Fmr. Senator Cory Gardner: why the AI race is won on boring infrastructure and how China wins by making America hate AI

Cory Gardner is a former U. S. Senator and Congressman from Colorado and was one of the Senate's leading Taiwan and China experts, chairing the Foreign Relations subcommittee on East Asia and authoring the Taipei Act. He is now president and CEO of NCTA, the Internet & Television Association, whose members built the nation's largest broadband platform. In this episode of Summation, Cory and Auren discuss: Why the AI race gets won on spectrum, fiber, and memory chipsThe bottleneck raising t...

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  In Washington, in policy, sound actually travels faster than light.

• 0:04Auren Hoffman?

  My guest today is Cory Gardner. Cory is the former US Senator and Congressman from Colorado, and he was also one of the Senate's leading Taiwan and China experts.

• 0:15Speaker 00

  It's not just about moving fast, it's about how people are talking about things, how people are framing things, and it is the speed of sound that we have to worry about too, because that can frame an issue faster than the speed of light. I think it's all about moving at the same speed, but just not forgetting to bring people along with you.

• 0:34Auren Hoffman?

  Hello, data nerds. My guest today is Cory Gardner. Cory is the former US Senator and Congressman from Colorado, and he was also one of the Senate's leading Taiwan and China experts. He chaired the Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asia and also author the Taipei Act. He is currently the President and CEO of the NCTA, which is the Internet and Television Association, whose member companies have built the nation's largest broadband platform, delivering connectivity to almost every US home. And he's been writing a lot about chips, spectrum, and how America could win the AI race against China. Cory, welcome to Summation.

• 1:14Speaker 00

  Hey, thank you very much for having me on Summation. I look forward to the conversation. Greatly appreciate it.

• 1:19Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, absolutely. Now, everyone is kind of talking about models and chips, but you've got an argument that AI race is actually going to be won on some of the boring stuff like spectrum, fiber, connectivity. Walk us through that.

• 1:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely. You know, just the other day, I was thinking about this podcast, having this great conversation. And as I was heading to the office, one of the Capitol tunnels, there was a truck that was stopped outside the Capitol Tunnel because it was too tall to get into the tunnel and it couldn't go anywhere. So I'm sitting here thinking, you know, what a great example of what's happening. You've got this AI potential, this great AI model with a lot of data, a lot of need, a lot of demand, that can't actually get into the tunnels, the pipelines, to get it out where it's going to be used. And so that's exactly what we've been talking about, is making sure that people understand that, yes, AI has this huge potential, but the potential is limited. Depending on the pipes, the pipeline, the infrastructure that underlies it,

• 2:16Speaker 00

  that doesn't get nearly enough attention, because that's how we're actually going to utilize AI and utilize the engine.

• 2:22Auren Hoffman?

  Is there a bottleneck there that like we should be thinking about?

• 2:25Speaker 00

  There are a couple of different bottlenecks. I mean, there's all kinds of supply-driven bottlenecks, there's infrastructure bottlenecks, there's permitting challenges that we face. But the one that we've been dealing with right now that you mentioned is the memory chip side of things, where we have a data, AI-driven data center demand for chips. I mean, this is a good news problem, right? I mean, this isn't something that I'm complaining about. This is a good news problem. The fact is, success is driving a demand for these chips, and we simply have to make sure that we have enough chips to meet the need for infrastructure, to match the creation of these data centers, the AI opportunities that are being built out as we go forward.

• 3:05Auren Hoffman?

  AI in general is unpopular in the US, or maybe not as popular as one would think. It's certainly not as popular as almost any other country outside of maybe Europe. Why is it so unpopular?

• 3:18Speaker 00

  I remember a conversation I had with a friend of mine who I grew up with. I live in a little tiny town in eastern Colorado. A lot of truck drivers live in that little town, and it was Colorado, this is a perfect story for it. The first ever fully autonomous truck delivery of commercial goods was beer. It was from Denver to Colorado Springs, and I remember reading about it in the paper. And then this friend came up to me a couple of days after that article was published, and he said, hey, did you see the story about the truck that got delivered with, you know, autonomous truck? And I said, yeah, wasn't it great? And his response was, well, yeah, but what's going to happen to me? And so when you ask that question about what people think about AI and why is it unpopular,

• 4:01Speaker 00

  I don't think people have done, businesses, government leaders have done a good enough job explaining, what does AI mean to the individual? What's going to happen to them, their jobs, their opportunities, their kids, their kids' success? Everything that they've built, planned for, and saved for, how is it going to be impacted? So, you know, look, when you look, when you listen to some of the CEOs talk about it, and they, sometimes they bring dire predictions, or they're talking about incredible opportunities it's going to create, that can get lost on the individual who simply says, hey, I'm worried about my $30, $40 an hour job, my $20 an hour job, what's it going to mean to me?

• 4:41Speaker 00

  How is that going to infect me, affect me? So I think that's really why you see this challenge on AI. That question needs to be answered. Look, we're, you know, we're putting, nearly in the last decade or so, $350 billion into the ground in infrastructure. That creates jobs and opportunity. But at the end of the day, people may be worrying, hey, am I investing that for a job that I'm putting myself out of business in?

• 5:05Auren Hoffman?

  When you think of like some of the past things like fracking, or pipeline, or things like that, that have created a lot of jobs in the US, a lot of the opposition to that was really mostly on the left. Today, there, if you think of like a data center, you still have that same coalition of people on the left that are against it, but you have this new coalition of people on the right who are also against it. What, explain, since you kind of come from the right, explain the second coalition and why they have this kind of like anti-data center thing going on.

• 5:38Speaker 00

  It's one of those horseshoe politics moments, right? And so I think it's about people concerned about their energy prices, people concerned about their privacy, people concerned about their neighborhood, their jobs, their economy, what it means for all of that, and people concerned that only a few are going to be controlling this. And so I think you have very similar arguments on the left and the right about what's going to happen and what it means for them down the road. And there is a natural distrust on both the left and the right for the creators of technology. I think there's, I used to make this joke sometimes when we talk about privacy issues and censorship issues. I would say, well, what's worse, 2,000 censors in Washington DC or 2,000 censors in San Francisco?

