James Kotecki (00:07):
This is ÓÀÐǶij¡ Tech Talk. I'm James Kotecki bringing you a media roundtable conversation on policy and technology captured live at ÓÀÐǶij¡ 2025, which is the best place to talk about that we brought together some of the brightest minds for this conversation and we are bringing it to you right now.
Jennifer Drogus (00:26):
Welcome everybody. Welcome to ÓÀÐǶij¡ day one. I am so excited. I actually just came from the Panasonic keynote over in the Venetian and was just absolutely thrilling. And so now we're over here on the CTA Stage here in West Hall, and I'm absolutely thrilled to be joined by three incredible journalists to talk about the tech policy landscape. It's very dynamic right now. And one thing I'll note is that a lot of folks talk about ÓÀÐǶij¡ as the intersection of tech and business. I like to say it's also the nexus of tech policy and so many important discussions around policy are had here at the show, and I'm just absolutely thrilled to be a part of it.
(01:06):
I'm Jennifer Drogus, I'm the Vice President of Communications at CTA, and we'll just go down the row if you guys want to introduce yourselves.
Ben Brody (01:15):
I'm Ben Brody, I'm the technology reporter at Punchbowl News in D.C.
Jordyn Grzelewski (01:20):
I'm Jordyn Grzelewski. I cover the future of travel for the Tech Brew newsletter at Morning Brew.
Tatum Hunter (01:26):
And I'm Tatum Hunter, I'm the internet culture reporter at the Washington Post.
Jennifer Drogus (01:31):
Awesome, thank you. Well, let's dive right in. Here in the US we've got a new president getting ready to take office. We've got the Republicans in charge of Congress. So what's on the horizon? What can we expect this year? Ben, I'll kick it over to you.
Ben Brody (01:46):
I guess I can start that one. I think that I am watching a couple of things. One of them is a real entry of China into the tech policy conversation, a real thinking about how trade policy and tariffs are going to start playing a role in American innovation and American competitiveness on the international stage. And I think the conversation around energy is going to kind of go into hyperdrive in a similar way. We've been having a couple of years where a lot of tech policy was around privacy competition, Section 230 content, all kinds of good stuff. I think we're going to see a pretty radical shift to some of these other issues in the coming months and years.
Jordyn Grzelewski (02:33):
I'm going to be keeping a really close eye on expected changes in policy around autonomous vehicles and electric vehicles. I think that's going to be a huge theme and just really significant changes from the Biden administration. One proposal that already is reportedly under consideration is establishing a federal regulatory framework for autonomous vehicles, which would really change the landscape for how AVs are deployed in the US. Something the Trump administration is reportedly considering also pretty significant changes in the works to some of the incentives in the IRA as it relates to EVs and to federal emissions and fuel efficiency standards that will have, I think, a really significant impact on the development and adoption of EV tech.
Tatum Hunter (03:24):
I'll be interested this year in the tension between privacy policy and AI policy. We have some really conflicting incentives between consumers, regulators and companies. For example, federal regulators have tried for years to pass comprehensive federal privacy legislation, and we also have this emergent AI industry that runs on personal data and has a very great need for it. So I anticipate that privacy policy might continue to be at the center of a lot of people's attention this year, and my hope is that those discussions focus on user experience because that's something everyone can agree on is that the consumer is of the utmost importance.
Jennifer Drogus (04:09):
Awesome. Sticking to AI for a minute because that is clearly a huge ingredient technology here at the show. One other component that is going beyond AI is quantum and we're seeing more and more discussions around quantum computing. We have a half-day conference track here at ÓÀÐǶij¡. Looking into the future, or maybe even now, are we going to see any emerging policy around quantum?
Tatum Hunter (04:34):
I can't speak to this super thoroughly, but I imagine that for cybersecurity and cryptography, quantum computing will be hugely disruptive and that there is going to be some serious re-evaluating of our normal cybersecurity practices as that comes to a head.
Ben Brody (05:00):
Yeah, so I think we are going to see some efforts in quantum, as well as some other frontier technologies, to move from this kind of basic R&D space into the application space. And so some of the leaders at the Senate Commerce Committee did come out at the end of the last Congress a couple of weeks ago and say that they wanted to push the National Quantum Initiative in that direction. How much interest there is more broadly in Congress and whether some of the advocates of basic R&D research and investment are going to go along with that, I think remains to be seen. But that's definitely a vector that I'm watching.
