Truth Podcast - Vivek Ramaswamy - Can America Win the AI Race? with Andrei Iancu | The TRUTH Podcast #24

In this episode of the podcast, we sit down with the man who led President Trump's US Patent Trademark Office and the Patent Trial and Appeal Office, the PTO, and has a lot of insights to share about intellectual property rights. Andre Iancu has been an intellectual property advocate since the early days of the biotech industry and has been involved in the creation of some of the most important intellectual property laws in the world. In this episode, we discuss how the founding fathers understood the importance of intellectual property, why it's important, and why it should be a fundamental part of our economic and political system. We also discuss the benefits and costs of government-created monopolies and monopolies, and the role that government should play in fostering innovation and fostering intellectual property in the 21st-century economy. This episode was produced and edited by Annie-Rose Strasser Lacchia and Alex Blumberg. Our theme music is by my main amigo, Evan Handyside. Our ad music is from Fugue, courtesy of Epitaph Records. Please rate, review, and subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts and wherever else you get your music choices. The opinions stated here are our own and do not necessarily reflect those of our record labels. We do not own the rights of any other record labels or record labels listed below. Thank you for listening to this podcast. If you enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a review and/or share it on your social media if you reccomend this episode by tagging us on Insta or tag us in the podcast. We re listening to it! and we ll=australia_t=a&t=3q&ref=a? Thanks for listening and sharing it on a podcast! Timestamps: 0:00:00 1:30 - What are your thoughts on the podcast? 3:00 - What do you would you like to hear from me? 4:00 | What s your opinion on this episode? 6:40 - How do you think about the future of intellectual Property? 7:00 -- What does it mean? 9:30 -- What would you think of it? 8:00-- What are you looking forward to hearing from me in the future? 11:40 -- Is it possible to have more? 12:30 13:30 | Why is it an inherent right? 14:30-- Why does it matter? 15:20 - What would it matter to you own your ideas?

00:00:02.000 America's founded on, among other things, property rights.

00:00:26.000 The fact that you own the land on which you live, if you bought it.

00:00:31.000 That you own the things that you buy, the things that you create, the things that you mix your blood with.

00:00:37.000 That's John Locke's theory of ownership.

00:00:39.000 Mix your blood and your labor with a thing.

00:00:42.000 That thing then becomes yours.

00:00:44.000 That was the backdrop against which the American Constitution was even written, was the idea that you could own something by making it your own and have it protected against a government's overreach.

00:00:56.000 That was one of the founding ideals, certainly.

00:00:58.000 But what about your ideas?

00:01:00.000 Do you own your ideas?

00:01:03.000 What kinds of ideas do you own?

00:01:05.000 This is something that our founding fathers grappled with, struggled with, but ultimately came to form a view on.

00:01:12.000 It's in our constitution for a reason.

00:01:13.000 The idea of intellectual property isn't just some modern invention to make new tech.

00:01:19.000 It's actually something that was woven into the fabric of the founding of our country.

00:01:23.000 It was as complicated and fraught of a question then As it is in the debates we have today about intellectual property as a form of vesting an individual or a company in their property rights.

00:01:36.000 It was actually fundamental to the industry where I first began my career, first as a biotech investor and then as a biotech CEO. I was taking on a big pharmaceutical industry and big pharma as an industry, but that entire industry is built On government created monopolies.

00:01:54.000 If that sounds controversial as an idea, it should be.

00:01:56.000 The government creates an intellectual property system, especially in certain industries, built on giving monopolies to people who earn the prize of delivering an innovation.

00:02:08.000 But the return for that prize is a period of exclusivity to actually run a monopoly.

00:02:12.000 why on earth would we go out of our way to create a government created monopoly?

00:02:15.000 The answer has to do with fostering innovation itself.

00:02:20.000 And that's part of the bargain.

00:02:21.000 We've been arguing about since 1776.

00:02:24.000 We continue to argue about it today.

00:02:26.000 And today we're going to advance that conversation in an episode of the podcast with actually the person who led President Trump's US patent trademark and the patent trademark office, the PTO, and has, I think, a lot of insights that I'm looking forward to digging into today.