• 6:22Speaker 00

  The bottom line is neither of them are good, and so I think people, people are worried about, you know, maybe they're worried about Washington, maybe they're worried about a technocratic elite, or whatever they want to call it. I guess not technocratic, that's not the right word, but the technological elite is the right source that they may be concerned about.

• 6:41Auren Hoffman?

  How do you think about the AI vis a vis China and how we should be thinking about it as a country? And then like even like locally, how we should be thinking about these things?

• 6:48Speaker 00

  We have rules of the road that we've set up to protect our democracy. We have this great constitution that is the, you know, the fabric of our country. We have courts, we have regulatory processes that we have to live within as we innovate, as we thrive. China has none of the above. They're going to compete with us. There's really no rules of the road. If they want to build something, they can build something. If they want to go over a site to put a piece of infrastructure through that maybe have some historic consequence to it, they don't care, they can just build it. They're going to, you know, use people as they need to, and they've got to throw a lot of people at anything that they want, just the sheer size, scope, and scale of the country.

• 7:29Speaker 00

  And they don't, they don't necessarily, they don't have the roadblocks or the speed bumps that we do in terms of looking at how things ought to be done, ought to be done properly, and the sort of human right component of it as well. And so they are advantaged simply because they don't have as many rules of the road as we do. And so how do we make sure that we are competing with them in a way that allows us to be nimble, that allows us to make our standards the ones that are followed around the globe? Because if we don't, it's their standards, it's their systems, it's their processes, their values, that will then sort of demand, command, and control the future of global AI adoption.

• 8:12Speaker 00

  And that's a dangerous thing for US. It's certainly anti-competitive. It certainly hurts our economic opportunity, but it's a national security risk as well.

• 8:19Auren Hoffman?

  Now, if I was China, if I was the leaders of China, probably the best investment, the best ROI I could make right now is running some sort of PSYOP in the US to make the US more anti-AI. It seems like that would be a very low investment for a very high amount of gain. I don't know if that's happening or not, but I would, I would be doing that if I was them.

• 8:45Speaker 00

  I mean, you go back to the Cold War, and you go back to the long telegram by George Keenan, and they talked about how sort of the social unrest or social challenges that our country faces internally were used by Russia, the Soviet Union, against us to put ourselves against each other. A different context then, but really the same sort of result, which is, yes, how do you fund this opposition network? How do you fund this algorithm, this bot somewhere that is putting out messaging that's going to get people riled up and fighting each other about it? So, Orin, you're exactly right. This is a big concern. There were questions about whether this happened in fracking,

• 9:24Speaker 00

  whether certain countries were using it to increase arguments in communities against fracking, trying to divide people. We have to be very careful. That is a, it is a very long-held tool that our competitors, enemies of the United States, have used against us.

• 9:43Auren Hoffman?

  And because we're such an open country, it's a, it's our own vulnerability in a way. Like, it's both our, it's both a strength but a vulnerability. It's an easy way to attack us, essentially.

• 9:53Speaker 00

  An easy way to attack, you're exactly right. And I mean, just go look at any number of bots on anything you're posting, blogging, tweeting, X-ing, whatever it is, you'll be able to see it and pick them out.

• 10:04Auren Hoffman?

  If you think of AI, like, there's all these physical things that we need. We need chips, we need power, we need connectivity, and we need components that make up all those, three of those things. If, whether it be Congress or the executive branch could like address one of these bottlenecks, which one should they focus on first?

• 10:24Speaker 00

  If I had to pick one, it goes back to the very beginning of our conversation today. It goes back to memory chips. And let me give you a couple of examples. You know, we're investing, you know, nearly, almost, you know, over $20 billion last year alone in terms of some of the infrastructure work that we've been doing. But the price of a router, something like the router that everybody has in their home, was memory chips made up about 3% of the cost of that router. Today, that's about 20% based on the price increases of memory. We talked about that underlying pipeline system, you know, the fiber, the HFC, that all of the things that we have to have to get AI to the household through Wi-Fi, as offloaded on Wi-Fi, that data can

• 11:07Speaker 00

  move around, what is synonymous with the Internet today. In order for that to happen, we have to have memory, and we have to have cheap memory that allows consumers to be able to afford it. And as it's being galled up by data centers and others, that is a real-time problem right now that we have to deal with, because it's not just our prices that are increasing, it's the price of a mobile phone that's increasing, it's the price of the Sony PlayStation or Microsoft Surface that's increasing.

• 11:33Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, Apple just raised the prices of every one of their products pretty significantly because of memory.

• 11:38Speaker 00

  If you look at how that's going to affect people, are they going to slow down their purchases? How it's going to then hit the companies? Because the companies are going to say, look, we'd like to unveil this new product, we'd like to roll out this new innovation, but we're not going to, because we don't think the consumer will bear the price.

• 11:55Auren Hoffman?

  If your iPhone costs $150 more, you might delay getting the new iPhone, or if you get the iPhone, you might not get something else, you know, that you're going to have some, you're going to have some sort of trade-off.

• 12:06Speaker 00

  That's right, your trade-off. I mean, that's one of the reasons why I want to pursue handset unlocking, because that, if we do see this, that allows us to get more opportunities for people to at least take what they already have and get more affordable service, if that's what they're choosing. But I, you know, one of the, we're not talking like real fancy national security memory. When I, when I talk about memory, I'm talking about DRAM. I'm talking not high bandwidth memory type chips that are used in AI to, I just mean your standard DRAM-type chip. And so, if, of all of the issues that you've lined out, if we could get that right, then we could start getting a lot of the other parts of this affordability question resolved.

• 12:45Auren Hoffman?

  If we think of DRAM, like, I don't think any DRAM is made in America. I mean, you would know better than me, but you know, it's, there's a lot of it's made in South Korea, maybe a little bit in Japan, and I don't even know if any of it's really made in Japan, or, and then increasing amount is made in China now. Like, how, how do we attack that bottleneck? Or is that just something like competitive pressures will attack over the next few years, but we're just going to have to deal with it for a few years? Like, oh, how's that going to shape out?

