
    have got to keep the grid resilient, especially in places like
    Texas that's a huge part of our country's economy, but also
    because we have already seen by what not investing in the grid
    can look like in 2021 during Winter Storm Uri. Because if AI
    moves forward without guardrails for jobs, for privacy, and for
    families, we really risk turning a lot of this promise into
    disruption.
        And I had a question for Mr. Turk: Do you believe the
    Department of Energy or Congress needs to take more aggressive
    steps to plan for and manage the energy load coming from AI
    infrastructure?
        And are there policies that you would recommend to ensure
    grid reliability and, again, affordability?
        Mr. Turk. Absolutely is the short answer. And fortunately,
    Congress provided a whole range of tax incentives, grants, and
    loans that are having a real impact right now on making prices
    more affordable not only for AI companies but also for
    consumers across the country. And it is helping to improve our
    grid reliability also.
        I know there is an active discussion going on right now in
    Congress: Do you all repeal those tax incentives that are
    lowering costs and allowing us to bring electrons on more
    quickly? And we look at what type of electrons are going to be
    brought on more--most quickly in our country. It is solar, it
    is wind, it is storage. That is what the experts, that is what
    the utility CEOs are saying.
        Unfortunately, right now we have a backlog on natural gas
    turbines right now. That is making it very challenging to bring
    natural gas on as quickly as some AI companies might want it
    to. So if you want to bring on electrons quickly, keep those
    tax incentives, keep those grants, keep those loans in place so
    that we can do it quickly, we can do it affordably, and that
    reduces costs for everybody, including for consumers.
        Mr. Veasey. Yes, absolutely, and it keeps America ahead by
    us investing in those things.
        You were at DOE when the CHIPS and Science Act passed, a
    law that is helping bring semiconductors and AI-related
    manufacturing back to U.S. soil. If those incentives are rolled
    back, do you think companies would continue to invest in
    domestic manufacturing, or would they move those operations
    overseas?
        Mr. Turk. I think Dr. Schmidt described what happened,
    unfortunately, a decade, two decades ago, when we let those
    manufacturing facilities slip out of our hands and go to other
    countries. And the CHIPS and Science Act was Congress working
    with the administration to step up and say we need to bring
    that back, and it is going to take some upfront capital. It is
    a perfectly appropriate role for the Government to say this is
    a critical technology, we are going to invest, we are going to
    encourage, and sent a bunch of private-sector investment to
    have those chips manufactured here in the U.S.
        So the short answer to your question is, if we were to some
    reason slow down the CHIPS Act or rescind that funding, we are
    going to be right back where we were, which is not where we
    need to be.
        Mr. Veasey. Yes. If for some reason we didn't fully
    implement CHIPS Act in this area, what would that mean for
    America competitively, particularly when we start talking about
    what countries like China are doing?
        Mr. Turk. So it is not only the economic opportunities that
    producing the chips here have for communities across the
    country. There is a real national security implication.
        Mr. Veasey. Yes.
        Mr. Turk. Chips, along with data and power and human
    intelligence, fuels this AI revolution we are in the midst of.
    If you don't have those chips and you are beholden to other
    countries and other supply chains, that is a real
    vulnerability.
        Mr. Veasey. Yes, which means China rules the world. Very
    scary.
        Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Joyce. The gentleman yields. The Chair recognizes Mr.
    Bentz from Oregon for his 5 minutes of questioning.
        Mr. Bentz. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks to all of you
    for being here.
        Is there a reason that we should have a more organized
    approach, Mr. Wang, to the approach that we are using to try to
    achieve this win in artificial intelligence?
        And before you answer that, tell me what a win is in
    artificial intelligence. I know, when I was reading the
    Oppenheimer book, and ``Turing's Cathedral,'' and other such
    literature--well, more Oppenheimer--the goal was a bomb. What
    is our goal in AI?
        Mr. Wang. AI is, as has been mentioned, a unique technology
    because it has such broad-reaching implications. It can be
    utilized to empower our economy and enable our industries to
    grow. It can be used for science in accelerating scientific
    discovery, helping us do things such as, you know, solving
    fusion or finding a cure to cancer. And it can also be used
    for--as a weapon, and used in military contexts.
        Mr. Bentz. And I know I asked you to tell me if our
    approach is the proper approach, and we will get back to that
    in a second. But as Lincoln said, the way you get things done
    is to change public opinion. And the great thing about this
    hearing today is what we are trying to say is this is an
    existential issue. This is so important we need to waive
    environmental rules, we need to push things aside, we need to
    create exemptions. We need to get past this haystack of
    obstacles that we have created for ourselves to protect things.
    But it takes forever now to do anything here, and we don't have
    forever.
        So what I am really asking is, make the best argument you
    can to America right this minute about why this is an
    existential, truly absolutely necessary thing for us to set
    these other important things aside. And it has to be more--and
    maybe it can't be. But your best argument. I am going to ask
    everybody else the same question, but go ahead.
        Mr. Wang. If we fall behind the Chinese Communist Party,
    this technology will enable the CCP, as well as other
    authoritarian regimes, to utilize the technology to, over time,
    effectively take over the world. You know, they will be able to
    export their ideologies, they will be able to utilize it as a
    military technology to invade other countries, and they will be
    able to use it for effectively spreading their regime in a more
    broad way across the world.
        Mr. Bentz. And so what is missing, of course, is--you say,
    ``use it.'' The definition of ``it'' is going to become more
    and more important. So people actually can grasp--this broad
    phrase of AI as so general.
        Your turn.
        Mr. Bhatia. Well, I think it is really critical that we not
    only maintain our leadership in terms of the algorithms and the
    data structure approach to being able to enable the AI
    applications, but absolutely the hardware, semiconductors,
    logic, memory. These are--it is absolutely critical that we are
    able to maintain our advantage----
        Mr. Bentz. They are critical. But what I am trying to get
    at here is public opinion has to understand why they are
    critical----
        Mr. Bhatia. Yes.
        Mr. Bentz [continuing]. Why it is absolutely essential that
    we win this race to a goal that is not as clear as I would
    like.
        Dr. Schmidt.
        Dr. Schmidt. In 5 to 10 years, every American citizen will
    have the equivalent of an Einstein on their phone or in their
    pocket. This is an enormous increase in power for humans. What
    if that Einstein is a Chinese one?
        Mr. Bentz. And I am going to shift back to Mr. Wang for
    just a minute because of, frankly, your age as compared to
    those others on the panel. So if everybody is going to have
    Einstein available, how would you suggest to teachers that they
    address this in the classroom?
        Mr. Wang. I think it is important. Frankly, I think AI will
    be an immense opportunity for humans and for industries to be
    able to leverage as a core technology. Our view is that, you
    know, in many ways our role--you know, humans' role will go
    towards supervising and managing these AI systems, these AI
    agents, if you will, in a--and give ourselves, frankly, more
    leverage.
        So I think the key for teachers and for education systems
    is to teach people how to leverage AI systems, how to use them.
    You know, how do you embrace the technology as a tool, as
    something that enables you to do more things, better things,
    you know, more ambitious things?
        Mr. Bentz. And that would mean that all of our teachers
    have to understand how to use this new tool.
        And I am going to be out of time, but I was interested, Mr.
    Turk, in the remarks you made about trying to recover and bring
    back to the United States manufacturing capability. I know that
    Micron is the only memory chip maker we have left here, and so
    I think the tariff concept is exactly that, to try to, in some
    fashion, get us back to where we need to be as we watched all
    those different, important jobs flee, now doing our best to get
    them back. And the real question is how to do it.
        And I am out of time, but it is certainly incredibly
    important. Thank you. Thank you all.
        I yield back.
        Mr. Evans [presiding]. The gentleman yields. The Chair now
    recognizes the gentlelady from Massachusetts, Mrs. Trahan.
        Mrs. Trahan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Congress must lead in advancing a proconsumer, pro-
    innovation AI agenda. Clear guardrails and regulatory certainty
    will fuel, not hinder, that innovation. So to understand what
    that looks like for everyday Americans, let's just start at the
    beginning of the AI pipeline with research and what we need to
    be doing to set the conditions for AI capacity.
        Foundational research drove breakthroughs like transistors,
    the internet, and large language models. Our adversaries get
    this. While Federal R&D funding is being cut, the Chinese
    Government is scaling its investments. For example, China is
    outspending us by more than double in fusion energy research
    and commercialization.
        Dr. Schmidt, in your testimony you noted the importance of
    ramping up fusion energy research. Commonwealth Fusion is in
    the district that I get to represent. The fusion and AI leaders
    that I regularly speak with tell me how important public-
    private partnerships are for advancing new technology and
    moving towards commercialization.
        How important is a strong Federal research enterprise for
    domestic innovation, including infusion and in AI?
        Dr. Schmidt. Commonwealth is an example of American
    exceptionalism. As you know, their development of these
    incredibly powerful batteries--or, sorry, magnets, excuse me--
    that was done in research at MIT shows you the path. You do it
    at MIT, you do a spinout. It was done collaboratively with MIT,
    with other investors. People have put billions of dollars into
    Commonwealth, including myself. I am also the chairman of a
    competitor company on the West Coast. That is how the American
    system works.
        Mrs. Trahan. Yes.
        Dr. Schmidt. The current 15 percent indirect cost issue is
    hurting American science, and it needs to be addressed. If
    there are issues in specific programs, do it surgically. The
    damage that is being done to American research, broadly
    speaking, will harm the country for the next 50 years.
        Mrs. Trahan. Thank----
        Dr. Schmidt. This is the time to reverse this.
        Mrs. Trahan. Your answer is exactly why the Federal
    Government must bolster and not squander its research capacity.
    Whether it is pushing away international researchers or gutting
    science agencies like NIH or the National Science Foundation,
    undermining research, the first step in the AI pipeline,
    threatens our ability to win, which I believe we all want to
    do.
        I would like to turn to AI development, which depends on
    computer chips. In 2022 Congress passed the CHIPS and Science
    Act to bring chip production back home. China sees the same
    strategic value and is implementing a massive state-sponsored
    campaign to strengthen its semiconductor supply chain. Mr.
    Bhatia, companies like Micron have received billions through
    the CHIPS Act to expand chip factories in the United States.
    How important is it that the Federal Government fully implement
    the CHIPS Act to ensure that Micron and other firms are able to
    bolster their domestic manufacturing capabilities?
        Mr. Bhatia. Thank you, Congresswoman, and you are right
    that, you know, our Asian competitors do have, you know, large
    cost gaps, cost deltas versus our operations here in the United
    States--35 to 45 percent range, depending on where in Asia--and
    those countries are also incentivizing their domestic
    companies, which creates competitive disadvantages for the U.S.
    companies.
        And it is absolutely essential that we are able to extend
    and expand the investment tax credits that were passed as part
    of that legislation so that the spring of new facilities that
    have started can continue and bloom over the next decade.
        Mrs. Trahan. Yes, thank you. You know, President Trump says
    he wants to revive American manufacturing, but he is gutting
    the CHIPS program office and floating repeal of the CHIPS Act
    altogether, and that just doesn't add up.
        Finally, on AI deployment, to benefit from AI people need
    protection. AI isn't flawless. It can mislead, it can make
    false predictions, it can expose personal data. Yes, we must
    beat China, but we don't need to become China. America must
    lead with its values, especially privacy. Our tech laws should
    reflect that.
        Mr. Wang, in your testimony you affirm the need for
    effective AI guardrails. This committee has repeatedly come
    close to passing a Federal privacy standard based on data
    minimization and transparency. How important are privacy
    protections as a guardrail for AI?