00:02:42.000 Andre Iancu, pleasure.

00:02:43.000 Welcome to the podcast.

00:02:45.000 Thank you for having me.

00:02:46.000 It's great to be with you.

00:02:47.000 So we have some certainly personal mutual friends.

00:02:50.000 I think someone who worked for you ended up working for me eventually.

00:02:53.000 That's how we met.

00:02:54.000 But I think your background, particularly in the last several years in the Trump administration, was our reason for reaching out to you.

00:03:02.000 One of the things I like doing here in this campaign, in this podcast, is going beyond just the question of the what.

00:03:08.000 All right?

00:03:09.000 You could spend a little bit of time on that, laying out the what.

00:03:12.000 What is a patent?

00:03:12.000 What is a copyright?

00:03:14.000 What is a trademark?

00:03:15.000 What is intellectual property?

00:03:16.000 In like the two-minute version of that.

00:03:18.000 But what I'm interested in getting to is the why.

00:03:22.000 Why is this important?

00:03:24.000 And I think once we understand the why...

00:03:26.000 We can then debate the costs and benefits of a system that I think merit some debate in terms of where we are.

00:03:33.000 So, have at it, Andre.

00:03:34.000 Welcome to the podcast.

00:03:35.000 I'm looking forward to hearing from you.

00:03:36.000 Yeah, thank you.

00:03:37.000 So, first of all, I loved your introduction because you have clearly identified how we got to have intellectual property rights.

00:03:45.000 It was so important to our founding fathers that they put it in the Constitution itself.

00:03:50.000 And what's really interesting to know is that the word right appears in the body of the Constitution only once.

00:03:57.000 Putting aside the Bill of Rights in the actual body of the Constitution, it only appears in the intellectual property closet, Article 1, Section 8, Closet, which gives inventors and authors the exclusive right to their discoveries and writings.

00:04:15.000 That is what enabled the United States to begin from nothing.

00:04:19.000 I didn't know that.

00:04:20.000 I mean, I guess now that you say it, it sounds about familiar.

00:04:23.000 Outside the Bill of Rights, which is full of enumeration of rights, I guess you must know this.

00:04:29.000 Yeah, that's the only place it appears, huh?

00:04:31.000 Yeah, and because it was that important to them, and they recognized that it is an inherent right.

00:04:37.000 It's an inherent property right.

00:04:39.000 You reference Lockean principles of property.

00:04:42.000 You work the land.

00:04:44.000 The fruit of that labor becomes your property.

00:04:48.000 Think about the ideas, the intellectual product of your mind that actually doesn't even exist before you came up with it.

00:04:58.000 At least the land exists before you get there and you work it.

00:05:01.000 An idea, you create it from nothing and it's only yours and the only way The government or the public can entice you to give it out to others, to share it with the public so they can benefit from your idea.

00:05:17.000 The only way they can do that is to protect it, to ensure you that as soon as you provide it to the public, you will have a limited time of protection for what you have come up with, the labor that you put in it.

00:05:31.000 And what do you think, why do you think they cared so much about it?

00:05:36.000 Yeah, so, first of all, I don't know that I've answered the what precisely.

00:05:41.000 So, there are multiple types of intellectual property, right?

00:05:43.000 Right, of course.

00:05:44.000 Just very briefly, there's a patent for effectively technological developments, you know, industrial applications.

00:05:51.000 Medicines, you know.

00:05:52.000 Medicines, computers, automobiles, spacecraft, whatever.

00:05:58.000 Then there are copyrights, effectively for fine arts, songs, novels, choreography, etc.

00:06:09.000 Then there are trademarks that protect brands, names, famous names, you know, of companies, slogans, and the like.

00:06:18.000 Then there are trade secrets, things you can keep a secret and the laws protect you from disclosing it.

00:06:23.000 And there's other forms of IP as well.

00:06:26.000 You probably know in the drug world there is data protection for clinical studies, for example.

00:06:32.000 Exactly.

00:06:32.000 And the USPTO stands for the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

00:06:37.000 Does that also cover copyrights and any trade secret and or data protection as well or not?

00:06:42.000 So not really.