• 13:10Speaker 00

  They're building out some in Virginia, but that, that supply has already been taken up. So, a couple of years ago, Congress passed the Chips Act, put billions and billions of dollars into the manufacturing of more chips. But a lot of these companies that said, hey, wait a minute, we can go off and make these other kinds of chips with this money, we'll stop making these, and go on to the next new shiny thing. And that's what's driving this problem. It's a, it's a supply problem, right? The demand is there. But as people give up fab lines to create these new chips, they're leaving others high and dry that need the DRAM. So, and I also don't think it's good policy, though, to your, to your question, Orin. It's not good policy for us to say, you know, have the government

• 13:51Speaker 00

  try to wave its magic market eraser and say, thou shalt build. That's not going to work either. So, what can we do? Well, we can create incentives, we can make sure the Chips Act is working to target dollars toward where the demand is on DRAM. We can make sure that we have research and development, or R and D tax credits, or production tax credits, or other types of incentives in the tax code that will allow these manufacturers to build onshore. We're making good progress in onshoring, but we've got to do more. And then we're going to have to look at other, you know, whether it's other chips made around the globe, to make sure that there's no national security risk. But we're going to have to have some solutions, or the consumers are going to find themselves even more, facing even more higher costs.

• 14:34Auren Hoffman?

  Today, we have this kind of like Wi-Fi, this kind of unlicensed spectrum, right? And then we've got the licensed spectrum that the mobile carriers own. And there's a lot of other, like, fights being around, or like, you know, police are talking about certain spectrum, and like, give us a sense of just like, the spectrum wars that are taking place, and how we should be thinking about this.

• 14:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely. You know, when I was a kid, I remember, I'd go over to my, my grandparents' house, and they had this business band. It was like a, you know, walkie-talkie, you'd pick it up, and you'd use the call sign, and you know, 40 miles away, I could connect with my aunt and uncle, who were out on the tractor in the middle of the field. And, you know, I didn't think about it then, but when I'm 10 years old, you know, using the call sign to reach them, that's using the spectrum out there, right? And so, all around us in the air, we have spectrum, and your audience knows it very well. The fight between licensed and unlicensed is really over airwaves that, that have no greenfield spectrum anymore. We know what it is, there's, the earth isn't creating more spectrum.

• 15:38Auren Hoffman?

  I assume like, there are many bands that are not being used, because maybe they're not being, they're not efficient, or something, or there's other types of things that are happening, like, like, walk us through, like, why, why are certain bands better than others?

• 15:52Speaker 00

  Right. It just depends on what your use is, right? Depending, you know, maybe you're using it for your garage door opener, to unlock your car. Maybe it's in your house that's telling you, hey, your refrigerator's out of milk, you need to order more milk.

• 16:05Auren Hoffman?

  And is there some sort of trade-off, like, this is really good for long distances, but it's lower bandwidth, this is good for short distances, but higher bandwidth, or something, or?

• 16:13Speaker 00

  That's right. And so, it's a question of power, it's a question of, you know, wattage, it's, it's about what use, and interference, right? So, I mean, some, some bands interfere to a greater degree with others, there's national security implications as well, because the government, Department of Defense, our intelligence agencies have spectrum that they don't want anybody else involved in because of interference, or, or listening concerns. So, there's just a number of reasons why you might be in a band. But the, the bottom line is this, the more unlicensed, I believe this, the more unlicensed spectrum that we have, the more permissionless innovation opportunities it creates. If you look at, for most people right now, if you're at home using the Internet, Wi-Fi is synonymous

• 16:56Speaker 00

  with the Internet. You know, so, so the Internet comes into your house, it goes through your, your router, and then it gets out into your house, you connect to your laptop, you connect to your phone, your, your appliances may be connected to it, your washer, dryer, all of it may be connected to Wi-Fi. In fact, about 85 to 90% of cellphone data, of mobile data, gets carried ultimately over Wi-Fi. And so, if you think about, and, and the, the carriers, the cellphone companies are interested in licensed spectrum. So, Wi-Fi is unlicensed. Mobile phones, they're using licensed, and they want more and more licensed, even though Wi-Fi, unlicensed, carries about eight times more data than the carriers themselves do.

• 17:40Auren Hoffman?

  I know in my house, like, I've got the Wi-Fi enablement and stuff like that, so I'm offloading a lot of those carrier type of things to my home Wi-Fi, essentially, my, my own bandwidth that I pay for.

• 17:51Speaker 00

  And that's how we're able to, in fact, you know, if you look at the, the companies that I represent, we're now the, combined collectively, the fourth largest mobile carrier in the country, and we can offer at lower cost, because we use Wi-Fi in our networks to offload the data. And so, it just makes sense where you can, to put this through our systems, because the infrastructure's built out, it's there, the capacity allows it. And it's a huge amount of data that we are carrying through unlicensed spectrum. You know, I, I, a lot of times talk about spectrum in terms of like, a, a public beach access, right? This whole fight is about whether we're going to have access to the public beach. Right now, if you want to go to the beach, it's public access, you go to it. One day, if you show up at that beach, and there's, and that's unlicensed spectrum,

• 18:34Speaker 00

  right? Just, I get to the beach, it's open access, I get to take my family, have a great day at the beach, show up one day, and there's a gate locked, or a chain across it, and you can't get to it. Well, all of a sudden, they've decided to license it.

• 18:45Auren Hoffman?

  Most people's Wi-Fi works pretty well. Is there a sense, like, if we had more spectrum, it would work better, or something? Or what's the, what's the fight there?

• 18:54Speaker 00

  Brown, the first administration, Trump administration, they made a very unique decision in the Globe. They said, look, we're going to use the full 1,200 megahertz of the 6 gigahertz band of, of spectrum for Wi-Fi unlicensed use. And that was, we were the first in the, in the world to do this. And it's created Billions and billions of dollars in economic opportunity each and every year through new device manufacturing, through consumers who can attach more and more in their household through Wi-Fi, things that they want to do to communicate with, to be utilizing at home, tools to help their businesses thrive, manufacturers to tie everything together.