        Mr. Wang. You know, we strongly support Congress's desire
    to get data privacy legislation done. Ultimately, what we find
    critically important is that--again, I have mentioned this a
    few times--that we have one Federal framework so that we don't
    have a patchwork of various frameworks throughout the country.
        Mrs. Trahan. Yes, this committee has a lot of work to do.
    Thank you so much for your testimony.
        Mr. Evans. The gentlelady yields. The Chair now recognizes
    the gentlelady from Iowa, Mrs. Miller-Meeks.
        Mrs. Miller-Meeks. Thank you very much to the Chair and
    ranking member for holding this extremely important hearing on
    AI, energy, and global competitiveness.
        Iowa's 1st District has become an important contributor to
    our Nation's AI infrastructure. In February, Cedar Rapids
    announced its largest economic development investment in the
    city's history, a $750 million partnership between the city,
    Alliant Energy, and QTS to build a major data center campus.
    The project will bring hundreds of construction jobs and high-
    tech positions, while featuring innovative, water-free cooling
    systems that address resource concerns.
        It is also home to Azure's largest supercomputers, which
    Microsoft built for OpenAI to train breakthrough AI models.
    This cutting-edge infrastructure in our State's heartland
    demonstrates how communities beyond traditional tech hubs can
    play vital roles in advancing AI innovation.
        As we examine these technologies, I am particularly
    interested in how we ensure reliable power generation for these
    high-demand facilities. Iowa's diverse energy portfolio
    positions us well, but we need significant additional
    generation capacity nationwide to meet growing electricity
    demands for AI, domestic manufacturing, and residential demand.
    I am eager to explore how we maintain America's energy
    competitive edge, and especially against China's targeted
    effort to become the global AI leader by 2030. The decisions
    that we make today about regulation infrastructure will
    determine whether the United States maintains its leadership
    position and how critical this is, as has been mentioned
    earlier.
        Mr. Wang, I was impressed by MIT's AI innovation when I
    visited there a few years ago, but concerned to learn about the
    CCP's whole-of-government approach to accelerating Chinese AI
    capabilities. With the recent emergence of models like
    DeepSeek, how would you characterize our current competitive
    position against China, specifically in the areas of data and--
    I think you have answered this partly--computing algorithms and
    workforce development?
        Mr. Wang. It is an important question. And, you know, I
    always--you know, AI really does boil down to its ingredients,
    and these ingredients are the ones that you referenced:
    computational power, data, algorithms, and ultimately the
    workforce that we have to support it.
        When it comes to computational power, we are still ahead as
    a country, but we have to be very diligent to ensure that we
    stay ahead. We are lucky that the leading chips in the world
    are Nvidia chips, some of the chips from Micron and others,
    which are the forefront of the industry and the envy of the
    world. But we need to maintain those leads, and we need to
    think deeply about how we do that.
        When it comes to algorithmic--the algorithms, you know, I
    would actually say we are probably on par at this point with
    China. You know, we used to have a meaningful lead. Most of the
    most innovative algorithms are American innovations, but they
    have been very quickly replicated. And at this point it is not
    clear that we have a lead.
        When it comes to data, this is where China has an
    immeasurable lead. They have invested in it for years, you
    know, nearly a decade of investment into data sets to fuel
    their AI development. This started with their global
    surveillance programs and when they, you know, instituted
    large-scale AI for facial recognition and other technologies
    throughout the country. And it has continued to today.
        We need to figure out, as a country, how we achieve data
    dominance and how we can do that both in the public sector as
    well as across the private sector.
        And then lastly, on the workforce, this is an important
    point. We, as a country--again, the workforce is what fuels
    every component of this--of these sets of innovations, so we
    need to ensure that we, as a country, are setting up the right
    programs to empower the AI workforce of tomorrow. Thank you.
        Mrs. Miller-Meeks. Mr. Bhatia, in your testimony you stated
    that the U.S. is not on track to keep pace with projected
    energy demand and that, unless the U.S. makes substantial
    policy shifts, access to affordable and reliable power will
    begin constraining America's manufacturing renaissance.
        During our hearing with the Nation's grid operators last
    month, they expressed similar concerns. Your testimony
    specifically highlighted the Boardman to Hemingway transmission
    line project that has faced nearly 20 years of permitting
    delays.
        Can you elaborate on how these permitting challenges
    directly impact Micron's expansion plans and competitiveness,
    compared to China's ability to rapidly deploy energy
    infrastructure?
        Mr. Bhatia. Thank you, Congresswoman.
        The Boardman to Hemingway line is just an example. It is a
    project that is, I think, 300 miles long and has been on the
    drawing board for almost 20 years now, and it is--we were
    joking earlier that it is approaching its 21st birthday almost,
    in terms of how--when it was proposed until today, and still
    hundreds of millions of dollars spent on permitting.
        It is a project that does span three different States to be
    able to connect transmission in the Pacific Northwest. And
    because of those kinds of regulations between the different
    States as well as Federal oversight issues and regulations, we
    have not been able to see it even get started. And that is just
    one example of, I am sure, many, many other examples of
    projects which really are needed to be able to bring the grid
    resiliency that others on the panel have talked about and that
    I have called for as well.
        Mrs. Miller-Meeks. Thank you. I have a question for Dr.
    Schmidt on fusion, but I am out of time so I will submit it for
    the record, if you could please answer it. But I hadn't heard
    fusion mentioned, so I wanted to get that in.
        Thank you, I yield back.
        Mr. Evans. The gentlelady yields. The Chair now recognizes
    the gentlelady from New York, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez.
        Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to
    our witnesses for joining us today and offering your testimony.
        You know, this--the crux of what we are here to discuss
    today is where a lot of where the rubber meets the road when it
    comes to AI and how this actually manifests in the world, and
    the real problems that we are going to have to square and
    solve, particularly as it comes to energy and energy
    consumption.
        Mr. Schmidt--Dr. Schmidt, you have written in the past
    about the energy consumption of AI. You mentioned in this
    article here on Project Syndicate that ``AI guzzles
    electricity. A single ChatGPT query requires 10 times as much
    as a conventional web search.'' And in your opening statement
    today you said something very fascinating and compelling, I
    think, about the actual scale of the energy consumption that we
    are confronting here when you talked about gigawatts and
    nuclear facilities.
        Could you repeat that for me very quickly?
        Dr. Schmidt. So some math here is--and thank you,
    Congresswoman--the typical data center--sorry, the typical
    nuclear power plant is 1 gigawatt. We have roughly 90 of them.
    We are talking about 90 gigawatts in the next 3 to 5 years
    needed in America to maintain this leadership. And you put
    the----
        Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Ninety gigawatts for the AI data
    centers?
        Dr. Schmidt. For the United States. And the reason I want
    to emphasize this is (1) this is insane, in terms of a build.
    Why do we need it? Because we are going from the ChatGPT that
    you know, which is language-to-language----
        Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Right.
        Dr. Schmidt [continuing]. To reasoning systems that do
    thousands and thousands----
        Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Yes.
        Dr. Schmidt [continuing]. What they do is called
    reinforcement learning. They go back and forth and back and
    forth.
        Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Correct.
        Dr. Schmidt. They are not as efficient as our brains, and
    they discover new things.
        Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. And so we are--and I completely hear you
    on the scale of the technology that we are dealing with here.
    And going back to that 90 gigawatt number, that is the
    equivalent of--to what you mentioned here, 90 nuclear power
    plants, just that we would be developing--or the equivalent of
    that just for AI data centers alone.
        And of course, we are not talking about building 90 nuclear
    power plants. We are talking about building that capacity,
    which, before us here today, to be frank, and with the current
    administration, is fossil fuel infrastructure. Of course, we
    have talked about mixed energy loads, but with the investments
    and what we are seeing in terms of what is getting defunded and
    what is getting funded and what is being advocated for, this is
    largely fossil fuel infrastructure, and particularly methane--
    methane being 28 times more potent in contributing to the
    climate crisis than even traditional CO2.
        But what we are also seeing is that in the administration's
    moves to massively invest in AI, we have also seen the fossil
    fuel market be tightly associated with this. In fact, the day
    after Trump announced his $500 billion AI Stargate initiative,
    gas prices in the market went up 5.3 percent. And after the
    DeepSeek announcement from China, which announced that they
    used--consumed 50 to 75 percent less energy, gas prices fell 8
    percent.
        And so, increasingly we are seeing fossil fuel market
    speculation seeming to start to intertwine with the development
    of the AI industry. And this is a problem for working people,
    and this is the part that we need to square. In New York, Con
    Edison bills--that is our kind of local energy provider--are up
    for--some families are paying $1,200 a month to pay their
    energy bill. And we are here talking about massive energy
    investments not to lower their bills, but for, ultimately,
    infrastructure that is privately owned.
        Mr. Turk, if a utility invests in a new substation so that
    gas generation for an AI data center can connect to the grid,
    will that utility typically pass those costs on via its
    electrical rates?
        Mr. Turk. Well, I think you have hit the nail on the head
    here, right? We don't just need new electrons for AI. We need
    them for consumers, right? And we need to have downward
    pressure on prices, not the opposite.
        And so that is why we need to keep our eye on the ball,
    including and especially with the IRA tax credits. What we are
    talking about is average households paying $200 more per year
    if those tax credits are repealed. For citizens in New York it
    is $400 per year more.
        Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. And so I think--so--but at--the core of
    the question--without--you know, if we currently go on this
    path, the increases in that energy consumption from AI get
    passed on through the bills.
        Mr. Turk. That is exactly right. It is a competitive
    environment. We have increasing demand. If we don't have a
    range of resources, especially solar and storage, which are the
    cheapest resources to bring on quickly right now in our
    country, if we increase the prices of that, everyone is going
    to feel it----
        Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. And----
        Mr. Turk [continuing]. And consumers in particular.
        Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. And fossil fuel prices are certainly
    more volatile than renewables.
        Mr. Turk. That is right. That is right.
        Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Thank you very much.
        Mr. Evans. The gentlelady yields. The Chair now recognizes
    the gentlelady from Florida, Ms. Lee.
        Ms. Lee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Wang, I would like to go back to your testimony of
    earlier today, specifically toward the end, where one of the
    things that you touched on was how we, as Congress, might
    empower and utilize NIST to help us in our promotion of
    artificial intelligence.
        One of the things that you mention is that NIST needs more
    resources to be able to complete relevant measurement science,
    such as standards and frameworks. Would you tell us a little
    bit more about--elaborate on those standards and frameworks,
    and what you think NIST could be doing that would be
    constructive?
        Mr. Wang. Ultimately, as AI develops as a technology, it is
    very important that we have what we call test and evaluation
    regimes, that we are able to both test and evaluate the
    performance of these AI systems, understand their limitations,
    as well as do--as other of the panelists have mentioned, do
    extensive red teaming on these AI systems, understand how an
    adversary would be able to utilize AI or hack into our AI
    systems to harm us.
        You know, this work is incredibly important and serves as a
    foundation that we can use to export American AI standards
    globally. And this is--you know, this is really the strategic
    move for America, which is how do we ensure that the way that
    we think about AI--both embedded with our values and our
    democratic values, as well as how we think AI should be
    developed globally--is exported as broadly as possible
    throughout the world.
        You know, we saw, I think, in the last few generations of
    technology the Chinese Communist Party actually be quite
    strategic on this, the Belt and Road initiatives, their use of
    Huawei technology for 5G. You know, they have in many recent
    developments, major developments in advanced technology, they
    focus on exporting their technology and making sure that
    Chinese technology is the global standard.
