Advancing America's AI Action Plan
House Science, Space, and Technology Subcommittee on Research and Technology
2026-01-14
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Source: Congress.gov
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The Subcommittee on Research and Technology will come to order. Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare recesses of the subcommittee at any time. I recognize myself for five minutes for an opening statement. I'd like to welcome everyone to today's research and technology subcommittee hearing entitled Advancing America's AI Action Plan. Today we'll hear testimony from the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Michael Kratios, on the administration's artificial intelligence strategy. As I think we all know, AI is poised to become a foundational driver of innovation worldwide. From serving as a personal assistant to generating computer code to advancing the frontiers of human science, the scope and impact of AI continues to expand at a truly extraordinary pace. It is critical that Congress does its job in enacting an appropriate federal framework for this burgeoning new technology. It is also imperative that the framework maintains the position of the United States as the leading force in the development and deployment of worldwide AI. American leadership in AI is essential to sustained economic growth, technological advancement across a wide range of applications, and the protection of our national security, particularly as competitors such as the Chinese Communist Party seek to undermine U.S. leadership in this space. Through my experience as co-chair of the bipartisan House AI Task Force last Congress, I've seen firsthand the importance of maintaining U.S. leadership in this area. AI-enabled cyber attacks are a growing threat that demands our constant vigilance. At the same time as AI becomes more embedded in everyday life, Americans are entrusting vast amounts of personal data to these systems, heightening the risk that sensitive information could fall into the hands of malicious actors. Against this backdrop, last July, the White House unveiled Winning the AI Race, America's AI Action Plan.
This strategy is built around three pillars, innovation, infrastructure, and international diplomacy and security. It is critical that Congress works with the executive branch to craft a unified and effective national AI strategy. In December of 2024, the Bipartisan House AI Task Force, which was co-led by Congressman Lew and myself, released a report outlining guiding principles for AI policy. This bipartisan effort resulted in 66 findings and 89 recommendations, many of which align with the AI Action Plan, including expanding access to computing power for researchers, investing in K-12 AI education, and advancing AI evaluations. Among its recommendations, the task force called for codifying the national AI research resource, what we call NAIR, and strengthening the science of AI evaluation and standards. My legislation, the Create AI Act, would codify NAIR while the forthcoming Great American AI Act will formalize the Center for AI Standards and Innovation, or CASEY, at the Department of Commerce to advance AI evaluation and standard setting. I am very glad to see that the administration's AI action plan includes many of the same tenants as the AI task force report, including support for the continuation of NAR and for tasking the KC with the critical work of developing standards and evaluating frontier AI models. I commend the Center for its strong report last fall assessing the national security implications posed by DeepSeek. The Center serves as a critical hub for technical AI expertise within our government, and I look forward to its continued work. OSTP, under Director Kratios' leadership, is steering the development of the AI Action Plan and will oversee its implementation as part of the nation's broader science and technology agenda. I hope that we can all agree it is critical that Congress now step up to the plate and work with the executive branch in developing a competitive vision for American leadership in artificial intelligence.
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The Honorable Michael Kratsios
Thank you so much, Mr. Chair, for holding today's hearing. And of course, thank you to Director Kratziotz for joining us today as well. OSTP has always held a very special place in my heart and is an agency or a division of the White House that we are grateful to have a connection to on this committee. And it is also very important that our thoughtful discussion today will be around implementing the administration's AI plan while protecting American workers. We all know that you can't talk about AI innovation and American competitiveness without talking about Michigan manufacturing. And you can't talk about the future of manufacturing without talking about the National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST. NIST is the little agency that could, and it is at the forefront of our efforts in artificial intelligence, quantum, robotics, and advanced manufacturing. Thanks to the Chips and Science Act of 2022 that many of us in this room helped write and pass, NIST is bringing semiconductor manufacturing back to America to develop the next generation of AI chips right here at home. NIST semiconductor work is also critical to the administration's AI plan And we don't want to see the agency being undermined, something that has long been supported by Democrats and Republicans alike. just to shine a light here and this is the work of our committee and this is what we do we have authorizing ability and it's important to just shine a light uh... the budget for the fiscal year twenty six it slashed this funding by three hundred twenty five million dollars three hundred twenty five million dollars and we're eliminating five hundred jobs
from the agency's lab program. We know, so many of us, how sacred this work is and how important it is, even when you just have just a handful of researchers working on these matters. And the cuts hinder NIST AI-related efforts. They're going to weaken cybersecurity and privacy standards, something I have legislation on, and limit advanced manufacturing, physical infrastructure, and resilience innovation.
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