00:06:43.000 There's a separate copyright office.

00:06:45.000 But the head of the USPTO also is in charge of US policy of all these other issues.

00:06:52.000 Okay, so even though you were chairing the USPTO, we won't call it the USPTO, you were also chair of you in charge of copyrights overseeing the copyright process in this country.

00:07:01.000 Again, there is a head of the copyright office.

00:07:03.000 Oh, there's a separate person.

00:07:03.000 But for policy considerations.

00:07:05.000 I see, I see.

00:07:07.000 The USPTO head, which is the undersecretary of commerce for IP, is also the advisor to the president on copyright and other issues as well.

00:07:16.000 Got it.

00:07:16.000 Yeah, the administrative state is still something else, but that's a discussion for another day.

00:07:22.000 So back to the real question here.

00:07:26.000 Why do you think our founding fathers were so intent on specifying that right?

00:07:32.000 Okay, look, it is one of the most fundamental tools in our economic engine.

00:07:40.000 So in order for a free market economy to operate and to allow investment in innovation...

00:07:48.000 But is this what they were thinking about?

00:07:50.000 Absolutely.

00:07:51.000 Because they had to have a way, even back then, to incentivize private investment in risky new developments.

00:08:00.000 Back then, it was an agrarian society.

00:08:03.000 Patent number one that was signed by George Washington was for potash, a fertilizer.

00:08:09.000 But nevertheless, somebody had to invest time and money to create it, And to develop it and bring it to market, they realized that there is no other tool in a free market economy to provide that incentive for people to do this.

00:08:27.000 So what happens is you provide that incentive Entrepreneurs such as yourself and others invest money in that technology on the promise that it will succeed.

00:08:38.000 Most times it fails, by the way, because innovation is risky.

00:08:42.000 But when it succeeds, you have to make sure that that investment is protected.

00:08:48.000 And then what happens, the brilliance of the system, is that now because it's protected, and if it works, the competitor sees what you have done.

00:08:57.000 And the competitor says, I want to do the same thing.

00:09:00.000 Yep.

00:09:01.000 But I can't.

00:09:02.000 Gosh darn it, I can't because Vivek has a patent on this or whoever the inventor is.

00:09:08.000 So what does the competitor do? 0.73

00:09:10.000 If the competitor is honest, then the competitor will learn from what the prior inventor has done and improve upon it.

00:09:19.000 So now the competitor is also incentivized.

00:09:23.000 Learns from the prior guy and is incentivized to improve upon it.

00:09:28.000 And this system allows for dynamic innovation at exponential growth, the likes of which humanity has never seen.

00:09:36.000 Yeah, I think that it's impressive to me.

00:09:39.000 So many things about our founding fathers impress me, but it's impressive to me that in the pre-constitutional America, for them to still have had the foresight of all the other things they were working out in that constitutional convention in 1789.

00:09:59.000 That they were checks and balances, separation of power, free speech, Second Amendment, you know, Fourth Amendment that protects against certain procedures, all against the backdrop of all of these things, that they were still this intent on intellectual property rights.

00:10:16.000 There's actually – I was giving a speech the other day in New Hampshire and one of the things I happen to just remember is somebody asked me, who's your favorite president?

00:10:24.000 When I gave my answer, Thomas Jefferson.

00:10:27.000 I gave the answer that, you know the thing we're sitting in right now?

00:10:30.000 You know what it's called?

00:10:31.000 It's a swivel chair.

00:10:34.000 We can turn comfortably.

00:10:37.000 Now we have this podcast and these swivel chairs 250 years later.

00:10:41.000 Thomas Jefferson invented the swivel chair.

00:10:43.000 Actually, while he was writing the Declaration of Independence.

00:10:46.000 And so it seems fitting that those guys that dreamed up the Declaration of Independence while also inventing the civil swivel chair, were also those that were writing a separation of powers late in articles one through three of the Constitution, while also thinking about the importance of setting innovation in motion through the intellectual property system.

00:11:07.000 It's kind of a funny thing, if you think about it.

00:11:09.000 So it doesn't surprise me That that's true about our founding culture.

00:11:13.000 It's actually deeper than that.