        We need to do the opposite with AI. And the beauty of the
    situation that we are currently in is that many, many
    countries--you know, Japan, France, the UK, India--have all
    established AI safety institutes that are all looking towards
    the testing that we are doing in the United States and the
    standards that we are enforcing in the United States for them
    to institute their own standards.
        Ms. Lee. If we are able to develop and then effectively
    export that measurement science, would you elaborate on how it
    is that you think that will help promote democratic values?
        And similarly, if we fail to do so, what do you anticipate
    that we will see if we do not create those standards and share
    them globally?
        Mr. Wang. Ultimately, you know, just as a simple example,
    let's say that we institute as part of our test and evaluation
    systems certain guardrails around factuality, so the AI
    systems, you know--or certain guardrails around, you know,
    whether or not the AI could be used to create bioweapons or
    whatnot. That would totally eliminate certain classes of risks
    of a CCP model being used globally to, you know, perpetuate
    their ideologies or perpetuate, you know, perpetuate
    instability globally.
        You know, there is--we have an immense ability to ensure
    that the United--that the American view of AI, which is a
    democratic technology that can be utilized by the people, for
    the people to ultimately empower industries, that that is how
    the entire world views the technology. And it is a fixed window
    of opportunity. We will not have this opportunity forever. At
    some point, all of the other countries will start instituting
    their own AI standards, and so we need to act quickly.
        Ms. Lee. One of the things that you mentioned is your
    assessment that NIST would benefit from having additional
    resources from Congress in order to be able to undertake this
    activity. Do you have a perspective on how that looks, whether
    it is dollars, whether it is people, if there is a certain type
    of workforce they require? Do you have any perspective on how
    we could better equip NIST to be ready to do this?
        Mr. Wang. Yes. I think all of the above are important. I
    think ensuring that they have the dollars, ensuring that they
    have the headcount. And one of the things that I think is very
    critical is that they are able to bring in and leverage
    cutting-edge AI talent as a part of NIST to help define these
    standards globally, because these are very advanced technical
    questions that need to be answered, but ones that will have
    immense benefit to America and our economy long into the future
    if we succeed.
        Ms. Lee. Thank you.
        Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
        Mr. Evans. The gentlelady yields. The Chair now recognizes
    the gentleman from Massachusetts, Mr. Auchincloss.
        Mr. Auchincloss. Thank you, Chairman.
        Dr. Schmidt, it is good to see you again. You had come and
    spoken to the Select Committee on China, and you were
    elucidating then, and I have enjoyed hearing your testimony
    today as well. I was hoping you could tell the committee a
    little bit about a famous Google paper in 2017 called,
    ``Attention is All You Need.''
        Now, you were no longer executive chairman at that point,
    but you had been stewarding the company for the 15 years before
    that, and I am sure is well aware of how that publication came
    to be. Can you give us, like, a minute backstory?
        Dr. Schmidt. I was, in fact, still executive chairman. And
    the interesting thing about that paper is when it came out I
    didn't even notice it. That shows you--asleep at the wheel, or
    something.
        The six authors all became hugely famous because they came
    up with a way of building scalable intelligence. Before that,
    the RNN and CNN--not media CNN, the convolutional neural
    network--architectures were slow, and the ``Attention is All
    You Need'' allowed you to essentially devolve the computation
    into subdividable things which could scale infinitely. The
    transformer paper--and the ``T'' in GPT is transformer--is the
    underlying architecture----
        Mr. Auchincloss. Right.
        Dr. Schmidt [continuing]. That has enabled this explosion.
        Mr. Auchincloss. Am I right, that that transformer
    architecture in the 2010s was--really came--became coherent
    around the problem of natural language translation?
        Dr. Schmidt. Not really. The transformer architecture was
    essentially a refactoring of the technologies of the time into
    a more scalable architecture, specifically that you could have
    federated computing--you would have lots of different computers
    doing things at the same time is the easiest way to explain it.
    And it was a real breakthrough. They will ultimately win the
    equivalent of Nobel Prizes for it.
        Mr. Auchincloss. Well, I was looking, I was doing some
    research about the--what has been called the Transformer Eight,
    the eight----
        Dr. Schmidt. Yes.
        Mr. Auchincloss [continuing]. The authors of that
    publication. And they are almost like the PayPal Mafia of AI. I
    mean, what they have gone on to do is remarkable.
        Here is what else is remarkable. Of those eight, seven are
    immigrants.
        Dr. Schmidt. Yes.
        Mr. Auchincloss. And the eighth is the grandson of refugees
    who came to the United States fleeing persecution. In fact,
    two-thirds of top AI startups are founded by immigrants, and
    most Ph.D.-level AI talent in the United States is foreign-
    born.
        Dr. Schmidt, can you describe the impact of immigration on
    AI's--America's AI competitiveness?
        Dr. Schmidt. I was in a conversation last week in London,
    where people were talking about people leaving the United
    States AI companies to move to London because they couldn't
    work here anymore. That is insane. It is so counter to American
    national security. It is, like, crazy.
        From my perspective, the most important thing America can
    do is look for high skills immigration. These--to describe how
    hard this stuff is, these are Ph.D.s in math. I have no idea
    what they are doing, and they are inventing these incredible
    algorithms.
        Mr. Auchincloss. Yes.
        Dr. Schmidt. We need all of them in America, every single
    one of them. Physics, chemistry, you name it, we need them all.
        Mr. Auchincloss. And yet the Trump administration is
    currently eroding due process for immigrants in this country,
    whether they have green cards or student visas. They are
    deporting students, they are creating a climate of fear and
    anxiety on some of our best campuses.
        Go ahead, sir.
        Dr. Schmidt. It is actually worse--we agree. It is actually
    worse. People are being thrown out of the universities that are
    doing AI research. Universities have shut down their hiring
    pipeline. And they need AI professors, and the people will
    otherwise go to industry. So the damage being done to the
    universities is really, really profound.
        It is very, very important that we understand that American
    leadership in the--in research, which you understand very well
    from where you are, is the cornerstone of our future. We will
    not get there. Meanwhile, China is pouring an enormous amount
    of money into the same groups.
        Mr. Auchincloss. Do you think, if the Trump posture towards
    immigrants--student immigrants in particular, universities more
    broadly--if that persists, can America beat China in AI?
        Dr. Schmidt. No. In fact, when I was--you all appointed me
    to be the chairman of the National Security Committee on--
    Commission on AI, and we looked at this very carefully. What
    was interesting is that Chinese-born contributors were often
    part of the key papers. They were not the lead author, but they
    were part of it. If you would get rid of those people--and in
    particular they go to China, right?--the leadership literally
    moves. I would much rather have them be here.
        And people say, well, you know, they are criminals. They
    are not criminals. They want to be in the United States.
        Mr. Auchincloss. Right.
        Dr. Schmidt. If they are criminals, arrest them.
        Mr. Auchincloss. They are Americans by choice.
        Not only is Donald Trump providing a massive opening for
    China with his xenophobic immigration policy, he is also
    providing a massive opening for China with his trade wars
    that's bringing Europe and China closer together.
        With that I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Evans. The gentleman yields. The Chair now recognizes
    the gentleman from California, Mr. Obernolte.
        Mr. Obernolte. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and I
    would like to thank Chairman Guthrie and the Energy and
    Commerce Committee for having this hearing on a topic that is
    very close to my heart, and something I think is of immense
    national consequence to our economy and our country.
        Mr. Wang, it is great to see you again. In your testimony,
    you were talking about the steps that must be taken to ensure
    U.S. continued leadership in AI. And I was very thankful that
    you had some very specific asks of Congress and the
    administration. And one of those was that we adopt a regulatory
    framework that is sector-specific and use case based.
        And I wanted to ask you, could you elaborate a little bit
    on what you mean by that and how we would go about enacting it?
        Mr. Wang. Yes. So ultimately, what we need as a country is
    to ensure that--from a technology development standpoint, that
    we do not slow down. We need to ensure that AI as a technology
    moves forward as quickly as possible. And that includes
    embracing the technology and ensuring that we have the--we have
    room to innovate.
        But the application of that technology towards certain
    sectors or certain specific use cases in the economy are areas
    where I think, you know, there probably needs to be some level
    of regulation, or at least some level of guardrails in place.
    You know, these could be industries like the medical industry,
    the pharmaceutical industry, the financial services industry,
    and others--you know, industries that already have some degree
    of regulation to protect consumers and protect Americans.
        You know, we can--in many cases, we can utilize those same
    provisions or those same regulations, and then there might be
    some cases where there are some gaps.
        Mr. Obernolte. All right. The Artificial Intelligence Task
    Force in the House issued a report in December that made
    exactly that same recommendation, and I think the exact finding
    was that we regulate tools, not--outcomes, not tools. And AI is
    a very powerful tool, but it is a tool. If we focus our
    regulation on outcomes, then we can capture all the different
    uses of the tool.
        You also talked about the need for a single Federal
    standard for regulation, and Congressman Dunn was on the way to
    asking you about that and unfortunately ran out of time. So I
    wanted to give you a little bit of space to explain what you
    meant by that.
        Mr. Wang. Yes. So, you know, as an AI company--and I think
    what we ultimately want as a country is to ensure that our
    industry can continue developing advanced AI systems and
    continue driving American leadership. You know, the worst-case
    scenario for us is actually that there are 50 different--that
    every State adopts a different regulatory standard, and we have
    to, you know, operationally comply with 50 different regulatory
    standards.
        I mean, it quickly becomes impossible, especially as you
    consider, you know, in a lot of cases the way that we develop
    AI is we develop, you know, one large model, and then we start
    applying that model in all sorts of different industries and
    use cases and jurisdictions. And so we need, as an industry and
    as a country, one clear Federal standard, whatever it may be.
    But we need one--we need clarity as to one Federal standard and
    have preemption to prevent this outcome where you have 50
    different standards.
        Just to put a finer point on this, you know, we do not want
    our American companies spending all their time figuring out how
    to comply with every State's standards, whereas the Chinese
    models and the Chinese companies will just race ahead on
    innovation.
        Mr. Obernolte. Right. That is another conclusion that we
    completely agree with you. In the task force report we had a
    whole chapter on this issue.
        And let me just point out the fact that, since then, just
    in the last couple of months, we have at last count 958 bills
    pending in State legislatures across the country on the topic
    of AI regulation, and I am sure it is going to grow to be
    several thousand just in this year. If we allow this regulatory
    landscape that complicated to exist, I actually think that
    Scale is probably well suited to that because you have got the
    legal sophistication to deal with that.
        But who does not have that sophistication are two people at
    Caltech--see what I did there; not MIT, Caltech--trying to
    start the next Scale. So I think we definitely--we have a
    limited amount of legislative runway to be able to get that
    problem solved before the States get too far ahead.
        And one last question for you, Mr. Wang. You had mentioned
    the need to establish a national AI data reserve. Could you
    talk a little bit about why that is so important?
        Mr. Wang. If we--you know, ultimately, national security is
    the responsibility of the Government. And our Government's
    data, particularly our DoD's data and our data relating to
    national security, is so vital and valuable to ensuring that
    our AI systems are able to defend our country, defend our men
    and women, and ultimately ensure national security, broadly
    speaking.
        So the necessity of the national AI data reserve is so
    that, you know, in 10 years, 5 to 10 years, we are not sitting
    here seeing how advanced the Chinese systems for defense and
    intelligence and, you know, cyber warfare and other systems are
    because they have an integrated data approach versus our
    systems, which would be dramatically behind.
        Mr. Obernolte. Well, thank you very much for your
    testimony. Sorry I didn't get to the other witnesses. I have a
    million questions. We will submit that for the record.
