OPINION:
At the birth of the internet age in the early 1990s, the U.S. and Europe took opposite approaches to advancing the economy-changing technology.
Europe tried the approach of industrial policy. It allowed the government to regulate, subsidize and then tax the swarm of tech companies that emerged.
In the U.S., Congress and the Clinton administration made a wider choice. We enacted laws that kept internet startups free of regulation, taxes and lawsuits. It was a new Wild West, a Darwinian race to excellence and survival. Some big initial companies such as AOL, Netscape and Myspace gave way to superior competitors, including Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and Facebook.
We all know the end of this story. For three decades, America and Silicon Valley came to entirely dominate these earliest innings of the digital age. Today, our “Magnificent Seven” tech companies, many with market caps above $1 trillion, are worth more than every company in Europe combined.
Now we are at the dawning of stage 2.0 of the digital age, with computers armed with artificial intelligence software capable of learning, remembering and computing orders of magnitude faster than microprocessors today. The power and capability are magnificent, awe-inspiring and frightening all at once.
Robots and AI have the capacity to give sight to the blind, eliminate all grunt work and manual labor and send rockets all over the galaxy. Flying cars are potentially the next big thing. I am on the board of Lightspeed, a company that builds houses with robots. We don’t want or need government subsidies or interference.
Goldman Sachs estimates that in the next decade alone, AI will add more than $7 trillion in wealth globally. That adds up to a lot more than a chicken in every pot.
This transformative technology must be led by America. This time, China is our rival, and it has designs on supplanting America as the superpower. That outcome would be bad for all humanity, as the leaders in Beijing are dangerous authoritarians who could use these advances for evil, not good.
The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation points out that China is “advancing rapidly in AI research and application, challenging the United States’ dominance in this critical field.”
We have a natural advantage over China despite its four-times-larger population because its model of central control is far inferior to ours, which is propelled forward through private, for-profit enterprise.
However, this advantage could be nullified if policymakers in Washington and state capitals meddle and interfere. Just this year, more than 1,000 pieces of AI-related legislation have been introduced in the states.
The Trump administration has wisely taken a light-touch approach to regulation. In one of his first acts this year, President Trump repealed an intrusive Biden executive order on AI issued in 2023.
At a Senate committee hearing in May, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, was asked about the impact of “a patchwork regulatory framework” and how that could impact U.S. competitiveness in AI. “I think it would be quite bad,” he said. “It’s very difficult to imagine us figuring out how to comply with 50 different sets of regulations. That will slow us down at a time when I don’t think it’s in anyone’s interest for us to slow down.”
Still, the political left is increasingly spreading fear of Dr. Evil/doomsday scenarios to press the case for government intervention. This will delay the multitude of spectacular benefits to even the poorest among us. Technology is a natural equalizer, not a thief.
All that can hold back another era of American tech dominance would be the government trying to step in and help — or hinder.
• Stephen Moore is a co-founder of Unleash Prosperity and author of the book “The Trump Economic Miracle.”
Please read our comment policy before commenting.