00:11:15.000 After the Constitution, the state was established.

00:11:19.000 President Washington becomes the first president in 1789. And very soon thereafter, they have to pass the first set of laws, okay?

00:11:27.000 So one of the first acts of Congress, it wasn't the first one, but it's in the first handful, is the Patent Act of 1790. So one of the first acts that they pass is the Patent Act.

00:11:38.000 In 1793, just a few years later, they amended the Patent Act.

00:11:42.000 I didn't know that they passed it that early.

00:11:45.000 Very quickly.

00:11:46.000 1793 was the first one?

00:11:47.000 1790 was the first one.

00:11:49.000 And they amended it.

00:11:50.000 And they amended it in 1793. The first section of the patent code that we have today, which is called Section 101, the first section that defines what is in and what is out of the patent system.

00:12:02.000 It was written word for word by Jefferson and Madison in 1793. To this day, Vivek, Congress has not changed the fundamental statute, the first introductory words that define what goes in and out of the system.

00:12:20.000 Now, they were that brilliant that they were able to figure it out back then, and to this day, no Congress has been able to improve upon it.

00:12:27.000 The problem with that, though, is that technology obviously has changed a lot since 1793. And as brilliant as the founders were...

00:12:38.000 Sure.

00:12:41.000 DNA sequencing and DNA processing.

00:12:43.000 They did not predict artificial intelligence.

00:12:46.000 They did not predict quantum computing and autonomous vehicles.

00:12:51.000 And as a result of that, the courts have been struggling in recent years to fit these new technologies into the words of a statute written in 1793.

00:13:04.000 And as a result of that, the patent laws and the patent system in the United States at this moment is not nearly as robust as it has to be to enable us to compete in the technologies

00:13:19.000 So say more about that because I actually want to Also, go in the other direction in a little bit, which is to talk about whether we over-create monopolies in areas where we're actually less well-served even by something that isn't as innovative, which is a big discussion I think that needs to happen in the pharmaceutical industry.

00:13:40.000 But say more about where you believe our intellectual property regime is not going far enough to incentivize innovation.

00:13:47.000 Yeah.

00:13:47.000 I'll give you a couple of examples.

00:13:49.000 Sure.

00:13:50.000 One particular area of technology that currently and remarkably in the United States does not receive patents, is not entitled to patent protection, is diagnostic techniques.

00:14:01.000 So, for example, tests, DNA tests, that a pharmaceutical company might come up with Is not subject to patent.

00:14:10.000 And you can imagine the disincentive that that creates or the lack of incentive that creates for startups and innovators in that particular space.

00:14:20.000 A second example in a completely different area of technology that is less clear, but nevertheless, it is still problematic, is in anything to do with software and computer processing.

00:14:33.000 So areas like artificial intelligence, like cryptography, It's not as clear as what I just said about diagnostics, but still it's highly questionable whether a patent can issue in those areas of technology.

00:14:48.000 Therefore, again, in this most...

00:14:50.000 Why is that?

00:14:51.000 Because of Supreme Court case law, because we're, first of all, relying on a statute written in 1793, okay?

00:14:57.000 That's still the statute.

00:14:58.000 It's still the statute on this particular question, and the Supreme Court has struggled with how to interpret it, and it came up with a series of decisions in the past decade or so that dramatically confused this area of law, and therefore, in my opinion, disincentivize investment in those areas of technology.

00:15:21.000 Now, that can be fixed with legislative language.

00:15:25.000 And there is a bill that was introduced in the last Congress by Senator Tillis, and Senator Coons said that he would join it as well in a bipartisan way that would address this issue.

00:15:35.000 But as you know, everything in Congress is a heavy lift nowadays.

00:15:39.000 Yeah, so what was the thrust of that?

00:15:41.000 What were they going to do?

00:15:42.000 I'm not aware of this, actually.

00:15:44.000 Yeah, so it would clarify this area of law and finally make some changes to the statute that was written by Jefferson and Madison in 1793. It would undo some of the harms and some of the uncertainty created by the Supreme Court.

00:15:58.000 More specifically, like how?