• 19:31Auren Hoffman?

  I don't know that I have access to the six megahertz today, my laptop or my Wi-Fi router. Is that something like everyone has access to or is that like coming out?

• 19:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, so a lot of your laptops, especially your newer devices, your newer routers and other things, may be using Wi-Fi 6 or Wi-Fi 7 that allows us to get into 6 gigahertz and to fully utilize that band.

• 19:52Auren Hoffman?

  Why is 6 better than 5? Like, or is it better than 5?

• 19:55Speaker 00

  It's just in terms of the technology, it's in terms of the sweet spot for Wi-Fi and what we need in terms of the spectrum to have the speed, the capacity to work the best. So it is the ideal road for us to be using, so to speak, from a wave standpoint. But we could also get into lower 7, which is the band just above that. And there's an issue right now of whether it will be licensed or unlicensed. The reason why you'd want to have more unlicensed is pretty obvious. The more people using the same road, the busier it gets, the more likely you are to have congestion, just like a highway. If everybody says, hey, this is great, let's get on it. Everybody drives, everybody's getting on it. It's more and more congested, it's going to slow down in bottleneck. And

• 20:39Speaker 00

  so, you know, whether it's a heavy, maybe it's an inner-city area with a lot of apartments, a lot of individuals using Wi-Fi, there's congestion risks.

• 20:49Auren Hoffman?

  Back in the day, like, I remember, like, you have to figure out, like, what's the right channel. I mean, I may be dating myself here, but, oh, I gotta be on channel 11 because my neighbors are on channel 9, or I gotta kind of like, and today somehow, like, the routers all, like, figure it out, like, automatically, right?

• 21:05Speaker 00

  That's one of the great innovations and opportunities with AI, is to have your, what, all of this spectrum decisions through your Wi-Fi system, enabling the best, the best airwave that you're going to get, that would allow you to both uplink, download, you know, upload, download the data that you're looking for. So if we don't get more spectrum, it's going to create the same problem that we've discussed on AI. The infrastructure just won't be there. AI, we won't be able to really realize that full potential of it at the user level. And the user level is somebody sitting at their home office or somebody sitting in a factory that's oftentimes using Wi-Fi. That's the real challenge we have here, the opportunities to build out, to get more spectrum. Again, we're talking

• 21:49Speaker 00

  billions of dollars in innovation for unlicensed innovation. The consumer product innovations that are created with more unlicensed really is unrivaled when it comes to this policy.

• 22:01Auren Hoffman?

  Now, if I want to get data wirelessly, I can get it, like, via Wi-Fi, I can get it via, you know, the cell network. I can also get it now via a satellite potential connection as well, which I assume does not use the bandwidth, or I don't even know how the satellite actually works, but there's some sort of, like, direct kind of line-of-sight link to a satellite or something, or, like, how do all these things, like, kind of, like, work with one another?

• 22:31Speaker 00

  There's been a lot of things in the news about how your satellite is going to displace, you know, your internet connection at your home. And that's, that's really not true in most cases.

• 22:42Auren Hoffman?

  Your internet connection at your home is usually wired.

• 22:44Speaker 00

  That's right. That's right. And that's going to be a better connection. Why? Because it's going to have better, bigger pipeline. It's going to have, you know, your, it's going to have low latency, your symmetrical up and down is going to be better. So it's just, it's just a bigger pipe with more data, more speed.

• 23:01Auren Hoffman?

  And you don't have to worry about the weather, you know, as much, et cetera.

• 23:04Speaker 00

  You don't have to worry about the weather, and if you're living 45, 50 miles out in the country in the middle of nowhere, then satellite may be the right solution for you. And, you know, if you've used a, flown on an airline that has a Starlink satellite, that connection's great. So there are opportunities that they are going to have.

• 23:21Auren Hoffman?

  Now you have, your device can connect directly to the satellite, and maybe, maybe right now just in emergencies, but later on, there could be other ways for your device to connect directly to the satellite. And that could take on, like, that could be an alternative to using Verizon or AT&T or some other type of thing.

• 23:37Speaker 00

  I mean, there may be alternatives to that, but I think it's why that, you know, we're looking at opportunities. I know our members are talking to different satellite companies about what partnerships they can have, where it makes sense, because they may decide, hey, look, it is not a business case for us to go out 100 miles to connect one house, but maybe we could work with you to find a solution for that, that family, that business, that farmer, rancher, so that we can provide them with the, with the very good internet that they don't have right now. And that saves the taxpayers' dollars, it saves the businesses' dollars, and it's a good product. So is it going to displace? Is it going to work in highly congested areas? Probably not. Is it going to work in the

• 24:18Speaker 00

  speeds and the size of data that needs for, for the AI boom that we expect to have and for that to blossom? Probably not. But are there opportunities? And is it a good technology? Absolutely it is.

• 24:28Auren Hoffman?

  Governments all across the world have, like, they have to kind of figure out what they do with their spectrum. There's all these, like, weird auctions for spectrum, and those come up in a certain way. Like, give us a sense of just, like, how the governments manage that asset.

• 24:44Speaker 00

  It's pretty nuanced, and that's one of the biggest challenges of talking spectrum policy.

• 24:48Auren Hoffman?

  I believe in the US, like, the federal government owns the spectrum. Is that right? Like, no state owns it, municipalities don't own it. Somehow, like, that has been just decided. It's like the federal government's thing, right?

