Senator joined POLITICO’s “First 100 Days” event to discuss America’s competitive position on AI, his priorities for the 119th Congress
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator John Curtis (R-UT), member of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, today joined a panel on maintaining America’s leadership in AI relative to China during POLITICO Playbook’s The First 100 Days event. Following the panel, the Senator sat down with Alex Burns, Head of News at POLITICO, for a one-on-one interview on the Senator’s priorities for the 119th Congress. Senator Curtis raised the importance of promoting domestic energy development to power AI technologies, his work to engage Republicans in climate policy, cutting government waste and reducing the deficit, and the current bipartisan tone in Washington to address issues like immigration and inflation.
Senator Curtis was joined on the AI panel by the Honorable Nazak Nikakhtar, former Assistant Secretary for Industry and Analysis at the U.S. Department of Commerce; Representative Ami Bera (D-CA); and Chris Lehane, Vice President of Global Policy at OpenAI. The panel was moderated by Steven Overly, host of POLITICO Tech.
Watch the panel on America’s leadership in AI development here.
Watch the one-on-one interview with Alex Burns here.
Excerpts from Senator Curtis’ remarks on the panel and interview with Alex Burns can be found below.
Panel on AI:
On the energy demands to power AI technologies:
Where is the energy going to come from? And if you put restrictions on that, it’s just not going to happen. And I think we have to be more realistic with the volume of energy that we are talking about to do what needs to be done.
It’s going to be natural gas. In long term, it can be nuclear and renewables can layer in on top of that. But I don’t think anybody sees a path forward provide this. And so, let’s be honest about that. And then let’s talk about “How do we make natural gas clean?” Right? Those are questions that are far better questions if we really think that we’re going to build these type of AI facilities.
And if we don’t, guess what, they’ll be built overseas and they’ll use coal, actually.
On Utah’s AI consumer protection legislation:
I’ll give my own home state, Utah, a shout out. And they’ve done some really creative legislation on this. They’ve actually created—they call it a “sandbox” where you can try and experiment on ideas. I’ve heard the term “we don’t want to stifle this.” That is so true. If we’re not careful, you know, in our good intentions, we will stifle this.
On optimism in America’s leadership in AI innovation:
I’ll bet on [the] U.S. all day long. In my opinion, as long as we don’t ruin it, this is going to happen here in the United States. And the most important thing is that the House and the Senate just don’t get in the way of this. We put the appropriate guardrails out and I’ll bet on U.S. leadership and innovation every day, all day long. As long as we don’t ruin it.
Interview with Alex Burns:
On efforts to galvanize Republicans on climate debate:
A number of years ago, I was a little concerned that Republicans weren’t engaging in the climate conversation. So, I did what everybody suggested I shouldn’t do, and I jumped in with both feet. I founded the Conservative Climate Caucus to get Republicans engaged. People kind of patted me on the back and said, “You’ll get five Republicans that will join.” And I’m just here to tell you today there’s 87 House Republicans that are part of the Conservative Climate Caucus.
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I don’t think you can separate climate policy from energy policy. And in the last conversation we just had about energy is so critical. If you just say “one half of Congress is going to show up to that conversation,” you’re not going to get the best answers.
So, if Republicans aren’t showing up for that conversation, if we’re not showing up for the climate conversation, we’re not showing up for the energy conversation. And I think it’s critical that to get the best policy, that Republicans are there and we’re articulating our solutions and we’re debating their solutions, and we’re coming to the best conclusions.
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I just came from, the House. I was on [the] Energy and Commerce Committee. And when I showed up seven years ago, if climate came up in a hearing, it was a debate about the science. By the time I left, if climate came up, it was now a debate about methods and how do we get affordable, reliable, clean. That was the conversation. And I think you’re going to hear that more and more from Republicans.
On DOGE and reducing the deficit and cutting government waste:
When I became mayor of Provo—one of my favorite positions ever was the mayor of Provo, and we need more mayors in Congress, by the way—I inherited a budget that, because of the crisis, the financial crisis way back in 2007, I had to cut the budget. And we did so very carefully, but we cut a substantial part of our city budget and increased employee morale and increased quality of services delivered to our residents.
And I bring that up because whether it’s business or government, there’s always waste—particularly when you go decades without going back and analyzing it. So, I welcome the evaluation of that waste, and I welcome the evaluation of programs that are no longer needed. And if we do it correctly, we’ll come out the other side with increased morale among federal employees and better services delivered to our constituents.
If we do it wrong, we’ll destroy morale, we’ll destroy the quality of services that we’re delivering. And so, to the extent I have any influence in that process, I want to make sure that we do it right. And I think, quite frankly, this is one of the things the American people are saying, “Please go do this right.” People can see that there’s waste. People can see the debt is too high. And so, I think there’s broad consensus something needs to be done and let’s go do it right.
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My experience is if you come in and say, “We’re going to cut, let’s just say hypothetically, every program in the federal government by 20%,” then you cut the good programs and you don’t cut the bad programs as much as you should.
So, to answer your question, how do you do that right? You have to get into the weeds on everything we do and say, “Could it be done better? Or should it not be done at all?” Right now—I’ll give you just a real glaring example—the number of empty office buildings around Washington, D.C. with federal workers not coming to work begs the question—should they be coming into work? And if not, why do we have the buildings? So, one of those two needs an Elon Musk to blow it up because it’s gone for years in the state that it has and it will just continue. And that’s where the American people can see, “Oh, something needs to be done.”
On the current bipartisan tone in Washington:
I’m really happy with the tone in Washington, D.C. right now. Eight years ago, it was—as a stereotype—more “We’re not going to work with the President. He’s not my president. We’re going to do what we can to stop him.” That is not the tone right now.
The tone right now is there are things the American people expect us to get done, and they’re not all partisan. American people do expect a fix at the border. The American people expect inflation to come down. I just sense from my Democratic colleagues many of them want to be part of the solution. That’s a good place.
I just feel like, look, it’s never perfect, right? Republican, Democrat. But we have the potential to really find some synergy here and do some things that the American people are expecting us to do.