00:16:00.000 Well, we probably need a couple of hours.

00:16:03.000 Give me the two-minute version for the sake of understanding how today's guys, Coons and others, are thinking about this. 1.00

00:16:10.000 Yeah, so effectively what they would say is that there are only certain defined exceptions in areas in technology that do not qualify, and they would specify what those defined exceptions are, such as business methods.

00:16:26.000 They would not qualify for patent or human interactions.

00:16:34.000 Right?

00:16:35.000 So that's a pretty expansive change, actually.

00:16:37.000 So they're defining by exclusion.

00:16:39.000 They're saying, let's set up a few categories that we would say are not patentable.

00:16:45.000 But short of that...

00:16:47.000 Fair game.

00:16:48.000 So that's actually a really big deal.

00:16:49.000 That's why I was asking about the specific.

00:16:50.000 It's not like they were going in and saying software and computer processing and DNA tests.

00:16:55.000 They're going in and saying everything except for business methods or communication.

00:17:01.000 Yes, approximately.

00:17:02.000 And the reason for that is because… By definition, you can't predict the technologies of the future.

00:17:09.000 You can't predict what the next inventor is going to invent.

00:17:11.000 So it's really hard to define by inclusion.

00:17:15.000 It's doable, but it's really hard to make sure that you don't somehow, by mistake, foreclose some new area of technology in the future.

00:17:23.000 Yeah, it's fascinating.

00:17:25.000 Is this pretty close to passing?

00:17:27.000 No.

00:17:27.000 Okay, because it's probably going to go nowhere, is the answer.

00:17:30.000 Well, I don't know, but it's a heavy lift.

00:17:32.000 Okay.

00:17:32.000 I'll keep an eye on that.

00:17:33.000 That's interesting to me.

00:17:34.000 I learned something there.

00:17:36.000 I agree.

00:17:36.000 That would be seismic.

00:17:37.000 I mean, that's a big deal, what you just described.

00:17:39.000 So, one of the things that always annoyed me, I would say, about being a first investor in biotech and then even running a biotech company was just even wearing my hat as a citizen, how unnecessarily complex that I think I think I think I think Patents

00:18:14.000 that will give you some form of exclusivity.

00:18:16.000 You know, what's 18 years, 20 years from the date of filing, something like this.

00:18:20.000 That's – you'll be filing it when you're developing the drug.

00:18:23.000 So it could be in phase one, it could be before phase one.

00:18:26.000 So what's T plus 20 years?

00:18:28.000 It's 20 years from filing.

00:18:29.000 20 years from filing.

00:18:30.000 You'll often file when it's going through some – what they call the preclinical testing phase, before you're testing the drug in human beings.

00:18:38.000 But then the FDA has this entire separate statutory regime that says that from the time of the drug approval, you get five years of exclusivity that's statutory irrespective of the patent.

00:18:55.000 And by the way, that's if it's a small molecule, but then if it's a biologic, which is a larger molecule, like a protein generally delivered by injection, then you get 12 years from the date of approval, which has nothing to do with, and it's totally separate from the patent system itself.

00:19:12.000 And then you'd have these weird things where like you would try to get certain things in the FDA approved label that if you wanted to create a generic, if you got it in the label, but the thing that you got into the label is patented other if you got it in the label, but the thing that you got into So there's the drug which you can patent, but there's all kinds of things which how the drug should be used.

00:19:37.000 If you got that approved in the label, then even when your drug goes off patent, they can't actually, They can't actually – a generic can't actually say make the drug because a feature of the drug was in the FDA's label and the FDA would say no even if the people who actually envisioned the US patent and trademark system would have said that that's a perfectly new innovation.

00:19:59.000 The FDA would nonetheless be able to effectively because of how it interacted with the FDA's rules block that and then companies would arbitrage this.

00:20:08.000 So then the stuff they put in their label actually has nothing to do with the safety or efficacy of the drug.

00:20:13.000 They pretend like it does but it doesn't.

00:20:14.000 It was designed to actually just block patent-based exclusivity long after the patent expires.

00:20:20.000 So those are just two examples right there of complexity that creates room for arbitrage that's not the productive kind of arbitrage, but the sort of regulatory arbitrage that frankly irritates the hell out of me.