• 25:02Speaker 00

  Yes. And NTIA manages this, you know, and you've got, of course, the Department of War, Department of Defense is involved in this, a lot of federal users, FAA, you name it. So they're all getting this, licensing it. And then if you're a, you know, a user of it, you either have a licensed or unlicensed use of it, but you have ownership of that spectrum. But that gets to the point of how easy it is for somebody who wants more licensed spectrum to go in and say, hey, we would like to have this spectrum to be used for our product. And the way the US government deals with that is either unlicensed or shared, which is like the CBRS band. You can share it, the Navy uses it, and then, and then

• 25:45Speaker 00

  the commercial sector can use it as well, where there's no interference. And then there's licensed. So unlicensed, shared, and licensed. The way you get the licensed is most likely through an auction. And it's easy to go into a member of Congress and say, look, you've got money problems, the government needs more, more revenue, you want to do all these programs. Tell you what, if you auction off this band of spectrum, or 800 megahertz of spectrum somewhere, we think it will generate billions and billions of dollars for you, and wouldn't you like to have that money now? And that's a pretty good thing for that member of Congress to sit back and say, wow, I don't have to do anything, I already have this, we already own it, we just move this money and boom, the money comes in and we're all set, and I get to spend it or pay off the debt or whatever I'm going to do with

• 26:28Speaker 00

  it. It wouldn't pay off the debt, there's not enough of that. But that's the easy argument to make. It's a lot more difficult to go in and say, we think that if you were to not only keep 6 gigahertz available for unlicensed, but allow it to expand into lower 7 gigahertz, we think the economic opportunity, the innovation that will occur, will generate far more money than it would if you were to just license that off and get the money now. That's a harder, more nuanced approach to make. That's a harder sell, and that's what we have to do to educate lawmakers, because once they license it off, it's too late to have the kind of permissionless innovation that would make a lot of money and make consumers better off as a result. The kind of innovations that could be created from unlicensed far

• 27:11Speaker 00

  outweigh the innovations from licensed, and it goes to far more people and far more consumer goods on the unlicensed side than it does on the licensed side. So, you know, the government looks at it through auctions, they look at it through hard dollars, we're looking at it through how do we get more people to benefit, more consumers to benefit, more product innovation. And as a result, the overall economy will flourish far greater. But, you know, again, that's our job to make sure policymakers understand that.

• 27:37Auren Hoffman?

  When countries have borders, and I assume there's, like, a weird spectrum kind of move of, like, do they have, like, treaties to somehow navigate that between each other? Like, how does that work?

• 27:47Speaker 00

  There's a whole series of treaties, conventions. There's actually a big convention coming up next year in Shanghai called the World Radio Communications Conference, that's going to set some of these standards for how a spectrum is allocated amongst countries and used. You know, in Iran, in North Korea, you hear them complaining about somebody trying to, you know, use spectrum in a way that goes against their interests, or they're going to, you know, try to eliminate the access to the internet for their people. And, you know, again, there are international boundaries, international issues, treaties, conferences, conventions. The ITU, which is a subset of the United Nations, does a lot of this work globally on spectrum.

• 28:27Auren Hoffman?

  If I want to use some bandwidth for whatever reason, in the middle of, like, international waters or something like that, is it just kind of like, I can use it, it's the Wild West, I can just, if I want to communicate between two ships?

• 28:38Speaker 00

  Somebody would most likely have that, the ability for you to just use your piece of equipment. Somebody would most likely have that.

• 28:45Auren Hoffman?

  When you're in the Senate, you were, you know, people would say you were a China hawk.

• 28:50Auren Hoffman?

  And you know, the AI boom really depends right now on chips that are made just a couple hundred miles off of China's coast. How exposed are we? How should we be thinking about this?

• 29:01Speaker 00

  We were incredibly exposed. Let's say everything that we're in progress right now, everything were to be built out and producing, it is a fraction, a tiny fraction of what is coming, what our reliance is on Taiwan right now. And so it is a major risk and we are, we are one geopolitical catastrophe away from having a very significant hardship in this country.

• 29:29Auren Hoffman?

  Let's say TSMC magically, you know, some wizard comes and magically got moved, not to the US, but magically got moved to Japan or something like, would that make you feel better? Is it the fact that it's like, is the fact that it's just so geopolitically exposed via China? Or is it the fact that it's just not in the US is the bigger problem?

• 29:52Speaker 00

  Look, I mean, you're talking about degrees with that question, but I think the ultimate solution is we've got to be able to be self-sustaining when we have this. And that's why it's important. I mean, and that's not just on memory or chips overall. This is about medical devices. This is about so many things that we do not produce anymore in this country that whether it's a global pandemic or whether it's a microchip.

• 30:17Auren Hoffman?

  That might not be a Taiwan risk. There's many other, obviously it's a global thing and things are produced all over the place.

• 30:23Speaker 00

  So yes, I mean, made in Japan, I mean, that's, that's a little bit more removed, you know, perhaps, and then it faces less. You have the geopolitical pressure that China and Taiwan do, it still has significant geopolitical pressure with and conflict between China and Japan, same with, with South Korea, obviously, and the challenges there. So we do need to have this capability, capacity in the United States in the long run. And that's why we also need to make sure that it's not just us, but our close allies participating as well, to be able to have multiple avenues and channels, so to speak, to have this, get these products into the country if we don't have enough right here.

• 31:07Auren Hoffman?

  I met this guy recently who owns a copper mine in your home state of Colorado. And he told me that basically a hundred percent of the copper that he produces gets sent to China. So they literally ship it over to China, then they create, whatever they're creating, copper wires from that, and then they send it all the way back to the US. Like, why, why does this have to go all the way to China? They come all the way back to the US for us to consume? Like, why, why can't we start doing something with it here?

• 31:36Speaker 00

  It's manufacturing, it's, it's labor cost, it's environmental challenges, it's permitting, it, all of that, we've got to figure it out or else that geopolitical challenge won't just become hypothetical, it'll become real and it'll, it'll destroy our entire economic foundation.

• 31:54Auren Hoffman?

  If you think about spectrum, back in the day, I would, I would think about Huawei or ZTE and, and you know, kind of like being able to jump in and start like getting in the telecom systems and replacing things like Cisco or Ericsson. And I don't know if that's still like as big of an issue as it used to be when people talked about that 10 years ago, but where, how does China think about this and how should we be countering that?