        I yield back.
        Mr. Evans. The gentleman yields. The Chair now recognizes
    the gentleman from Louisiana, Mr. Carter.
        Mr. Carter of Louisiana. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank
    you to our witnesses for joining us today. I am glad we are
    discussing the need to upgrade our infrastructure for the 21st
    century economy and provide for all Americans' access to
    cutting-edge technologies championed by our witnesses here.
        In January, Louisiana became the first State to secure
    Federal approval for deploying $1.3 billion in broadband equity
    access and deployment, otherwise known as BEAD, funding. This
    achievement highlights the bipartisan nature of Louisiana's
    commitment to universal connectivity and to set standards for
    States regarding broadband access.
        The State's BEAD rollout plan began under the Democratic
    Governor John Bel Edwards and was completed under Republican
    Governor Jeff Landry, who called it a generational investment
    that will create thousands of jobs, drive billions of dollars
    in economic growth, and transform Louisiana's communities in
    all 64 parishes. The State's plan will connect approximately
    140,000 locations to high-speed Internet through funding
    awarded to 20 internet service providers, with nearly 70
    percent of the funds awarded to Louisiana companies.
        More than 90,000 of these locations were set to transition
    from zero connectivity to futureproof broadband fiber, although
    these broadband investments will drive significant economic
    growth for the State, creating approximately 10,000 new jobs
    and generating an estimated 2 to 3 billion dollars in new
    revenue for Louisiana companies.
        However, since the Trump administration took office, just a
    week after Louisiana received approval--its final approval to
    move forward on its proposal--the Commerce Department has
    withheld final funding to the approval that would have
    otherwise had shovels in the ground installing high-speed
    broadband infrastructure today--not aspirational, but now. The
    unexpected delay has stalled progress, frozen investments made
    by small internet service providers and contractors, and left
    rural communities still waiting on the promise of broadband
    access.
        Just recently, Meta announced that they were building a
    roughly $10 billion data center in rural Richland Parish in
    Louisiana, an area that would have benefited from the State's
    broadband rollout. In fact, over 600 households within a 10-
    mile circumference of the new Meta facility would be connected
    via BEAD. We also expect that--around the data center to grow
    as the facility brings in hundreds of workers, including
    skilled technical specialists.
        The delays around BEAD rollout mean that these workers
    for--the $10 billion advanced data center may lack high-speed
    broadband at home, threatening yet another huge investment in
    my home State. The freeze in BEAD funds is yet another example
    of how the Trump administration has shown chaos and uncertainty
    for businesses trying to make major investments in technology
    and energy, on top of the past week of economic turmoil and
    worldwide market crashes. This is unacceptable.
        Mr.--is it ``Ba-ye-ta''? It is close enough?
        Mr. Bhatia. Close enough.
        Mr. Carter of Louisiana. How important is quality of life
    for your workers when you are looking to grow your operations
    in new areas?
        Would considering making major investments in the area
    where your workers are, and their families lack access to the
    internet be a major factor?
        Mr. Bhatia. Absolutely. We would like to ensure that we
    have a workforce that is highly skilled, highly trained, and
    can--and, you know, all the jobs that we are creating with our
    projects--you know, 11,000 direct jobs at Micron, 80,000 direct
    and indirect jobs--those all should be high-paying jobs which
    will allow people to have a high standard of living. And we
    think that is an important element to ensure our technology
    leadership as well as our manufacturing efficiency.
        Mr. Carter of Louisiana. Thank you.
        Mr. Wang, in your testimony you recommended that the
    Federal Government put policies in place to let the AI
    workforce thrive in America. Would you agree that we are
    holding back our future workforce by allowing children to grow
    up in an America without access to high-speed broadband
    Internet?
        Mr. Wang. I certainly think that the ability for our
    future--for our children and future workforce to embrace AI
    technologies and other technology is going to be absolutely
    critical to, you know, the future development of our country.
    So ultimately, yes, I think we need to ensure that----
        Mr. Carter of Louisiana. Thank you. I have got 4 seconds.
        Real quickly, Mr. Turk, our American grid is now facing an
    unprecedented surge in electrical--electricity demand. How has
    the Trump administration's blanket refusal to permit large-
    scale offshore wind projects impacted our country's ability to
    meet this new demand?
        Mr. Turk. So it is another tool in the tool belt. Why take
    it off? It is incredibly important, along with other sources of
    power.
        And I think your point more broadly about infrastructure
    funding, you need predictability and you need certainty. You
    don't need chaos. And that is what----
        Mr. Carter of Louisiana. Thank you very much.
        Mr. Turk [continuing]. We are seeing.
        Mr. Carter of Louisiana. My time has ended.
        I yield back. Thank you.
        Mr. Evans. The gentleman yields. The Chair now recognizes
    the gentlelady from North Dakota, Mrs. Fedorchak.
        Mrs. Fedorchak. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for
    being here. It has been an interesting hearing.
        Dr. Schmidt, you said you think the AI--the importance of
    AI and the challenges we face has been underhyped. I agree with
    you. I also think that the challenges that our electric grid in
    this country face have also been underhyped. The truth of the
    matter is we are underpowered today, and that doesn't even take
    into consideration the demands that the AI industry brings, or
    the need and the urgency for us to meet that demand.
        So knowing that, would you all agree that one of the first
    things we should be doing is stopping retiring of existing
    resources that are connected to the grid?
        And I will just go down the line. Mr. Turk? Real quickly. I
    don't need a 1-minute answer. Yes or no, we should stop
    retiring existing resources if they are still somewhat
    economic.
        Mr. Turk. Yes, but we do need to keep an eye on other
    goals, including climate, and we need to make sure we----
        Mrs. Fedorchak. OK, thank you.
        Dr. Schmidt?
        Dr. Schmidt. Yes.
        Mrs. Fedorchak. OK. Mr. Wang?
        Mr. Wang. Yes.
        Mrs. Fedorchak. Mr.----
        Mr. Bhatia. All of the above.
        Mrs. Fedorchak. Excellent, thank you. I think it is not a
    yes/but, it is yes, we need to stop retiring. This is an urgent
    need. Everyone has said it is a national security issue.
        All resources take time to get on the grid. And so when we
    don't even have enough to meet demand today, then we most
    certainly--and we have growing demand, we most certainly should
    all be able to agree in a bipartisan manner that we should keep
    whatever we can right now, and then go from there, because
    technologies evolve and they will continue to evolve.
        Mr. Turk, you had said earlier that you think that you had
    said that solar and wind are the cheapest resources to bring on
    to the grid. Can you elaborate? What do you include in that
    calculation?
        Mr. Turk. Yes. So I look not only at the levelized cost,
    but I look at what is actually being brought into our grid
    right now, driven by economics.
        Mrs. Fedorchak. Does that include----
        Mr. Turk. And so 93 percent--our independent Energy
    Information Administration is saying 93 percent of the new
    power brought on this year will be solar and storage and wind.
        Mrs. Fedorchak. OK, but that doesn't necessarily mean it is
    coming on because it is the cheapest. Does your calculation
    include the cost of transmission to bring that online?
        Mr. Turk. Well, this is why we need to have--and I know you
    are an expert in this, and thank you for your leadership in
    NARUC, in particular, with your previous job--we need to have
    the whole grid. We need to be thinking about reconductoring. We
    need to be thinking about grid-enhancing technologies. We need
    to be thinking about transmission too. We need to think about
    it holistically----
        Mrs. Fedorchak. Right.
        Mr. Turk [continuing]. And systemically.
        Mrs. Fedorchak. Exactly. And I support GETs 100 percent. It
    is not the 100 percent solution, though. And it is not----
        Mr. Turk. It is not, that is right.
        Mrs. Fedorchak. It should not be overstated, because I
    think a lot of people who don't understand this hear things
    like that and think there are simple solutions, when really
    they are far more complicated.
        And the truth of the matter is, when you consider solar and
    wind as being the cheapest, the cost of the transmission is not
    included in that calculation, nor is the cost of all the backup
    generation that is needed to provide power when solar and wind
    aren't available. Those have to be included in our calculations
    when we are talking about costs, because the people who pay for
    that, they notice that those aren't the cheapest things because
    it is all included in their bill. Nobody else soaks up those
    costs but the final customers who pay the bill.
        I would like to ask one more question of all of you. So I
    think that in an urgent time like this, it is more important
    than ever that the signals that this Federal Government sends
    through its policies provide clear messages and clear
    instruction about what we need the most.
        We had all the grid operators here a week ago. To the
    person, they all said what they need now is dispatchable power.
    Knowing that, is it reasonable for the Federal Government to
    continue to incentivize resources that are not dispatchable?
        And I will start down here at the end. Should we be sending
    that signal? If what we need is dispatchable, why are we
    sending strong signals that you should bring on things that
    aren't dispatchable through tax policy?
        Mr. Bhatia. I think that, you know, I mentioned all of the
    above earlier. I think that we need to think about technologies
    that can--and investing in technologies that will be able to
    contribute longer term. We shouldn't take away from that.
        I mentioned in my prepared remarks, you know, some nuclear
    technology that we have stopped investing in that, you know,
    probably looks today to be short-sighted. But at the same time,
    we need to be focusing on the technologies--on the sources of
    energy that can support the demand today.
        Mrs. Fedorchak. Thank you.
        Mr. Wang?
        Mr. Wang. I am not an energy expert, I am an AI expert, so
    I am probably not the best to answer to this.
        Mrs. Fedorchak. OK, Dr. Schmidt?
        Dr. Schmidt. If you take all of the subsidies away of oil
    and gas and all the ones around renewables, you get a different
    calculation. Given we have the oil and gas subsidies, it is--I
    think it is fine to have the renewable subsidies.
        Mr. Guthrie [presiding]. Yes, our----
        Dr. Schmidt. The key thing is solve the storage problem,
    which I think has largely been solved. That creates
    dispatchability.
        Mr. Guthrie. Thanks.
        Mrs. Fedorchak. Thank you, I yield back.
        Mr. Guthrie. The gentlelady yields back. The Chair
    recognizes the gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. Menendez, for 5
    minutes.
        Mr. Menendez. Thank you, Chairman Guthrie, for holding this
    hearing this morning--afternoon, I guess, now.
        Dr. Schmidt, in your testimony you state that securing
    America's energy future requires bold, strategic Federal action
    and investment. One example highlighted by both you and Mr.
    Turk is the potential for fusion energy, which is generally
    supported by both Democrats and Republicans.
        Dr. Schmidt, can you briefly describe the potential fusion
    has for the future of our domestic energy production?
        Dr. Schmidt. Fusion is different from fission. It is a very
    different process. It is the technology that is inside our sun.
        There are two main approaches. One is essentially--it is
    called a tokamak. You essentially create a plasma that floats.
    The plasma is so hot you have to control it using magnets and
    AI to hold it, otherwise the walls would melt. There are a
    number of companies in America that are using that approach.
        There is an alternative approach, which is a pulsed fusion.
    This was funded initially through something called NIF in
    Livermore way back when. And it looks like the pulse--and what
    you do is you create a magnetic field which causes a collapse
    that causes electricity, and the electricity generated is
    greater than the electricity to cause the pulse. It is called Q
    > 1. The timeline of these things is demonstration for a number
    of these companies by roughly 2030.
        If you make some assumptions about the number of
    electricians and the scale of the problem--and the devices are
    typically 400 megawatts. So think of the number of 400-megawatt
    sort of power sources, and you sort of take the current power
    source--coal power, nuclear, basically, natural gas, whatever--
    and you put this fusion thing in it, that is the model.