00:20:32.000 What's your reaction to that?

00:20:34.000 Are you familiar with some of the things I just described?

00:20:38.000 And what's your reaction to it?

00:20:40.000 I'm familiar with all of it.

00:20:42.000 And the data protection, for example, which is your first example, is another form of intellectual property protection that you're absolutely right.

00:20:49.000 It's completely separate from the patent system.

00:20:53.000 And it's based on activities at the FDA. Is it really completely separate, though?

00:20:58.000 Because the FDA lists these orange book patents that they have.

00:21:02.000 That's correct.

00:21:02.000 But the 5 years and the 12 years protects the data.

00:21:06.000 I mean, okay, yeah.

00:21:07.000 Okay?

00:21:07.000 So it is incredibly complex.

00:21:10.000 And it gets much more complex even than that.

00:21:11.000 And we just simply don't have time to go through all the complexities.

00:21:14.000 What's happened, Vivek, is that over time...

00:21:18.000 Various government agencies responding to various pressures from industry from different directions over many, many years and decades have developed various systems for processing whatever they're doing.

00:21:31.000 The FDA has got its system, the patent office has its system, and there's many other equities available in the government to complicate it even further.

00:21:42.000 One of the issues...

00:21:44.000 If you happen to become president and you can look at it, that I think is really important for the United States is to have an overall innovation policy.

00:21:56.000 And for that, I personally believe we need an overall secretary of innovation that can look at the holistic system for the United States.

00:22:09.000 Of what it will take to make sure that in all these areas of technology, the United States has the most balanced and optimal system to enable Americans to innovate and to have access to that innovation and to maximize our competitive advantage vis-a-vis China and other countries.

00:22:29.000 An innovation policy that looks at the system holistically can solve A lot of the inefficiencies in the system and modernize our system in order for us to compete.

00:22:45.000 So I'll tell you that here's the part I'm deeply sympathetic to about that suggestion.

00:22:50.000 Part of it really resonates with me is that we have this patchwork, right?

00:22:55.000 FDA takes it on upon itself for this responsibility.

00:22:58.000 God knows what non-grammatical amalgam of letters.

00:23:01.000 Some other agencies do the same thing.

00:23:03.000 USPTO is doing its thing.

00:23:06.000 But even though what many people as capital allocators in the farm industry look at often for biologic, rarely is it when the patent expires because it takes 10 years to get it through the drug approval process.

00:23:16.000 And so 10 plus the remaining 10 years is still less than the 12 years that you automatically get.

00:23:23.000 So it's the statutory data exclusivity that matters.

00:23:25.000 It's deadweight waste actually in terms of – even think it's creating incentives that the private sector responds to.

00:23:32.000 That's only if they can actually readily comprehend and digest those incentives and focus on actually innovating rather than arbitraging across how they interact with each other.

00:23:40.000 So I'm deeply sympathetic to the idea that we need to have an intentional innovation policy to the extent we're going to have government involvement in this at all.

00:23:49.000 I'll press you on this.

00:23:52.000 For me, I have like a native...

00:23:55.000 Reluctant reaction.

00:23:56.000 Anytime somebody tells me that we need to have a secretary of anything, I think we need fewer secretaries of things than we do more secretaries of things.

00:24:02.000 So what in the existing apparatus would you cut to make space for that?

00:24:09.000 And by the way, when I say Secretary of Innovation, I don't necessarily mean a whole new cabinet level position.

00:24:15.000 You mean synthesizing.

00:24:15.000 Synthesize to one more layer.

00:24:17.000 It's just everybody, the question too is, still, I understand the spirit of that.

00:24:21.000 It's not something new.

00:24:22.000 It's synthesizing, which is in principle good, but it's still another managerial layer.

00:24:26.000 What would you cut or consolidate in order to make that so?

00:24:31.000 Let me just add that in addition to the FDA, there is the Department of Energy for energy-related innovations.

00:24:38.000 There is the USDA for food-related innovation.

00:24:43.000 There are elements of all these innovation policy issues spread throughout the entire federal government.