• 32:20Speaker 00

  They are trying to, the WRC that I mentioned, World Radio Conference in Shanghai in 2027, where some of these standards will be hashed out. You can bet that they are going to be around the globe, whether it's Europe, Brazil, you name it, trying to meet with regulators and others to get their standards set. And oh, by the way, it's their devices that use those same standards. And oh gosh, just the way we happen to set it up, the only way you can meet these standards is to use our device. And so that's the device that's going to be in Europe, that's the device that's going to be in Brazil. And all of a sudden, the United States stands on an island, everybody around the globe is using theirs, not ours. And then it makes it difficult for us to, to use devices or those, those countries,

• 33:05Speaker 00

  when they bring their device here, maybe it's their cell phone, maybe it's something else they can't use it here because our system is set up different. And so then we decide, gosh, we're going to have to give in and change our standards to what are, this is, you bet China's trying to do this. And you know, this past spring, I went to a, a major conference, a mobile world conference in Barcelona, and they have these massive convention halls, huge, huge convention halls. I bet one seventh of that convention was Huawei because they're trying to convince people around the globe, here's this device, here's our product, here's our innovation. And you know, it's not like we're talking black and white. I mean, they're fully color, they're fully digital, they're doing stuff, but it's just

• 33:46Speaker 00

  to their benefit, to our detriment, and you bet they're working every day to displace us.

• 33:52Auren Hoffman?

  Why has Huawei been so successful? I, by the way, I just bought this book, this new book that came out, House of Huawei. I haven't read it yet, so I don't know if it's good, but I'm very excited to dive in. Like what, why, obviously there's the China state's been helping them, but like they make products that are high quality, that are very inexpensive. Like, why have they been so successful?

• 34:12Speaker 00

  You bet. I mean, it's part of their Silk Road initiative where they're going out and saying, hey, we'll build all these things for you. And by the way, we'd like you to use this product or we'll build this infrastructure, we'll build this network for you and we're just going to use our technology, our, our country's providers for our country's equipment. You know, I remember several years ago, when I was in the Senate, talking to a rural cell phone provider. And it was over the, this policy of rip and replace, that there was going to be a requirement that all Huawei equipment would be taken out of the network and then it would have to be replaced and that the pushback was, well, wait a minute, who's going to pay for this? Is that, is the federal government pay for this? And you know, in talking to these rural cell phone providers, they all said, look, all

• 34:54Speaker 00

  these other providers, they do not have the price points, the entry point that Huawei does. It is dramatically lower cost. Look at the whole question of China and the automotive industry right now. Look what Europe's dealing with, with the entry of Chinese autos into their markets. It's destroying those local markets. And so it is very much get into a country, get the cheap product there, set the standards and then devour it from within.

• 35:22Auren Hoffman?

  My wife was in Paris and she took an Uber to the airport from her hotel and she was, and she was just like, she was just in this like super nice luxury car. And she took a picture and she's like, I've never seen such a nice luxury car, it was beautiful. And turned out it was like a, it was just a random Japanese, a random Chinese car that just doesn't exist. And they like, their cars are great. Like that's the part of the problem is we're competing against not just like cheap products, but we're competing against products that are really good. Like, how do we make sure we have the best products? How do we make sure we have the better like system than Huawei? Like, why, why are they able to compete with us so well?

• 36:03Speaker 00

  First glance is one thing and really good five years from now is another thing. And I think that's what we have to keep in mind too, is while this product may be gee whiz and fantastic to look at, to use today, how does it, how does the supply chain for repairs and replacement parts work long run? It falls apart and that's the whole challenge with, with the supply chains coming out of China right now. Maybe that changes over time, but I think we've got to be able to be involved in these standard setting bodies. The State Department's got a great opportunity at that conference in Shanghai to stand up for the US, to fight for things like six gigahertz, to say this should be for unlicensed use, to make our compelling case. There's a reason why China wants more licensed spectrum. If you're China, you want license because you want control.

• 36:48Speaker 00

  If you have a license, you can yank the license from somebody who's not going along with you. And so it's command and control. Just think of licensed spectrum as the, you know, the state's ability to put its thumb on the scale. Think of unlicensed spectrum as an opportunity for innovation and openness. And that in and of itself explains why the United States has a big challenge ahead of us, but we've got to get it right. Going around the, fighting back on the standards that would overly benefit them, setting the rules of the road so it shares our values, not theirs, and to make sure that, at the beginning of our conversation, we talked about the, the values that we have, that we abide by, making sure that those values are thriving going forward and not just run over by a regime that doesn't care about them.

• 37:30Auren Hoffman?

  I don't know if there is a book, but I want the book about understanding Ericsson's failures. Like, is there, is there something we can learn about why Ericsson is not a dominant company today? Why Ericsson kind of like fell off the path? Why they weren't able to innovate? Were they able, like, what can we learn from them so we don't, you know, repeat that mistake?

• 37:51Speaker 00

  Right. Well, again, it's, it's innovation. It's, it's not just sitting back on your laurels and holding to one, one technology. It's, it's driving the change. It's getting countries to realize what it means and it's sharing the story of what happens when, when we lose out.

• 38:04Auren Hoffman?

  Cause 25 years ago, Ericsson was like, in some ways like a pinnacle company. It wasn't that long ago where it was like, it was, it was really pushing the envelope on technology, it was doing these incredible things. And I don't even know if it, honestly, I don't even know if the company even exists today. Like I never hear about it anymore.

• 38:21Speaker 00

  This space, it doesn't stay constant. It's always moving, always moving. And if you're trying to, to stay to what's worked because it's worked and you're making money on it and that's been, you know, let's just stay with it, you're going to get left behind.

• 38:34Auren Hoffman?

  What about Europe? Like what can we, obviously, we want Europe to be successful. It just seems like innovation isn't happening at the same pace, even in cars like, it's like 25 years ago, the German car was, just 25 years ago, the German car was the pinnacle of engineering. Today, honestly, I feel like the Chinese cars are even better than the German cars. They're maybe not as, German cars aren't, it's like a Tesla, Chinese cars, then the German cars are kind of the next kind of level. Like they're just not even as good, they're, they're not innovating. I don't feel like they're really much better at all. Like what, how do we, if we want Europe to succeed, we kind of need them to innovate. What can they do better?

