美国商务部长：AI是瓶装教育，半导体本土化目标50%

Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news.

We are on the ground here in Chapel Hill and I'm surrounded by a who's who of AI. It's the Mount Rushmore of artificial intelligence as you walk around uh the Carolina in here. Think Jensen, Altman, Karp, and we'll add another name, Lutnik. The commerce secretary is hosting this confab in North Carolina and joins us right now live on Bloomberg TV and radio. Mr. Secretary, it's great to see you here at the G20.

It's great to be here with you. So, we were just talking about the sales pitch and some of the comments that the Treasury Secretary made last night. You're surrounded by arguably the smartest people in the world. You've been having fireside chats with them and I've been fascinated to listen to these conversations. Are you surprised they have not been clever enough to sell the American people who might be skeptical about this technology and the means with which we're developing it through data centers?

And I think today was sort of the first day that they really sort of grabbed on to it and tried to understand that they're really they were saying the word intelligence, right? Like data centers create intelligence. But the right way to say it is the way they said it today at the G20, which is it's education in a bottle.

And what they were saying is imagine if all the world the smartest people in the world were willing to move to your country, speak your language.

Speak your language and work on the projects you want them to work on. Would you really keep those people out of your country?

See, that's what AI is. AI is education. It's the ability to ask the smartest people in the world to do what you want them to do. And that is what I set out to do today, to have the world understand that they can grow and build using the American tech stack and AI.

You've talked about our adversaries potentially spoiling the narrative here through disinformation when it comes to data center. Is that true? Where's it coming from?

I do. I think data centers I mean, think about it. The number one product that uses water is an almond farm. And the next thing is cattle. I mean, data centers don't use water. This is just misinformation.

Well, the early generation did, right? I know the newer plants were closed circuit and use different cooling systems, but people remember these old data centers that made a lot of noise. They used a lot of water and drain a lot of power.

So, basically, if your community embraces data centers, you're going to have great economics. you'll have more power will be built and the price of power in your community will go down and you'll [clears throat] have the economic power of they're paying taxes and they're making your community better. So if your community doesn't embrace a data center, some other community will.

And I think data centers are part of the mix. They're not the mix because you can always rent a data center from another community that's using it. But the fact is education is coming. Democratized education is coming and the opportunity and entrepreneurship which will this will really work for America because we are the most entrepreneurial country. Do you realize compared to last year entrepreneurship new startups up 40%.

Usually it's like up 2%.

Up 40% year-over-year. This is really the greatness of America coming

out. Sam Alman put a very fine point on that when he was speaking to the room full of folks in a fireside chat that you were just leading. When it comes to disinformation though, have you confronted your Chinese counterpart about this? Have you met on data centers?

We met with our Chinese counterparts and and we really talked about how we could work together. Remember these the G20 is all about a collaborative way to how to do things together, right? Can we come up with a set of pillars, a set of

really instructional items on AI and technology? Can we all work together all G20? And I think we are going to reach consensus amongst us all.

Isn't this zero sum though? Somebody's got to lose, Mr. Secretary.

No.

Am I wrong?

Are we trying to beat China?

Yes, we we are trying to have the American AI tax stack be out there in front. But if you think about AI, there's a if the smartest the if we talk about as educ education, the smartest frontier models in the world are American. They're the teacher. And if the teacher is relentlessly studying to stay at the frontier, the smartest, the greatest in the world. The students are always going to be a little back. And that's what you have right now with Chinese open- source models. they are studying from us but it's open AI it's anthropic and by the way Tom Brown was here he's a founder of enthropic he was one of my fireside chats earlier today and the idea is those are the teachers those are the frontier and the Chinese open source models are a couple of generations back because that's what students are going to be when the teacher is the smartest in the world and keeping at the frontier

and China is the student to your point um fascinating to see you sitting down with Tom Brown. Has Anthropic writed its relationship with this administration?

They did. They did. We had a good kurluffle.

Yeah.

Right. It was out there. But, you know, they've they've gotten religion. They understand.

What's the religion?

The religion is that there is no country better than America and that you have to be on side with America because America's on your side.

Did they need to be taught that? Well, I I think they were a little confused about the topic, but we sorted that out. The president sorted that out and I helped sort it out and now I think we're all in tune together. So,

OpenAI was here with Sam, but so was Tom Brown with Anthropic. Jensen was here and now Alex Karp. So, we're talking trying to get the world's G20 ministers to understand that the American text act is going to democratize education. They should bring it in. it'll speak in their language, right? And use it to make the world a better place. This is the opportunity to make the world a better place. And it's the American Text Act that's going to drive.

Well, we've got uh China on our mind here. There's a question about tariffs when it comes to chips. I don't know if we're talking about all semiconductors, Mr. Secretary. If it's memory, if it's beyond that, but what are you preparing to unveil? Well, remember the Trump administration has always said if you build here, there's no tariff. And you know, we set out as one of our key things that when the Trump administration walked in the door and I walked in the door, we had like 1% production of semiconductors and our goal is now 40% and if Intel can be successful, which it's clearly on the way to be, we could get to 50% domestic

by the end of the term.

By the end of the term, we want that shovels in the ground building. And it won't all be complete, but there'll be shovels in the ground building it

to get us to 40 or 50% production of semiconductors. And the idea is very simple and it's been very successful with pharmaceuticals.

Build it here and you won't pay a tariff while you're building. But if you're not willing to put shovels in the ground here, then you should pay to have access to the greatest market in the world. And I think that's our objective. We're going to shoot for 50% market share,

right? 50% of our own consumption should be built here and that's our objective and we have commitments already already of 1.2 2 trillion dollar building. So TSMC

265 billion, Micron 250 billion. That's two companies over $500 billion. So you can see they're coming to America. They're building to America. The policy is working.

So it sounds like if you're SK or Samsung, you're on notice.

You are on notice that they are going to build here. They need to build here. It's vital that they build here. Can we build a foundry fast enough to get to t