00:24:54.000 Those issues can be consolidated.

00:24:56.000 And what I mean is that you don't necessarily have to have a completely separate new thing.

00:24:59.000 You could, but if you don't want that, and I understand you don't want to create even more government bureaucracy, it could be consolidated within an existing department.

00:25:11.000 To me, though, the most important thing is that whoever is president thinks at the highest level about what is the United States going to do To innovate at our maximum capacity.

00:25:27.000 How are we holistically going to consolidate, simplify, incentivize, and what industries, you know, what is the nation going to do?

00:25:41.000 Look, in the 1960s, The United States had a Sputnik moment.

00:25:46.000 We were caught off guard by the Russians putting their first satellite in space, and then the first man in space. 0.99

00:25:54.000 And the president at that time, President Kennedy, called the nation to task and said, we will Put the man on the moon by the end of the decade of the 1960s.

00:26:09.000 It was a concentrated whole country effort to win the space race.

00:26:15.000 And there are many elements of that.

00:26:17.000 Today, it's more complicated.

00:26:19.000 We have to win the AI race.

00:26:20.000 We have to win the quantum race.

00:26:22.000 We have to win the biotech race.

00:26:25.000 We have to win the new materials race.

00:26:29.000 We need leadership that can recognize those things and call the nation forward and the best elements of the nation forward to make sure that we actually compete.

00:26:44.000 Intellectual property is one tool in this kit.

00:26:48.000 Intellectual property, patents, copyrights, data protection, whatever it is, is a very important tool that needs to be addressed, but it's just one tool.

00:26:55.000 There are many other elements of this as well.

00:26:57.000 Well, how about you answer your own question?

00:27:00.000 Great.

00:27:00.000 Suppose we say, yes, we need a vision of how we're going to innovate our way out of many of the challenges we face and make sure we're still leading and not China.

00:27:11.000 Go ahead, pick up where you left off.

00:27:13.000 What does that look like?

00:27:15.000 Well, first, I would like to know, what are the technologies of the future?

00:27:19.000 Okay, now, I'd like to hear from industry, what are the most important technologies of the future?

00:27:25.000 In the 60s, the country decided that it's the space race, okay?

00:27:30.000 I just named a few, but who am I to know?

00:27:33.000 I want to hear from industry and studies should be done.

00:27:37.000 AI, as I said, quantum, whatever it is.

00:27:40.000 And then I want to know what are the various elements from the public sector, from the private sector, and from academia to enable us to do that.

00:27:50.000 And there should be a plan, not a directive, but just a general high-level plan.

00:27:57.000 Do we need to amend our education system to create more inventors?

00:28:02.000 Do we need to amend our immigration system, the legal immigration system to bring to the country more inventors?

00:28:10.000 Do we need to have more public and private investment in research and development?

00:28:17.000 And look, I mean, these are not easy issues to answer, but the nation has to start talking about it.

00:28:24.000 Because in some areas of technology, Vivek, we've already lost the race.

00:28:28.000 Yeah.

00:28:29.000 What's unclear to me is whether the proposed method, and I'm truly keeping an open mind here.

00:28:34.000 I'm thinking through what you're saying.

00:28:35.000 I'm appreciative of it.

00:28:37.000 I think what's unclear is, what's clear is, yes, we are Losing on a battle of innovation vis-a-vis China, vis-a-vis even other countries in the world relative to the standing that we had.

00:28:49.000 What's less clear is whether the idea of having a centralized national plan in an area that matters is likely to be successful.

00:28:58.000 I think that that might – I was using this expression in an earlier discussion with someone else – Does reflect a bit of what Friedrich von Hayek would have called the fatal conceit.

00:29:09.000 The idea that you can solve a complex problem centrally or through some form of central dictate is an open question versus saying, all right, pass a bill like these other guys are talking about.

00:29:21.000 Make sure we reform, simplify, and expand the scope of the patent system and then leave it decentralized as we always have.

00:29:30.000 I mean, the space race was one example, but I think that's the anomaly.

00:29:34.000 Other than the space race, most of the rest of what we enjoy was done the other way.

00:29:38.000 And so, what would you say in response to that challenge?