        The problem is, when I look at the timeframe, you are not
    until 2040 to 2045 when you have abundant fusion.
        Mr. Menendez. Right, to get onto the grid and make it part
    of our daily life.
        Dr. Schmidt. Now, having said that, this is an area where
    America will lead. It should be a source of great pride for
    America to lead in this for the world.
        Mr. Menendez. I agree with you. And how important is
    Federal funding specifically for the U.S. National Laboratories
    program to advancing new technologies like fision?
        Dr. Schmidt. The DOE work in this is fundamental, and such
    is true of the labs and all of the stuff I am talking about.
    The people that I have hired in my company are all coming out
    of the labs, thank God.
        Mr. Menendez. And thank you for that. And so just yes or
    no: If this program were to see its funding cut or
    significantly reduced, would that hinder our ability to harness
    this new technology?
        Dr. Schmidt. It would be horrific. We need much more
    funding in these areas.
        Mr. Menendez. See, I agree with you, but last month at a
    Space, Science, and Technology Committee hearing, leaders from
    the Department of Energy sounded the alarms about tens of
    millions of dollars that are crucial to research development
    being put on hold because of President Trump's funding freezes
    across the Federal Government.
        Dr. Schmidt, in your testimony you mentioned the need to
    dramatically increase funding for energy sector cybersecurity.
        Dr. Schmidt, again, just yes or no: Should the Federal
    Government take the lead on having a strategy to combat cyber
    attacks to our critical infrastructure?
        Dr. Schmidt. It has to.
        Mr. Menendez. Yes, I agree, but President Trump recently
    signed an Executive order that puts States and municipalities
    at the forefront of our Nation's cyber attack response process,
    instead of the Federal Government, weakening Federal investment
    in disaster preparedness and creating a patchwork plan for
    attacks to our critical infrastructure across the country.
        Dr. Schmidt, yes or no, does that seem like a wise
    strategy?
        Dr. Schmidt. It is not a good idea. Remember that we have
    an incredible cyber force in America under the Pentagon and the
    National Security Agency. I do a lot of military work. They are
    phenomenal.
        Mr. Menendez. I agree with you, and their work should be
    celebrated, and it should sit at the Federal Government, not
    States and municipalities. I am in complete agreement with you.
        Mr. Wang, in your testimony you called for the
    establishment of a national AI data reserve. Your testimony
    also notes that the right regulatory framework maximizes
    innovation while still creating proper guardrails.
        Mr. Wang, yes or no: Should guardrails be placed on the
    government's collection of sensitive data?
        Mr. Wang. Yes.
        Mr. Menendez. Yes, I agree. But here is the thing, right?
    So the Trump administration is currently weaponizing data that
    they have within their control--including families' sensitive
    personal information that is collected by HUD and IRS--to
    target immigrants, mixed-status families, right?
        So I agree that having the data is the power, right, that
    we will be able to use in terms of AI, right? And the Federal
    Government having a reserve or a collection of data is how we
    fully harness AI, right? But this administration is undermining
    our belief and trust in the Federal Government's ability to
    properly hold data and not use it and weaponize it, which this
    administration is.
        This is my challenge with Republicans right now, is that
    they are seeing all this stuff happen in real time, right?
        Dr. Schmidt, you have talked about an all-of-the-above
    approach to energy production, but they want to roll back
    investments in renewable energy. And they sit here every week
    and make it seem like it is business as usual. You are their
    witnesses, and you are telling them we need to reverse course
    in what this administration is doing, and they remain silent
    week after week.
        Mr. Guthrie. I am sorry, the----
        Mr. Menendez. And that is the challenge.
        And by the way, people have gone over on the other side.
        Mr. Guthrie. The time has expired.
        Mr. Menendez. I am 3 seconds over, Mr. Carter. Three
    seconds, OK?
        But this is something you all need to be accountable to the
    American people----
        Mr. Guthrie. The gentleman's time has expired.
        Mr. Menendez. It is like this administration----
        Mr. Guthrie. And the gentleman from Georgia is recognized.
        Mr. Menendez. Thank you, Chairman Guthrie.
        Mr. Guthrie. Yes, thanks.
        Mr. Carter of Georgia. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you
    all for being here. And thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding
    this very important meeting.
        Artificial intelligence is transforming every aspect of our
    economy and our society, as we well know. From energy and
    communications to national security and healthcare, AI is
    both--presents extraordinary opportunities.
        I am very interested in healthcare, and chair of the Health
    Subcommittee, so I want to give you an example: HealthFlow.
    HealthFlow is a company that is applying artificial
    intelligence to transform the diagnosis and treatment of
    coronary artery disease, which kills one in five Americans.
    This is significant.
        Using a standard CT scan of the heart, HealthFlow's
    algorithms can determine blood pressure and flow in the
    coronary arteries, allowing physicians to determine the
    severity of disease and whether invasive treatment is needed.
    In fact, HealthFlow's technology has proven to decrease the
    rate of heart attacks and save the Medicare program more than
    $3,100 per patient. Per patient.
        Our job as lawmakers is to make sure the U.S. continues to
    lead in AI innovation while protecting American values like
    data privacy, reliable infrastructure, and fair competition.
        Mr. Schmidt--Dr. Schmidt, I want to ask you. Startups play
    a crucial role. We all know that they play a crucial role in
    driving innovation in the technology ecosystem.
        How can we avoid creating regulatory structures that only
    large companies with extensive legal teams and lobbying power
    can navigate?
        Dr. Schmidt. I agree with the premise of your question,
    sir. The innovation that is occurring in startups is
    phenomenal. You see completely new techniques using AI. A
    typical example would be cancer scoring, right, where you have
    a bunch of things. I am part of the Mayo Clinic board and so
    forth, and they have--they are spinning out startups to do
    precisely this, so it can be done. We need to have the entire
    ecosystem of venture capital and so forth behind the image that
    you described.
        Mr. Carter of Georgia. Exactly, and not just where the
    bigger companies are the ones who are doing this----
        Dr. Schmidt. Right, and may I add that some of that is
    actually the data problem that Mr. Wang keeps talking about.
        Many of the startups cannot get the data that they need for
    various regulatory reasons. A simple example would be that if
    you had opt out of privacy things for healthcare that people
    could--for research, that you could have research pools, then
    you could accelerate that. There's a whole bunch of approaches
    there that are reasonable tradeoffs.
        Mr. Carter of Georgia. OK, let's talk about the role that
    AI is going to play in developing new treatments and cures. And
    we know that is going to be the case. How should lawmakers be
    thinking about integrating AI tools into HHS and CMS and FDA to
    create a more efficient process like quicker drug approvals?
        Dr. Schmidt. One of the--well, the biggest problem with
    drugs is the phase 3 trial cost and the timing.
        Mr. Carter of Georgia. Exactly.
        Dr. Schmidt. I am involved with a startup that has a new
    approach using AI to simplify that. We will see if my startup
    is successful or not.
        The current model is static and unchanging. It is not
    informed by data. A simple regulatory change to allow better
    analytics around how you prove that the thing is phase 3 trial
    would really--would deliver a drug in--years ahead of time, and
    years is lives ahead of time.
        Mr. Carter of Georgia. And we all understand this is--this
    could be a great benefit. I mean, this could be a game changer
    with diagnosing, with making sure that we are doing the right
    treatments. AI in healthcare is going to be phenomenal. I am
    very optimistic about that. But it is also going to have some
    downfalls and some things that are dangerous that we need to
    really guard against.
        But we have heard a lot of promise about how it can cut
    costs and how it can increase efficiency within the Federal
    Government, especially in some of the organizations like HHS.
        How should regulators think about contracting with
    innovators to integrate AI into the regulatory and oversight
    functions that we have, particularly in Congress?
        Dr. Schmidt. I will give you a personal answer.
        The Federal Government does a terrible job of procuring
    software. The Federal Government does quite a good job of
    building--buying hardware. Software is not managed the same way
    that you manage hardware. Software is never done. It requires
    constant attention, the teams are constantly turning over.
        Instead, the Federal Government purchases specific
    contracts for specific outcomes with specific teams. It doesn't
    work in software. In order to achieve your vision, you have to
    attack the software problem. The reason our Government is so
    incredibly inefficient, in my view, is because it doesn't use
    software correctly.
        Mr. Carter of Georgia. It doesn't use software correctly.
    Have you got an example of that?
        Dr. Schmidt. Everywhere you look. I mean, if you look at
    what the tech companies do in terms of integrated software,
    there is no analog. Every aspect of data in the Federal
    Government is insecure. All of them are being attacked by the
    Chinese and others. The systems----
        Mr. Guthrie. Thank----
        Dr. Schmidt [continuing]. Are so bad that people have to
    add layers on top to fix them.
        Mr. Guthrie. Thank----
        Dr. Schmidt. Many of the underlying databases are COBOL----
        Mr. Carter of Georgia. My time is up. Thank you, and I
    yield back.
        Mr. Guthrie. So Mr.--so Dr. Schmidt, I know you had a hard
    stop. Can we do one more?
        Dr. Schmidt. Yes, of course.
        Mr. Guthrie. And we will--we have just a handful left, but
    whenever you are--let me know when you need to be excused.
        Dr. Schmidt. No, no, I appreciate that. These are very
    important----
        Mr. Guthrie. But I want to make sure that everybody gets a
    chance to ask questions.
        So Dr.--Mr. Mullin, you are now recognized from California.
    Mr. Mullin, you are recognized.
        Mr. Mullin. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you to all of our
    witnesses for your testimony.
        We have heard from our panel today that, to compete on AI,
    we are going to need a lot more stuff: more energy, more
    materials, more investment, more of everything. But steel,
    aluminum, and everything else that goes into powering data
    centers cost money. And we cannot win the global race on AI if
    American businesses can't afford the raw materials to build
    that infrastructure.
        Amid this uncertainty, the majority is considering a repeal
    of the IRA and the Infrastructure Law, two landmark laws that
    have already leveraged hundreds of billions of dollars of
    private-sector investment in our country's energy
    infrastructure. There are also reports coming out that the DOE
    is planning to unilaterally cancel billions of dollars in
    grants for hydrogen hubs and long-duration energy storage
    projects that have already received congressionally approved
    funding.
        Rolling back these laws and unlawfully cutting committed
    funding will severely undermine the trust in the Federal
    Government that stakeholders have, until now at least, taken
    for granted.
        So Mr. Turk, in your time as the Deputy Secretary at DOE,
    you interacted with stakeholders across the energy and AI
    sectors. What will be the worst impacts of all of this economic
    and policy uncertainty, including the tariffs which were
    referenced multiple times today, on the investments that are
    underpinning AI?
        Mr. Turk. So it is the grants, it is the loans, and it is
    the tax incentives, and getting rid of or even just causing
    confusion about whether the grants are actually coming.
        And I should say on the grants this was money that you all
    have already given, and this is money already obligated in some
    instances. And so the private sector needs to rely on the
    Government doing what it is supposed to do, doing it
    professionally, doing it without any political interference.
        So I think what it does is it not only puts those immediate
    projects at risk, but it puts the credibility of the Government
    at risk, as well. And if we are going to be successful
    competing on AI, building out our infrastructure, doing all the
    other things that we need to do, we need to have credibility in
    the Government working in partnership with the private sector.
        Mr. Mullin. So thank you for that, and I fear there will be
    serious repercussions for our energy system if cuts are made to
    the IRA programs that are essential for energy as energy demand
    increases as part of AI.
        But as important as the AI race is, we also have to talk
    about rising costs. People are paying more not only at the
    grocery store, but losing money in their retirement savings.