• 39:12Speaker 00

  They've got to want to succeed, right? We can't care more about Europe than Europe cares about Europe. And so they've got to figure out that if you create a, a system that front loads costs and makes it impossible to start or to create and to innovate, then you're never going to get past the, that first initial burden of, I can't afford to start something. I, I can't invest here because we just can't get the door open to even begin. You know, so I think there's some things that Europe does right. I think there's some things, and you know, I remember we had an energy and commerce committee hearing years ago about medical device manufacturing and the approval process for medical devices.

• 39:53Speaker 00

  And at that time, and this has been about 15 years ago now, their version of the FDA in Europe was actually doing a better job of approving medical devices than the US was. I think that's dramatically changed. And so we know they can do it, but they've got to figure out that they want to do it.

• 40:13Auren Hoffman?

  And some parts of Europe are innovating. I mean, you have Sweden, Estonia, like they're innovating at a super high pace, maybe even higher than the pace of than the US. But just like the seems like the rest of Europe is really languishing and maybe holding every, you know, holding other things back.

• 40:29Speaker 00

  It's the same argument as I had. I remember when we were talking about, you know, pipelines from Russia into Germany. It's like, why are you doing this? It makes no sense. So, you know, there was, it was either the Journal or the Times in the last week had an article about the German automotive industry and that, you know, is essential to the sort of the psyche, the fabric of the nation. And now something in the order of 30% of the cars made up of Chinese autos. So if they decide that they want to keep with a bureaucratic, a technocratic state that's going to, you know, make it impossible to actually move beyond those initial burdens, they're going to get more of the same. And that is a Europe that falls behind. I hope they decide they want something different.

• 41:10Auren Hoffman?

  What is it like to be an ex-senator that only an ex-senator would know?

• 41:13Speaker 00

  Most people don't know I'm an ex-senator now. They, you know, once you're off TV and once you're no longer doing commercials, they have no idea who you are. In fact, I go through the airport today. I think the most recognition I get is somebody coming up to me and saying, hey, do you do the weather? And so completely, maybe it's intentionally forgotten. I don't know. But look, I think stepping back, you hear and digest information differently because the stories you see in the paper today, on the front page of the news today, as a member of Congress, you actually probably knew that story was going to happen the day before, the week before, the month before. So the amount of information, the sort of in the know that a member of Congress has is truly remarkable. I also

• 41:58Speaker 00

  know that the fights that you read about aren't as simple as the articles that share those fights. There are, you know, stories that can't possibly cover the nuances, the challenges of that debate and the framing. So it does give you a unique perspective and sort of a unique insight into maybe what the real story is behind it and who is pushing it back when it wasn't on the front page.

• 42:24Auren Hoffman?

  What do you miss the most about being in the Senate?

• 42:27Speaker 00

  Somebody who gets elected to Congress obviously has a pretty big nerdery about themselves. If I can make up a word, you know, they're a kind of a wonk. They're, they're a little bit, they're just different because they're fascinated by politics. The sense of humor of almost every single person there is incredible. You could see somebody on TV and you're like, that guy, that they can't possibly be, there can't possibly be a funny bone in that person. But odds are, they incredible wit, incredible humor, dry, sarcastic at times, but they are, they are, and they're all committed. Look, I'll give you an example of interaction that I had when I was in the House. I was in the House Energy and Commerce

• 43:08Speaker 00

  Committee, and Ed Markey, Senator from Massachusetts, is on that committee with me. He'd come into the committee hearing and I thought, oh my gosh, Ed Markey, I disagree with everything that person says. I can't believe I'm in the same committee. This is awful. This is terrible. You know what? I got to know Ed Markey. And while he may disagree on a lot of things about me, I may disagree with things about him and his views. I actually got to really respect him because I knew him. It's hard to hate up close. We did some really good things in on Asia. You know, the number of policies as it related to our Asia Subcommittee that we did together because, and so because I took the time to know him. And so as a former senator looking in, you can see where there's opportunities that people have to

• 43:52Speaker 00

  collaborate to work, but you can also see disappointment at times when they don't take those opportunities.

• 43:57Auren Hoffman?

  One of the things I've seen is like when, like sometimes a Subcommittee of the Senate will go on a fact finding trip to, I don't know, Saudi Arabia or something like that. Right. And it'll be like, maybe a small number of senators, a small number of staff, maybe the center spouses will come along, but a very small group and they travel together and then they really get to know one another through travel. I don't know if that was something that you experienced that, but it does seem like you start to get appreciation of, of, of the, the other senators, their families, et cetera.

• 44:31Speaker 00

  No, I think that's exactly right. In fact, I think there are a number of people who say that one of the most beneficial things about those delegations is the opportunity to, to put sort of, the old saying was the politics stopped at the water's edge. Now that has eroded significantly lately, but it still gives people a chance to get to know each other, to see each other's work away from the TV gallery in Washington DC and to approach things and each other a little bit differently. And that has been a good thing. And I think there's a number of policies that could be domestic focused and nothing to do with whatever that visit was, that were started, spawned on that visit

• 45:13Speaker 00

  because they had a chance to talk about issues that mattered to themselves.

• 45:17Auren Hoffman?

  You're from Colorado. When I was younger, Colorado was a very much a purple state. It certainly had the liberal side, but also had this kind of like very libertarian, kind of like mountains, kind of piece. Now it seems to solidly bloom. And maybe I'm wrong about that, but at least that's like, I think all the statewide officers are on the Democratic side now. Why, why has it moved? And, you know, give us a sense of just like Colorado itself. Like what, what should we not understand about the political situation about that state?

• 45:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, you know, I think Colorado still maintains a very sort of keen sense of libertarian, libertarianism, right? So there's this individuality there. They just leave me alone. And that's on both sides of the aisle. But, you know, beginning in around 2002, when Republicans were, you know, holding nearly every office statewide, that shift is now complete. It is a solid blue state. I think you're right. Every statewide office at the state level held by Democrats, you know, you've got the delegation that is in the House is a little bit more split, but both, both Democratic members in the Senate. So I was the first

• 46:31Speaker 00

  Republican to be elected in Colorado statewide federally in 10 years. And that was 12 years ago. So it's been 24 years since a federal Republican elected statewide. So what happened? How was it driven? A couple of things. I think in the early 2000s, Republicans lost their way. And I think conservatives started to do things that were going against the interest of a new population moving in from largely California. And then later on, sort of the Northeast New England states started moving in. It's a highly educated state. And I've always sort of, it's very, it doesn't make it sound very good when you say highly, the more highly educated a state is, the less likely they're to vote for Republicans.