Jennifer Drogus (05:38):
Awesome. Shifting gears for a minute and thinking about the personalities that we're going to see on Capitol Hill and around DC in the coming years. So I feel like the Trump presidency has opened the door to many tech personalities and leaders who are having influence, whether as advisors or informally, Marc Andreessen, Elon Musk. How do you think these individuals are going to shape what we're going to see in the next year?
Jordyn Grzelewski (06:05):
Well, I think we're already starting to see it play out. Elon has already played such a significant role in the transition. I think it's safe to say that he was instrumental in pushing the Trump transition team to consider a federal framework for autonomous vehicles. From the experts that I speak to in the industry that would benefit Tesla more than anyone because they are preparing to roll out fully self-driving vehicles this year. They just revealed their concept for a robo-taxi, so having this kind of less stringent, less state-by-state approach to regulating the AV sector really stands to benefit Elon's company.
(06:48):
I think we also are seeing that with some of the other proposals that have kind of started to brew. There was some reporting about the Trump transition team looking to do away with crash data reporting standards, which is another thing that would benefit Tesla more than anyone. And some of the changes to EV policy while it might seem contradictory because Tesla is an EV maker, they also I think feel that they're so far ahead of the other EV makers that it would really just kind of give them even more of a leg up on the competition. So I think his influence is already super apparent even before the next administration has taken office.
Tatum Hunter (07:31):
I live for the drama, so I am very interested in the ways that the interests of these tech leaders and the promises of the Trump campaign will match and will mismatch. For example, we just saw this with the discussion about HIB visas where some pressure from Elon might have contributed to Trump walking back some of the immigration points that he ran on. And so, I can't wait to see how this turns out.
Ben Brody (08:06):
Yeah. What's interesting to me is there's kind of this new generation of tech leaders who I think have a pretty open line to the president, but there's also the layer below that, which is you're starting to see more VC, Sand Hill Road coming in, opening their DC shops, more prominent K Street leaders going into that space. There's some continuity here. I think a lot of these figures felt that they had an open door either in the first Trump administration or even going way back in the Obama administration, maybe not so much during Biden. But I think we're going to see a kind of change in the personalities there.
Jennifer Drogus (08:47):
Absolutely. One thing that we know the incoming president cares deeply about are tariffs, and that is something that CTA also cares deeply about, and we feel that they are a tax on the American consumer and tech innovators. But curious to hear what you all think. What's that going to look like? What's it going to do?
Ben Brody (09:08):
Anyone feel confident to say what Donald Trump is going to do?
Jordyn Grzelewski (09:12):
Make your bets now.
Tatum Hunter (09:14):
My colleague Jeff Stein just reported this week, spoke to three people inside the administration who said that Trump is considering rolling back some of his tariff claims. Just because they were so sweeping, and so they're kind of deciding amongst themselves how to deliver on that without shooting themselves and the American businesses in the foot. But I think it's important to remember that promises like the 25% tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China, people inside the administration are still saying that he's committed to that and that, of course, at least in the short term, would cause a pop in the price of consumer electronics.
Jordyn Grzelewski (09:58):
Yeah, that report was super interesting and I would imagine was met with a lot of relief by folks in the auto industry. The 25% tariff proposal is really a massive concern for the domestic auto industry because something like one in four vehicles in the US are built in Mexico or Canada and brought here. So that's a massive concern. I feel like the reactions that I've seen in the industry range from like, let's just wait and see. We can't actually predict what's going to happen. This is just a negotiating tactic. To, I think I saw, I'm paraphrasing here but not that much, it was an auto executive telling the Wall Street Journal, I'd rather be slapped in the face than be hit with these tariffs. So I think the reactions kind of run the gamut and we're all just basically waiting to see.
Ben Brody (10:46):
Yeah. I would also say I think outside of the realm of tariffs, but within the realm of trade policy, I do think we're going to see the administration continue to take a pretty close look and then maybe expand the technologies where it is taking a close look of basically how we export our trade and our tech and what we bring in. And so that's not specifically tariffs, but you do start to see trade policy. Can we export advanced weapons tech? That sort of thing. I think those questions come up a lot too in an adjacent space.