    But recent estimates show these tariffs are going to cost
    everyday Americans an additional $3,800 a year on their utility
    bills. To meet both the AI challenge and cost challenge, it is
    clear that we need more energy resources, and we need to get
    them online as soon as possible.
        Earlier today you mentioned that renewables are the
    cheapest, quickest sources to deploy when it comes to energy.
    So what--Mr. Turk, what does Congress need to do to unlock this
    development and ensure that consumers are not hit with the
    higher costs yet again by the Trump administration?
        Mr. Turk. So the good news is you all have done your jobs.
    Now, we could use more, but you have got the tax incentives,
    the grants, the loans in place. What is at risk here is, if
    those are repealed, just two provisions--the investment and
    production tax credit, technology-neutral tax credit--if that
    is repealed, Americans' households are paying, on average, $220
    more per year just with those two provisions repealed, let
    alone the other provisions and grants and loans not going out
    in the way they are.
        So this is--the worst way to keep downward pressure on
    prices is to repeal these incredibly important tax incentives.
        Mr. Mullin. Great. Thank you for that, sir. And thank you
    all.
        With that I yield back.
        Mr. Guthrie. Thank you. The gentleman yields back. The
    Chair recognizes Mr. Griffith--oh, I am sorry, Mr. Fry. I
    apologize.
        Mr. Fry. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        South Carolina is experiencing a remarkable spat of
    economic growth. From the Grand Strand of the Pee Dee, new
    businesses are opening, manufacturers are investing, and
    families are moving in. That growth is a tremendous
    opportunity, but it does pose some significant challenges.
        Yesterday, President Trump issued Executive orders
    declaring a national energy emergency and directing swift
    action to boost grid reliability and cut red tape for energy
    projects. These steps are both timely and necessary. Power
    demand is rising sharply. There's a lot of contributing factors
    to that, but it is. And in South Carolina, nuclear power
    provides more than half of our electricity, giving us a pretty
    strong foundation.
        But permitting delays, premature plant retirements, and
    transmission bottlenecks threaten not only our State, but all
    50 States. We need a Federal policy that keeps pace with
    innovation. That means faster permitting, support for fuel-
    secure generation, and a strong, reliable grid. I appreciate
    the testimony of all the witnesses today.
        My initial questions, Mr. Bhatia, I appreciate your
    comments on the need to reshore semiconductor chip
    manufacturing and secure our supply chains in this country. As
    you noted, China controls an overwhelming majority of global
    capacity for critical material refining and processing, an
    unacceptable strategic vulnerability on our part. During our
    hearing with the regional grid operators, we heard that regions
    like New England, as an example, are facing real constraints on
    natural gas capacity. That bottleneck is holding back the type
    of energy-intensive investments that we need to support AI and
    manufacturing.
        So if we are going to plan for the future, where we reshore
    significant portions of our supply chain, how important do you
    believe permitting reform is to infrastructure like natural gas
    pipelines and the like?
        Mr. Bhatia. I think it is critical. And I think the cost of
    inaction that we have had over the last several years and
    continue to have is very, very high.
        I mean, you have heard multiple data points in testimony
    around the sharp spike in demand that is forecasted both
    because of the data centers that are going to be built, as well
    as the manufacturing in semiconductors, as well as other
    industry segments. And so, you know, after having, you know,
    many, many years where supply and demand has been matched and
    stable, this spike threatens to create a dislocation that could
    ultimately threaten the viability of some of these projects
    longer term, whether those are in the data center segment or in
    manufacturing.
        And I think streamlining and working to be able to remove,
    you know, duplicative processes between Federal and State is
    something that both parties can get behind. And States--red,
    blue--red States and blue States both can get behind trying to
    ensure that there is a streamlined process for critical
    projects to move forward.
        Mr. Fry. Sir, do you think that we can realistically meet
    our energy demands without those simple reforms that you talked
    about?
        Mr. Bhatia. You know, I am not sure. I believe that we--I
    don't think we should try and figure that out. I think we
    should make sure we move forward with the permitting, and I
    think the permitting needs to be across transmission, it needs
    to be across generation, and it needs to be across all of the
    above sources of energy investments that we need to make.
        Mr. Fry. Thank you.
        Dr. Schmidt, I appreciate you staying a little bit. Your
    testimony laid out the strategic importance of AI and the race
    with China in pretty stark terms. You mentioned that AI data
    centers could require up to 10 gigawatts of power each, and
    that we risk falling behind.
        Given what we are seeing across the country, though,
    especially in States with business-friendly environments, can
    you speak to the importance of permitting reform and how it
    relates to our competitiveness in the AI space?
        Dr. Schmidt. When you look at people who have the money,
    they still can't get the permits and, in particular, the
    interconnection permits that are needed to get into the grid.
    You can solve that problem by, for example, building your own
    power plant next to your own data center. But that is not
    particularly efficient.
        There are all sorts of other issues. If you look at the
    cost of, for example, building--I will give you an example.
    TSMC built a semiconductor plant in Arizona, and by the time
    they were done it cost four times more than in Taiwan. Some of
    that is labor, some of that is permitting, some of it is
    government. We are not competitive globally against our key
    partners and competitors with respect to costs and timing.
        Mr. Fry. Thank you for that. And you also mentioned the
    potential for AI to help manage and secure our grid. What role
    do you see for the Federal Government in AI-enabled grid
    modernization, particularly for regions like mine in the
    southeast that are growing so rapidly?
        Dr. Schmidt. So way back when, before all this was well
    known, Google did an initiative where we looked at our data
    centers--which had been designed by the very best scientists,
    according to us, you know, in our own arrogant way--and we
    applied our own AI. And it beat our own top people by 15
    percent. That 15 percent of efficiency went straight to the
    bottom line. It showed me that you can take any system and,
    using AI, do more what is called predictive analytics, and you
    can predict loads and basically shed loads and handle it much
    more efficiently. That is where our grid needs to be.
        Mr. Fry. Thank you.
        Mr. Chairman, I have many more questions, but I got 15
    seconds. So with that----
        Mr. Guthrie. Will----
        Mr. Fry [continuing]. I will yield back.
        Mr. Guthrie [continuing]. You yield to me?
        Mr. Fry. Yes.
        Mr. Guthrie. My purpose--for Mr. Menendez--for asking Dr.
    Schmidt to be here is not to come as a Republican witness and
    not tell us what we want to hear, but tell us what we need to
    hear. And I think we have all heard some things that probably
    don't fit within our ideology, but things we needed to hear and
    we can figure out and work through.
        So time has expired. I yield back, and I will recognize--I
    am sorry, I apologize to Mrs. Fletcher for missing her last
    time. But Mrs. Fletcher, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
        Mrs. Fletcher. Thank you so much, Chairman Guthrie. I
    appreciate it. And I appreciate all of our witnesses for being
    here today and for your testimony.
        I think this has been a really useful and important
    hearing. You have given us lots to think about, and we have
    heard from all of you, right, that the United States is really
    on the brink of an AI revolution, that there are many things we
    need to be thinking about, and just kind of the
    transformational change that this is going to bring, including
    demand for energy.
        And in normal times that should be great news for my home
    state of Texas, where we already have a growing industry, a
    cluster of data centers, and we have the energy resources and
    the know-how to meet this sort of record high demand. But
    President Trump's policies are eroding the certainty and
    predictability that the people who run businesses and make
    investments need to succeed at every turn. And this is
    particularly true when it comes to building our infrastructure
    for our energy to meet tomorrow's demand. So I want to focus a
    little bit on that.
        But Mr. Schmidt, I really appreciated your opening
    testimony today before the panel, and I wrote down a few things
    that you were speaking about that I want to follow on. And you
    mentioned--you referenced sort of the balance of power
    globally, and I think we can all acknowledge that we are in a
    very uncertain and shifting moment in our history. It is
    changing minute by minute.
        And--but you said something I thought that was really
    important, kind of--that I want to ask you about that in the
    context of something you said in your written testimony, which
    really struck me. And I am just going to quote from your
    testimony, but you said, ``The Government can't win this
    technological race alone. We must reignite America's unique
    innovation power, the potent collaboration between government,
    private industry, and academia''--and I won't read the whole
    quote in the interest of time.
        But before I served on this committee, I served on the
    Science, Space, and Technology Committee, and I was struck at
    every single hearing by the witnesses. We always had a witness
    from academia, from the Government, and from industry talking
    about how well and efficiently and effectively they
    collaborated.
        And so I assume that you would agree with me that the
    disruptions that we are seeing are challenging in this moment.
    I assume you would agree with me that regulatory certainty is
    an important factor for private industry and attracting capital
    and to projects.
        That is yes?
        And I assume you would agree that the supply chain
    disruptions and other kinds of things that we are experiencing
    are going to hurt productivity.
        Dr. Schmidt. Yes.
        Mrs. Fletcher. I also assume that you are aware, based
    especially on your testimony about your involvement with the
    Mayo Clinic, that you are aware of the cuts to academic
    research that are happening. Whether it is through the NIH and
    the cost sharing for medical research or grant funding at
    various institutions, I keep hearing from my constituents in
    every industry that the increased uncertainty that we are
    experiencing as a result of this administration's policies--
    these are all new changes this year--is really an impediment.
        And so I just want you to elaborate with the time we have
    left, which is about 2 minutes, on your vision for revitalizing
    the partnership that you described between industry and
    academia and the Government, and then share your thoughts on
    how we can and should do that in this environment, and what
    kinds of changes we should make to make that possible.
        And I know we don't have everybody in the room today, but I
    have heard our colleagues on both sides of the aisle are
    listening, and I think your insights here would be really
    important.
        Dr. Schmidt. Thank you. The--Vannevar Bush post-World War
    II constructed the sort of structure that you are describing.
    The Government is a regulator and a proposed--and a proponent,
    and also does basic research funding. Universities do that
    research, and then venture capital takes huge risks to do this.
        You see this in traditional Democratic areas, but also
    Republican areas. For example, fracking was an American
    invention following the same problem, and it produced enormous
    benefits to America by virtue of economics and so forth.
    Everybody is aware of that. We are now essentially energy
    independent.
        So the role of innovation is core. I call this innovation
    power. I have written about this at some level. The future of
    America will be determined about the rate at which we can
    innovate. And we have, unfortunately, somebody who is trying to
    copy us and moves very quickly. Their innovation model is more
    centralized, but they are plenty smart, they got lots of
    resources, and they are very focused, and they do all the right
    things with respect to--of course, it is not a democracy--
    getting the right smart people in the right place. They produce
    national champions, as Alex mentioned, and they push them and
    they push them hard for globalization.
        China is now, in fact, overbuilding manufacturing so that
    they can essentially become the world's manufacturer, again,
    with huge impacts economically to everybody. You see the power
    of innovation right in front of you there in China. Why are we
    not going after that in AI? We should. We invented it. It is
    right in front of us. It is the core of everything we can do,
    new developments in physics and biology and science and so
    forth.
        The current administration's cuts--the 15 percent indirect
    cost recovery, the NIH costs--are not consistent with that
    vision. If they have a problem with specific programs, do it
    specifically, not generally.
        Mr. Guthrie. Thanks.
        Mrs. Fletcher. Thank you so much. I have gone over my time.
    I really appreciate it.
        Mr. Guthrie. Thank you, I appreciate----
        Mrs. Fletcher. And Chairman Guthrie, I yield back.
        Mr. Guthrie. I appreciate it very much. The gentlelady
    yields back.
        Mr. Evans, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Evans. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member, and,
    of course, to the witnesses for taking the time to testify
    today.
