(Bloomberg) — A bipartisan pair of senators is reviving a invoice to interrupt the grip that tech giants like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google have on the Pentagon’s cloud computing and synthetic intelligence contracts.
The Defending AI and Cloud Competitors in Protection Act is about to be reintroduced on Thursday by Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Republican Eric Schmitt of Missouri, in keeping with individuals aware of the matter. A model of the invoice can be being launched for the primary time within the Home, mentioned the individuals, who spoke on situation of anonymity as the knowledge is just not public.
The aim of the laws is to extend competitors for billions of {dollars} price of AI and cloud contracts presently dominated by Massive Tech corporations. If handed, the Division of Protection can be required to carry a aggressive bidding course of for offers price $50 million or extra. The invoice would additionally direct the company to “mitigate boundaries” that make it tougher for startups and nontraditional contractors to compete.
The deliberate laws displays a brand new balancing act for lawmakers. Whereas many in Washington have expressed higher urgency to bolster US technological competitiveness and deploy extra AI throughout the federal authorities, there are additionally longstanding issues on either side of the aisle about additional entrenching the dominance of Silicon Valley’s largest firms.
“It’s a mistake to let Silicon Valley monopolize our AI and cloud computing instruments as a result of it doesn’t simply stifle innovation, it will increase prices and threatens our nationwide safety,” Warren mentioned in assertion.
Warren and Schmitt, who each sit on the Senate Armed Companies Committee, first launched the bill in December, within the last weeks of the Biden administration, but it surely failed to achieve traction. It’s gathered recent momentum lately, helped by new procurement policies issued by the White Home targeted on constructing a “aggressive AI market.”