Jennifer Drogus (11:22):
Pivoting off of the administration for a minute and focusing more on Congress, what can we expect from the House and Senate this year?
Ben Brody (11:30):
We at Punchbowl News are watching very, very carefully this question of whether we are going to do one big beautiful bill or we are going to do two bills with a lot of domestic priorities, a lot of Trump's domestic priorities, and taxes. It sounds like a small difference, but it is everything. It determines how much they can put in, how much dissent they can have in the Republican Congress, what the timing is, how much political capital the administration needs to spend. So we are watching, I think, really closely right now to figure out what they're going to do, and I think they're figuring it out over the next couple of days too.
(12:10):
But like I said, I think once they do figure that out, we're watching spectrum, we're watching energy, we're watching China tech. And then we are watching those privacy initiatives, the AI initiatives. We are watching telecom and we are watching all of the appointees that need to be confirmed. So there's a lot going on there.
Tatum Hunter (12:31):
Since I cover what's happening on the internet, I am super interested in the ultimate fate of KOSA, the Kids Online Safety Act. It's not dead yet, and we could see it rise again in 2025, as well as Section 230, the law that provides a liability shield for social media companies. Trump has said conflicting things about Section 230. And politically, both parties have political reasons to target it and ask for it to be scaled back. At the same time, if the Kids Online Safety Act ever goes into effect, it would overwhelm those 230 mandates and make them far less relevant. So we could see a world potentially in 2025 where we get some answers about how responsible tech companies and social media companies will be for the content that appears on their sites and what the US's philosophy is going to be going forward about protecting kids online.
Jordyn Grzelewski (13:31):
I definitely will be paying attention, I'm not sure how big of a priority this will be in the grand scope of everything this next Congress wants to achieve, but what types of changes we might see to the Inflation Reduction Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. If Republicans try to rescind provisions of that. I've heard differing opinions on how likely that is. Whether it's just the Trump administration trying to slow-walk some of the funding allocations that have come out of those bills or whether it's more significant activity by Congress to water down those pieces of legislation, I'll be paying attention to that.
Jennifer Drogus (14:08):
Awesome. Knowing that we have a lot of large tech luminaries who are informing the administration and Congress, but then there's also been a lot of scrutiny over the years around bigger companies and breaking them up. What do you think the trajectory of competition and antitrust policy is?
Ben Brody (14:33):
There's so many ways it could go, but I will say one thing that I'm watching very carefully is the remedy phase of the trial in the Google monopoly trial, Google was found to have violated monopolization laws by a federal judge last year, excuse me, and now they basically have another trial to decide what can do to restore some of that competition. And it is going to involve basically, I shouldn't say splitting apart, but basically deciding how close the relationships can be between the search engine, phones, apps, browsers, laptops, and all those sorts of things.
(15:09):
When you start severing some of those connections or when you possibly, as the DOJ would like to see, start actually breaking some of the corporate structures, you can really, really change the industry that is kind of the foundation of our experience on the internet. So that's something that I'm going to be watching really closely.
Tatum Hunter (15:29):
I don't really have a horse in this race other than the user experience. And Google, for example, has been accused of having a monopolistic control of internet search. And my reporting has found that it's true, that as Google adds more search engine results, page features such as AI-generated results or sponsored results, that it has become more difficult, period, for users to navigate and to find the trustworthy information that they want. And so I think that it'll be curious where if these companies get broken up and it does create some competition where there wasn't competition before, for example, Google gets 90% of search traffic globally if it makes it easier to use for people at home and they're this much happier and healthier as they are on the internet.
Jordyn Grzelewski (16:21):
Not too much to add, but I guess I would just say one thing I'll be paying attention to is because of the cost pressures that the auto industry and the EV sector are under, and as they enter potentially an even more challenging time from that perspective, I think we'll see more consolidation. How permissive of an environment it is for them, I'm not sure. I don't know that they attract some of the same level of scrutiny as other industries. But it's definitely a trend to pay attention to.
Jennifer Drogus (16:53):
Awesome. We're coming up with just a few minutes left. I wanted to turn it over to the audience in case anybody has any questions.
(17:04):
Yeah.