        Dr. Schmidt, my first question will be to you. In your
    testimony, you talk a lot about China's investment in a lot of
    different forms of energy like wind, solar, and newer
    technologies like fusion. The United States has made similar
    investments in the past several years, but I think it is also
    important to highlight that not all energy is necessarily
    created equal.
        And so the first question to you is, in your opinion, which
    nation has brought more dispatchable baseload energy generation
    online over the last 5 years between China and the U.S.?
        Dr. Schmidt. It is almost certainly China.
        Mr. Evans. And then, in your opinion, which nation has
    taken the most dispatchable baseload energy offline in the last
    5 years?
        Dr. Schmidt. Almost certainly the United States.
        Mr. Evans. Thank you, and I agree with your answers there.
    Obviously----
        Dr. Schmidt. I should include Germany for shutting down all
    of its nuclear plants, which was also a mistake.
        Mr. Evans. Thank you. But yes, I agree with your answers
    there.
        We know that China's thermal power generation has reached a
    record high just last year, and that is driven by things like
    coal-fired plants, which have also reached a record high as a
    percentage of what it is generating in China.
        And by comparison, the United States is on track to retire
    12.3 gigawatts of dispatchable power this year. And for me
    personally, that is concerning because over 10 percent of
    that--about 1.3 percent of that is retirements of dispatchable
    baseload power that is taking place in Colorado, even though we
    are only 1.3 percent of total energy production in the United
    States.
        So with that focus on Colorado, the next question to you
    is, we are taking over a gigawatt of power--or scheduled to
    take a gigawatt of baseload power offline in Colorado this
    year, 5 gigawatts of dispatchable baseload power offline by
    2030, at the same time that my Governor is saying he wants to
    make our State a--or, excuse me, a hub for quantum technology
    and AI.
        So the question to you is, if you wanted to be your State--
    make your State a leader in quantum computing AI, what would be
    the energy policy that you would want to see to support that?
        Dr. Schmidt. It probably makes sense to retire the coal
    plants and replace them by natural gas plants. It makes sense
    in Colorado because you have such great natural resources to
    work on enhanced geothermal. So there are things that you can
    do.
        But the core message, I think, from the entire panel here
    is we want more of everything, right, and that we want it
    sooner. And not only do we want it, we need it for American
    exceptionalism.
        Mr. Evans. Thank you, and I appreciate your reference to
    the gas plants, because my district is truly an all-of-the-
    above energy district: 83 percent of the oil, 56 percent of the
    natural gas in Colorado, largest wind generating, you know, the
    wind turbine manufacturing facility probably in the United
    States is headquartered in my district. Geothermal, solar, we
    truly are an all-of-the-above.
        But specifically with gas plants, one of the things that I
    have heard there is that there is a major backlog in getting
    the gas turbines. So can you speak a little bit more to the
    timing of retiring coal generation if you don't have a gas
    alternate immediately ready to go?
        Dr. Schmidt. I am not enough of an expert to give you a
    precise answer. The reason that natural gas plants have become
    more expensive is demand, which is--and is sort of what we
    want, right? We want more of everything, and then the market
    will react.
        The problem is that these things take years to--backlogs
    get--years. That delay in natural gas plants will hurt AI
    competitiveness because it is the best source of power in
    certain situations.
        My personal advice is start by--since China is allegedly
    dumping solar panels, just buy them, right, because they lower
    energy costs, right? Do whatever it takes to get more power
    into America--as Mr. Turk says, more electrons.
        Mr. Evans. Thank you for that.
        Mr. Wang, kind of pivoting off of that conversation, I am
    just curious if you can speak to--in my remaining 45 seconds--
    just briefly, what happens if we lose this AI race with China?
        What does the world look like if China becomes the leader
    in that space and no longer the United States in part because
    we retired too much power?
        Mr. Wang. I spoke to this, and I think Dr. Schmidt made
    some relevant comments that, you know, AI is on the brink of
    becoming a very, very powerful technology that is much more
    than just ChatGPT. It is a reasoning engine. It has the ability
    to, you know, very soon conduct cyber attacks, you know, be
    really a very important technology for national security.
        So to sum it up, I guess, in 10 seconds, you know, in a
    world where the Chinese Communist Party wins, they have clear
    intention to utilize AI as a mechanism to export their ideology
    globally, as well as potentially, you know, enable them and
    other authoritarian countries to lead.
        Mr. Guthrie. His time has expired on this. So thank you,
    Mr. Evans. He yields back. We are trying to keep--we have three
    more to go, Mr.--Dr. Schmidt.
        So Mr. Landsman.
        Mr. Landsman. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to all of
    our panelists for your testimony today. This has been
    incredibly helpful. And, you know, the issue of AI is one that,
    you know, we have to get right. There is no debate about that.
    Winning on AI and harnessing it for good requires, as you all
    have said very, I think, impactfully, clear instructions and
    guidance and meaningful investments.
        Mr. Turk, let me start with you. Congress has struggled to
    do this, and I am not picking a fight here, I am not leading
    you in any direction. I am genuinely curious.
        What do you think the barriers are, in terms of us laying
    out that clear guidance and making the necessary investments?
        Mr. Turk. So the good news is Congress provided that
    certainty, provided that window of investment. That is one of
    the brilliant parts of the legislation that you all passed on
    the tax credit side to have tax credits in place for 10 years
    that investors, that developers, that utilities, that AI
    companies can rely upon and know will be there so that they can
    make investment decisions that will come to fruition over a
    period of years.
        So the good news is the biggest thing you have to do at
    this point is leave those tax incentives, let that grant money
    do what the grant money was intended to do by Congress, but
    just execute on that.
        Mr. Landsman. That is on the investment and--so thank you
    for that--on the investment and--piece of this. But on the
    clear instructions and guidance, I mean, what do you think is
    holding us back from providing that framework that everyone has
    been asking for?
        Mr. Turk. Well, this is where the private sector will do
    what the private sector does best. When it has that certainty,
    it doesn't have the chaos from tariffs, it doesn't have the
    chaos from repeal of provisions.
        I also completely agree with all the panelists. I don't
    think there is disagreement. We need to build, and we need to
    build quicker in this country, including transmission, but a
    whole range of clean energy resources. Permitting takes too
    long in our country. It is complicated. We have made some
    progress on that, but we need to make more progress.
        Mr. Landsman. I totally agree.
        Mr. Turk. To make it durable it needs to be bipartisan. And
    so I know there is conversations happening. We just need to get
    on with it.
        Mr. Landsman. Mr. Schmidt--thank you, I agree with that.
        Mr. Schmidt, I--can you just talk a little bit about how
    important talent is? You discussed it earlier, but how
    important talent is to this whole process and the impact of the
    chaos around the administration's immigration policies.
        Dr. Schmidt. So Silicon Valley and the world I represent is
    powered by the smartest people, or at least the self-proclaimed
    smartest people in the world. And we collectively need them
    because the algorithms and the approaches we take are
    incomputable by normal people. I don't understand what most of
    these people are doing, and I have a Ph.D. in this area.
        Mr. Landsman. Yes.
        Dr. Schmidt. That is how complicated this stuff is. The new
    AI stuff is largely math, and it is a new set of math. In fact,
    there are people who are working on what are the limits of AI
    using--again, trying to find out where the--really, limits are.
    All of that knowledge is in the heads of people around the
    world who are highly specialized. They are not normal people.
    They are just geniuses in one way or the other, men and women.
    I want all of them here. It is insane to not let them in here.
        If you look at polymaths--I wrote a book on this called
    ``Genesis,'' and we studied polymaths. A single polymath, the
    person who invents something--this is the Leonardo da Vinci-
    type person--can generate a $1 trillion industry. Carver, Mead,
    and so forth in the 1970s invented semiconductors, now a
    multitrillion-dollar industry. We need those people in America.
    Imagine if each and every one of those people did not live in
    America, they lived in another country, and in particular
    China.
        Furthermore, we have lots of evidence, for example, that
    the quantum lead that China now has occurred because a specific
    quantum physicist was not allowed to stay in the country, and
    he said, ``OK, I will go back and work for China,'' and the
    rest is history. And quantum is a huge national security issue
    for America right now.
        Mr. Landsman. Thank you for that. Also, Dr. Schmidt, I just
    wanted to talk a little bit about the prices. I only have a few
    seconds, but prices have gone up, electricity prices in Ohio,
    and obviously this is going to cause even more pressure on
    prices. Is it the tax credits? And is that the most important
    thing we can do to keep prices down, or do you want Congress to
    do more?
        Dr. Schmidt. I want more supply.
        Mr. Landsman. Yes.
        Dr. Schmidt. More supply should lead to better and tougher
    competition and more--a more dynamic network, which would allow
    vendor choice.
        The way--the Congress should not set prices. The Congress
    should enable competition at every level in the value chain in
    every industry, and in particular in electricity.
        Mr. Guthrie. Thanks. We have two more. Two more. If
    somebody else comes in after, we are going to excuse you, Dr.
    Schmidt, and we will keep going.
        But Mr. Griffith is--thanks for yielding back. Mr. Griffith
    is recognized for five.
        Mr. Griffith. Thank you very much. Let's continue talking
    about prices.
        So it makes absolutely no sense to retire a coal plant,
    let's say, that was opened up in 2012 or 2013 that has a life
    expectancy of more than 50 years because we have decided we
    hate coal. Isn't that right, Mr. Schmidt--Dr. Schmidt?
        Dr. Schmidt. It has to do with how long--it is a more
    complicated answer.
        Mr. Griffith. OK.
        Dr. Schmidt. It has----
        Mr. Griffith. So for the question--let me cut through some
    of the complications. For the question that Mr. Landsman asked,
    he said our prices are going up, what do we need to do, you
    said we need more supply. I agree with that.
        But also, we can't leave stranded assets out there, because
    this was opened up in my district in 2012 as the cleanest coal
    plant at the time in the world, and--a very clean plant, and it
    is underutilized right now, and there's movements afoot to have
    it close up early, and that takes power away from us, and that
    affects prices because the consumer not only can't access the
    power because there is not enough supply--which you just said--
    but it also puts them in a situation where they are paying for
    the stranded asset of the existing coal plant and the new plant
    that might replace it with whatever fuel source it uses,
    whether it be nuclear, which I am also in favor of, or whether
    it be natural gas, or whether it be wind or solar.
        That is fairly straightforward, isn't it? Because if you
    leave the stranded asset, the ratepayer is paying for both the
    old and the new.
        Dr. Schmidt. I grew up in the coal country of Virginia, so
    I do understand.
        Mr. Griffith. Oh, what county?
        Dr. Schmidt. Blacksburg.
        Mr. Griffith. OK. Well, they did have coal mining there at
    one time, but, yes, I represent that area. That is my district.
        Dr. Schmidt. The important thing about coal is that over
    the long run coal is going to get regulated out, because it is
    such a--coal is much dirtier than natural gas.
        Mr. Griffith. Yes.
        Dr. Schmidt. You would always choose natural gas over coal
    if you made that decision today.
        Given that you have an underutilized coal plant, I would
    encourage you to look at the network interconnect. Why is it
    not fully used? Why are we not taking that resource that you
    described and fully using it right now?
        Mr. Griffith. Because we are overregulating coal. I will
    just answer that one for you.
        Now, I also have--and this gets to be interesting--I have
    an underutilized natural gas plant as well in the area, and so
    we are trying to attract investment into that region that you
    grew up in. Blacksburg is a wonderful town. I also represent
    the coal fields where they still produce the coal and natural
    gas as well, because of our coal bed methane. And we have got a
    natural gas facility that used to be a coal facility--it was
    converted--that is also underutilized.