• 47:14Speaker 00

  That's the way it works. And that's the way it's been. And Colorado is, if not the highest, one of the most highest highly educated states in the country. And that's why you have a state that is solidly blue. We'll see if that continues. There's ebb and flow to all of this. And maybe that will change in the next two years, or maybe it's going to take 20 years for it.

• 47:33Auren Hoffman?

  What does maybe people here who don't go to Colorado all the time not appreciate about the state?

• 47:38Speaker 00

  You know, I just, I think there's so many parts, like down in the southwestern part, the Sand Hills area, that's the Andoons area of the state that people may not have had the chance to get to. It's remarkable. And then you get out to the Eastern Plains where it's just wide open and vast expanses of the state. You know, half of the state is just high plains. Most people probably think is in Kansas and Nebraska. That's the part that I live in, the, the, the neck of the lack of the woods, so to speak.

• 48:02Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, there's like the ski side, there's the, the, the, obviously the Denver side, there's like the cowboy side of the, it's kind of got everything.

• 48:12Speaker 00

  It does. You know, there's a town out, way out in the Eastern Plains is called First View. And for years I'd go through this town and go, what the heck is the first, what is, what is this the first view of? One morning, it had to be like five in the morning, just as the sun was coming up and I hit that town and you could make out the mountains for the very first time. And I mean, it had to be like 180 miles away from the mountains. So that was the first view as those settlers were coming into the state, the first view of the mountains that they thought they'd hit the next day. But it took them, you know, a full week or more to actually get there. And then, you know, I always joke, my, my family came to Colorado in the late 1800s. They stopped in Eastern Colorado. If they had to have been so lazy, if they'd have spent another 10 days in a covered wagon, they could have been in Aspen and life would be much different. The uniqueness of Colorado

• 48:55Speaker 00

  is you have these places and pockets of, you know, the Eastern Plains, the Western Slope, that rugged individualism that's throughout all four corners of the state. It's defined by water, you know, the lack of water. If you go into our Capitol, there's a poem written on the wall that says, here is a land whose history is written in water. It's really true.

• 49:14Auren Hoffman?

  How are you personally using AI in your day to day?

• 49:18Speaker 00

  Probably not enough, but, but, you know, I could use it for a couple of things. I, I, I do, I'll actually check a letter or a memo just to make sure that I didn't scrub, whether it's, you know, grammar, how I could word something better and say, make this view, improve it.

• 49:30Auren Hoffman?

  Kind of like an editor in a way?

• 49:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's exactly right. Or questions on it. I, I use for presentations, I'll say, hey, create this charter graph. If I'm talking politics, hey, here's, show polling that does this, that or the other, put it into a graph, make it for a board presentation, those kinds of things. If there's a, a job description that I'm looking at, you know, say, hey, what would, what would this type of a job description look like based on this size of an organization and this type of work that we do, those kinds of functions and activities. And it's, you know, it's remarkable. But again, the, you have to have the infrastructure to use it and the resources are real. I was visiting with the, one of the leaders of SK Hynix. And, and this is about two years ago, they said that if you

• 50:14Speaker 00

  were to ask the generative AI, a simple query about what the, what's the weather like today in New York, that, that answer, it's a lovely 75 degrees with a slight breeze and a possible chance of rain. That answer would require about 500 milliliters of water to cool the chips down from coming up with that. So these are real public policy implications that we have to deal with.

• 50:38Auren Hoffman?

  What conventional wisdom or advice do you think is generally bad advice?

• 50:42Speaker 00

  You know, it's funny, and I know, I know, wanted to frame it through my work in Washington, DC. There's, everybody always talks about how we move fast, how we move the speed of light, right? Or try to find a way faster. What's the next thing? But in Washington, in policy, Sound actually travels faster than light. And so I think sometimes as we're debating AI, as we're debating how the American people feel about AI, as we're debating the future of memory chips or what we need for unlicensed licensed spectrum, it's not just about moving fast. It's about how people are talking about things, how people are framing things. And it is the speed of sound that we have to worry about too, because that can frame an issue faster than the speed of light.

• 51:25Auren Hoffman?

  And how should one think about that? Like, how should one shape that in a way? Or how should I have that in back of my mind?

• 51:32Speaker 00

  You have to be paying attention. You have to be a part of the conversation. You have to be listening. You have to be learning and you have to be advocating, constantly advocating. And that's the sound that gets in there. Because when something breaks, when something happens, you'd either need to be on the success end of that or how you're handling the failure of that. Because that speed is going to be what you're going to be dealing with. But that speed of sound is how you are going to be successful in addressing either end of that spectrum.

• 51:58Auren Hoffman?

  And how do you like? It does seem like sometimes when people are plugged in and they maybe they innovate less because they start like thinking in the same way as the crowd. Like, how do you be plugged in yet still innovate? Like, how does one walk that line?

• 52:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, just I think it's all about moving at the same speed, but just not forgetting to bring people along with you. You know, just sharing it, to bring people in, to exposing them to the ideas that you're creating in that process. So you have to be mindful of it all. And it has to be purposeful and have a team around you that says, hey, let's make sure that we're communicating this or talking to people or involving this, not slowing down, but making sure that you're able to keep up with that advocacy messaging and the good or the bad of the conversation that's happening around you.

• 52:48Auren Hoffman?

  This has been awesome. Thank you, Cory Gardner, for joining us on Summation. By the way, I follow you on X, @CoryGardner on X. I definitely encourage our listeners to follow you there. This has been really great and a ton of fun. One more thing before we go. I read a blog called Summation. It's the same as this podcast. The blog is about non-obvious idea sharing on business, talent, data, longevity, and random contrarian takes. If you like the conversations on this show, you'll probably like the blog. It's free. New content comes out twice a month. You could subscribe at orin.substack.com. That's orin.substack.com.