00:29:41.000 Look, I very much agree with you.

00:29:43.000 I think the nation has benefited dramatically over time from our decentralized free market economy.

00:29:49.000 But if we don't know as a nation even what our problems are, if we don't even know where we are going to compete, we are going to have a very difficult time competing there.

00:30:00.000 These bills, take for example, the fact that you cannot have patents on diagnostics.

00:30:05.000 Why is that important?

00:30:07.000 Who says that that's important?

00:30:09.000 Now, we know that it is because we think diagnostics and technologies in that area is important.

00:30:16.000 Artificial intelligence, the fact that it's hard to get patents on that, why is that important?

00:30:22.000 I'm not saying that we should have a centralized directive like the Chinese, God forbid. 1.00

00:30:27.000 That's the exact opposite of what we should do.

00:30:29.000 But at the minimum, we need to have leadership that recognizes that we need to compete in these areas Identify some paths and direction, directly, not, you know, directionally, I mean, for us to be able to go in and be based on those, then certain bills and projects can be undertaken.

00:30:51.000 This actually gets to the heart of a debate in the conservative movement.

00:30:56.000 It's interesting to me, and I'm going to confess.

00:31:00.000 My own convictions on this are...

00:31:05.000 To be determined, okay?

00:31:07.000 It's still up in the air for me.

00:31:09.000 The extent to which we need to rethink the classical model of total decentralization, that's where my heart is.

00:31:18.000 Versus, you know, the example I was having in another discussion episode of the podcast with another guest was even Reagan, who was the ultimate embodiment of that Friedmanite philosophy, the one that I'm deeply sympathetic to as well, still Made a decision that we needed more auto manufacturing in the US and put a quota on the number of Japanese cars that could be imported to help spur domestic manufacturing industry,

00:31:40.000 which in turn resulted in temporarily higher consumer prices, but which were ultimately made up for whenever a Japanese company came to the American South and started manufacturing cars here in America.

00:31:49.000 He decided that was the problem he needed to solve.

00:31:51.000 There may be other problems today.

00:31:53.000 And I want to be careful not to fall into – What I often criticize the left or others who disagree with me of which is reciting your own dogmas without necessarily Addressing the actual clear and present issues that rest in front of you that stand in the face of your dogmas.

00:32:13.000 But I have to say that I believe that history should teach us to be very skeptical of a centrally planned model.

00:32:20.000 But I think that you did a good job of presenting it in a persuasive way by saying at least ask the questions of what are the biggest problems we're facing for at least as a prompt for what a decentralized marketplace could then deliver.

00:32:31.000 Let me leave you this rhetorical question.

00:32:34.000 I believe we have lost the race on 5G and 6G. More than 50% of installations in the world are done by Huawei and ZTE, for example, despite Western sanctions.

00:32:44.000 That's a fact.

00:32:45.000 We are neck and neck on AI. We are neck and neck on quantum computing.

00:32:49.000 And by the way, the Chinese have already demonstrated a quantum uplink to a satellite.

00:32:54.000 We haven't.

00:32:55.000 And there's many examples like this.

00:32:59.000 Accepting that these are facts, and true, we can verify all that.

00:33:03.000 The rhetorical question I have is, what are we going to do?

00:33:07.000 What is the United States going to do?

00:33:10.000 And I'm just posing the question.

00:33:12.000 It's a powerful question.

00:33:16.000 I think you've taken the first step, honestly, man, by asking it.

00:33:22.000 I don't have the answer for you right now.

00:33:24.000 It's part of the reason that I'm getting folks like you here and preparing me to occupy that seat if we're successful in this process.

00:33:31.000 So thank you.

00:33:32.000 I really appreciated this.

00:33:33.000 Learned a lot in a short time together.

00:33:35.000 I have a feeling we're going to be continuing the conversation offline for some time to come.

00:33:39.000 Pleasure to be with you.

00:33:40.000 Thank you so much.

00:33:41.000 Thank you.

Truth Podcast - Vivek Ramaswamy - May 09, 2023

Can America Win the AI Race? with Andrei Iancu | The TRUTH Podcast #24

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