        And we would love to see folks take a look because, as you
    know, having come from that region, these are very industrious
    people. And whether or not they have that diploma, I am
    reminded of the scene in ``The Wizard of Oz,'' that there is a
    lot of smarts out there, and I believe that both data centers
    and AI could benefit by being in the region.
        But when you close down these facilities--and I understand
    you have a preference for natural gas, and I understand that.
    But when you close down these facilities, that creates a
    problem, because wouldn't you agree we--right now, in the last
    year, the American Electric Reliability Corporation's long-term
    assessment estimated that 115 gigawatts of dispatchable
    generation is planned to retire over the next 10 years, in
    comparison to what they estimate to be an increased demand of
    150-plus gigawatts. Doesn't that impede or make it more
    difficult for us to have space to grow AI and power our AI as
    we need to?
        Dr. Schmidt. Again, I think all of us believe in more.
        Mr. Griffith. Yes.
        Dr. Schmidt. With respect to the specifics, you have
    regulatory issues which you pointed out, which I think should
    be loosened. But I also think the long term for coal is to be
    replaced by natural gas, and I think we should get organized
    around that. And eventually, natural gas will be replaced by
    fusion, which will ultimately solve all of our problems 15
    years from now.
        Mr. Griffith. Yes, I am looking forward to fusion getting
    here. I hope that you are right on your estimate.
        I would say this, as well, because so many times people
    hear statements like that in my district, and they
    automatically assume that that means coal production is going
    to end, and they don't realize that what you are talking about
    is coal production for the creation of electric generation. And
    my district has a rich seam, as you are probably aware, of
    metallurgical coal, which for those who don't know, means that
    we mined that coal to make coke and steel out of it so that we
    can produce the steel that is needed for this country. I think
    somebody mentioned it earlier today that we need the steel so
    we can make sure we build the equipment and so forth to do the
    AI with, the buildings, et cetera. And you are not going to
    make that really good steel without burning some of my
    metallurgical coal.
        I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Guthrie. The gentleman yields back, and the Chair
    recognizes Ms. McClellan----
        Ms. McClellan. Thank you, Chairman.
        Mr. Guthrie [continuing]. For 5 minutes.
        Ms. McClellan. Thank you, Chairman Guthrie and Member
    Pallone, for planning this hearing. This is probably my
    favorite hearing of my entire almost a little over 2-year
    congressional career. It is definitely the most important.
        And Dr. Schmidt, I am glad you stayed, because in your
    opening statement you said that the sheer speed of AI
    development is outpacing our societal and government ability to
    adapt, and I wholeheartedly agree with you. In fact, 7 years
    ago, in 2018, I attended a conference at which a speaker was
    talking about the rise of AI and megatrends and all of these
    things, and he basically said the same thing. And I came to the
    conclusion 7 years ago that none of our systems in the United
    States at all--government, education, none of them--are
    prepared for what is coming.
        But at the same time, as Mr. Wang testified, at that point
    7 years ago China already had an AI master plan, advanced
    capabilities, and President Xi Jinping declared China's plan to
    dominate AI by 2030. Yet this committee held its first hearing
    on AI in 2023. The race for AI dominance is reminiscent of the
    Space Race, but instead of the Soviet Union, now it is China.
        But the stakes are even higher. And we won the race to land
    a man on the moon, and that was critically important to our
    economy and our national security and innovation and scientific
    advancement. And to win the race for AI is just as important.
        But as Mr. Wang testified, while the U.S. leads on
    computing and we are tied with China on algorithmic
    development, China leads on data, which is the raw material
    that enables AI to learn, adapt, and improve over time and, as
    Mr. Wang said, is AI's oil, gas, wind, solar all wrapped in
    one. So if we lose the race to lead data, we lose the race for
    AI dominance.
        Now, the Trump administration's actions since January 20th
    have directly undermined our ability to win the race for AI
    dominance. The haphazard firing of Federal workers, freezing or
    cutting Federal funds for government agencies and universities
    critical to supporting competing AI hinders our ability to
    implement the recommendations of Mr. Wang's testimony and his
    four pillars to win.
        This war on renewables that the President has engaged in
    and attempts to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act tax credits
    undermine the ability to meet our energy demands for data
    centers. And Trump's reckless tariff policy is increasing
    costs, exacerbating supply-and-demand issues already occurring,
    and raising the cost to build new data centers and
    semiconductor manufacturing plants that are critical for our AI
    success. Because while semiconductors have been exempted from
    the tariffs, the equipment and machinery used to build and run
    the data centers have not.
        This is not theoretical. Just this week, Microsoft
    announced that it is backing off plans to build three data
    centers in Ohio. So, given this committee's clear desire to
    position the U.S. to win the competition with China for AI
    dominance, I am perplexed by my colleagues on the other side of
    the aisle's silence over the Trump administration's actions
    that hinder our ability to do so, and the blank check it looks
    like we are about to give the President to take those actions.
        So Mr. Wang, you offer two options for AI dominance in the
    future, and recommend working with our allies to promote an
    American model of AI technology. But this trade war is actively
    undermining our ability to work with our allies to do so. Can
    you elaborate quickly on the steps that we should actually take
    to work with our allies to promote a U.S. model of AI usage and
    governance?
        Mr. Wang. Yes. So the first thing is we need to ensure that
    NIST, the National Institute of Standards, is properly
    resourced and we are able to make progress on AI measurement
    science and, ultimately, the development of these AI standards.
        Then we need to codify this into a set of standards that we
    ultimately agree with in terms of how we should measure AI
    performance, how we should--what are the characteristics of
    safe and performant AI systems in the future, and then we
    should utilize the global network of AI safety institutes,
    which is--which already exists. Many, many countries have stood
    them up, you know: France, the UK, Japan, India, Korea.
        I have met the heads of many of these AI safety institutes.
    They are all looking towards the United States because, you
    know, they understand that we are the leader in the technology,
    and we need to give them our standards and export it globally.
        Mr. Guthrie. Thank you.
        Ms. McClellan. Thank you, and I yield back.
        Mr. Guthrie. Thank you. The gentlelady's time--I had
    committed to Dr. Schmidt that he got--we have--Dr. Schrier did
    come in, but I committed to you, Dr. Schmidt, to leave.
        You--Dr. Schrier, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
        And if anybody else shows up, you are--I will let you walk
    out and go. Thank you for your--because it has been valuable. I
    will shut up and let her go.
        Ms. Schrier. I am so glad you are staying.
        Let's see. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank
    you to all our witnesses. This is a fantastic hearing.
        I am from the Pacific Northwest, and chip manufacturing and
    data center expansion are the big energy demand drivers to the
    region, so I am thrilled to have this discussion.
        We are at this inflection point. We all know that we are
    really headed straight to an energy crisis if we don't act
    quickly on this. It impacts AI and data centers, as we have
    heard a lot about, but also we have been talking nationally a
    lot about manufacturing, and we need affordable energy for
    that.
        One of the best ways to maximize access to the power we
    already have in the U.S. is strategically building out
    transmission. And last year Senators Manchin and Barrasso
    introduced the bipartisan Energy Permitting Reform Act, and I
    will be really clear it is not the bill I would have written. I
    was not a fan of all the provisions. But we need to move
    forward, and that is the whole idea, that we need compromise in
    order to move the ball forward.
        Mr. Bhatia, in your testimony I see this prime example that
    you have talked about a couple places, a couple times, where
    this bill for speeding permitting would make a difference. It
    was the Boardman to Hemingway transmission project that
    connects Oregon to Idaho. And in the Pacific Northwest our peak
    energy demand is in the winter, when we turn on the heat, and
    yet we have our peak hydropower generation in the warmer
    months, when the snow melts. The opposite is true in the
    mountain region, where we see the opposite. So irrigation and
    air conditioning drive that demand and in the summer, and then
    wind energy is more abundant in the spring and winter.
        So connecting those two regions would allow us to correct
    this mismatch and meet the demand. The project, as you said, is
    about to hit its 21st birthday, and it has been stalled for
    almost 21 years.
        If we continue to require transmission projects to jump
    through all of these hoops and red tape, how is that going to
    hamper our ability to onshore tech, keep onshore tech, and
    expand manufacturing here at home?
        Mr. Bhatia. Well, absolutely, you know, EPRA is something
    we are absolutely supportive of because what it is going to do
    is exactly what you mentioned. You know, we have talked about
    investing in the grid, we have talked about modernizing the
    grid, creating more flexibility so that you can balance supply
    and demand.
        And, you know, the big data centers, certainly the large
    semiconductor manufacturing which we are under construction
    right now in Boise of what will be the largest--the only large-
    scale memory manufacturing facility in the country, the first
    leading-edge one in more than 25 years--needs that transmission
    to be able to ensure that we can have that stable power for the
    consistent and long-term load growth that we have.
        Ms. Schrier. And Dr. Schmidt, basically, same question. If
    we don't have good transmission and the ability to move energy
    across the country, how does that impact our ability to remain
    dominant and win the AI race?
        Dr. Schmidt. When I think about your State, I think about
    all of the incredible natural resources you have, whether it is
    the west or east part of your State. That power does not have
    the path out of your State that is strong enough. It needs to
    get fixed.
        Ms. Schrier. Yes, thank you.
        I just want to emphasize for my Republican colleagues that
    if they introduce a bill like that one, they will have
    Democratic partners because we all understand, especially after
    this hearing, that we need to get----
        Mr. Bhatia. If I could just add one more, just one more
    thing to add to this.
        Ms. Schrier. Yes.
        Mr. Bhatia. It is not just about the success of those
    projects. I know we are talking a lot about AI, but it is about
    jobs that are being--that all of this investment in
    manufacturing are going to be creating, high-paying jobs,
    higher-paying jobs in--today.
        And domestic supply of semiconductors, while critical and
    important for AI, is also critical for many, many other
    industries that we haven't been able to talk about. The
    automotive industry, for example. Fifty percent of the cars on
    the road have a chip made in Micron's facility.
        Ms. Schrier. That is right, and we need to manufacture----
        Mr. Bhatia. And so there are many, many industries that
    need these projects to be successful.
        Ms. Schrier. I am going to turn one more question quickly
    to Dr. Schmidt.
        AI, as I read in Dr. Wang's testimony--Mr. Wang's
    testimony--brings potential benefit, potential risk. We have
    seen the abuse of AI in China for public surveillance and
    crackdowns. Now, unfortunately, I am having to think about that
    in our country, too, with what we are seeing now as suppression
    of dissent and retribution efforts to crack down on free speech
    and stymie scientific research, target nonviolent university
    protesters who I may not agree with, but we all have the First
    Amendment rights.
        And we have also seen insurance companies with Medicare
    Advantage use AI to deny or delay coverage. So as you think
    about--we only have--we actually don't have any time. If you
    could write me an answer to what you would suggest for
    guardrails for AI as we move forward, we want to be able to
    keep up and do this wisely.
        Dr. Schmidt. I will do so. Thank you very much.
        Ms. Schrier. Thank you.
        Mr. Guthrie. All right. Seeing no further folks here to ask
    questions, I ask unanimous consent to insert in the record the
    documents included on the staff hearing documents list.
        Without objection, that will be the order.
        [The information appears at the conclusion of the hearing.]
        Mr. Guthrie. I remind Members they have 10 business days to
    submit questions for the record, and I ask the witnesses to
    respond to the questions promptly.
        Without objection, the committee is adjourned.
        [Whereupon, at 2:30 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
        [Material submitted for inclusion in the record follows:]
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