Audience (17:04):
This year is like agentic AI all over the space. So if they make some decisions, what's the policy about who's going to be responsible? Is that AIs at a company? Is that still people? I'm so confused when I see they become employees, but could AI really be responsible for the decisions made?
Jennifer Drogus (17:28):
So I think the question was is AI going to be responsible for more decision making? Is that-
(17:39):
I see anybody want to take a shot at that?
Tatum Hunter (17:41):
I think that's very much up in the air. For example, the company Character AI just got sued after one of its bots allegedly encouraged a young kid to commit suicide. And so I think as we get this series of lawsuits asking that exact question, who's responsible for AI agent's behavior or AI characters behavior? We'll get some real answers for that. Right now I don't think we really know. But definitely people who are most critical of the AI industry are calling for personal liability for executives and companies when AI hallucinates something dangerous or encourages something wrong.
Jordyn Grzelewski (18:22):
I would agree and say it's very much a similar open question as it relates to AI use in vehicles. As we sort of get closer to a future where vehicles will drive themselves, that brings up really thorny questions of who's responsible in the event of an accident. And I think that's one of the key questions that will have to be hopefully worked out if we do have some sort of federal regulations around autonomous vehicles is who takes responsibility for that? Is it someone in the vehicle? Is it the car company? Is it the provider of the software? That's an open question that I think has to be answered.
Ben Brody (19:03):
Yeah, and I'll just add in. I don't think Congress has fully grasped this question, and so I think a lot of it falls to the courts and a lot of it falls to traditional questions about liability, particularly when you have a complex ecosystem where it's not really just one company and a customer relationship, but you have different vendors, you have different information sources. And so I think a lot of it will follow to courts and Congress will follow is my guess.
Audience (19:44):
Oh, okay. That works better. So obviously the Republicans held the House, took the Senate. But in the House they've got a, what, three seat majority. So I think we are going to see a trend that tech policy is going to be dominated once again at the state level. And we've seen that with Kids Online Safety, things like age verification, talking like Arkansas. We're seeing that with AI, places like Colorado, California. What do you think the big trends at the state level are going to be as we move into 2025?
Tatum Hunter (20:17):
I hope that one will be facial recognition just because it is such a huge question for everyday people, and I will be watching that super closely to see which states take that on and what their decisions reflect about the future of facial recognition
Jordyn Grzelewski (20:34):
As it relates to EV I think we might see a little bit of a bifurcation of states that are motivated to, for example, put money into building out EV charging infrastructure versus states that are not interested in that. So I think that we'll see kind of a further trend towards whether or not going electric makes sense for you will really depend on where you live.
Ben Brody (21:00):
Yeah. I hate to be a broken record here, but I think energy for AI is something that can be done a lot on the state level. And you always want to look to those trifecta states. We have a federal trifecta, but the states where one party controls all of the branches of government.
Jennifer Drogus (21:15):
I'm sorry, we're out of time here. Maybe a couple of quick closing remarks and we'll head out. Start with you, Ben.
Ben Brody (21:23):
Really excited to be at my first ÓÀÐǶij¡ and really excited to keep covering Congress this year and going forward.
Jordyn Grzelewski (21:29):
Also my first time at ÓÀÐǶij¡, so excited to be here and check everything out. Thank you all.
Tatum Hunter (21:35):
Yeah, thanks for having me. I hope that tech policy this year, that companies really put their money where their mouth is and so do regulators about users at home and what all this tech is for.
Jennifer Drogus (21:46):
Thank you three for your time and thank you all. Everybody enjoy the show.
James Kotecki (21:51):
I hope you enjoyed that roundtable conversation from ÓÀÐǶij¡ 2025. That's our show for now, but there's always more tech to talk about. Look out for other media roundtable conversations on digital health and advanced mobility. And please help us give the algorithms what they want, if you're on YouTube, please subscribe and leave a comment. If you're listening on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeart Media, or wherever you get your podcasts, hit that follow button. You can get even more ÓÀÐǶij¡ at ÓÀÐǶij¡.Tech. That's C-E-S-dot-T-E-C-H.
(22:21):
Our show is produced by Nicole Vidovich and Paige Morris and edited by Third Spoon. I'm James Kotecki, talking tech on ÓÀÐǶij¡ Tech Talk.
