How can the U.S. stay ahead on cyber warfare? Here’s what Sen. Mitt Romney says

The world’s shared town square, the internet, poses national security threats that are hard to ignore, senators heard at a committee hearing Tuesday. From cyber warfare to spying systems, Sen. Mitt Romney said that he feels “disturbed” by the weaponization of cyberspace by U.S. adversaries.
The conflict between free nations and authoritarian states is far-reaching, going beyond air, land and sea, and seeping into cyberspace, the GOP senator said at a Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Tuesday morning.
But Romney, who chaired the hearing, conveyed his skepticism of some methods used to ward off bad actors, especially when they have artificial intelligence and quantum computing at their disposal. The policy solutions would have to account for protecting freedom of speech in the U.S. while dismantling disinformation, he said.
“What do free nations do to secure the rights that we hold so dear?” Romney asked.
The solution, Romney said, is building more advanced technology, staying ahead of other countries, and discouraging spying, even though he guessed that request would get laughed at.
Romney cited the latest prediction from Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, which created ChatGPT. In a blog post Monday, Altman said, “It is possible that we will have superintelligence in a few thousand days.”
Establishing norms for cyberspace, an idea often talked about in Congress, isn’t a strong deterrent, Romney said. “If I was (Chinese President) Xi Jinping, I’d laugh,” the GOP senator said. “The only thing that would allow us to defeat the spread of authoritarianism and digital authoritarianism is having the tools and capabilities to push back against it and to (exercise) our own strength.”
It’s essential to eliminate authoritarian-owned technologies in the U.S. and other places, whether it’s apps like TikTok or an army of bots on social media, Romney said. Foreign adversaries like China and Russia are “far ahead of us in these things,” he said.
Directing his question toward Jamil Jaffer, the founder and executive director of Virginia’s National Security Institute, he asked whether the answer to combatting cyber warfare is staying ahead of adversaries, and kicking them out when they’re found.
Jaffer said Romney’s thinking was correct, adding “strongly worded” letters from senators, diplomats, and the like won’t change anything.
“What is going to get this job done is providing people who want freedom in those countries access to news and information the way that the Open Technology Fund is doing, and ensuring that we’re investing here at home, that we’re building the best and most awesome technology at home,” Jaffer said. The Open Technology Fund is a U.S. nonprofit that advocates for global Internet freedom.
He said that while the U.S. leads in artificial intelligence, that might change. “In fact, if we adopt the approach the Europeans have taken, which is regulate, regulate and regulate, we’re likely to lose that edge,” Jaffer said.
He said the U.S. receives investments from all around the world because it is “the most productive system of allocation of capital.”
“We’ve got to take advantage of it, double down on it, and … also (ensure) that our investors are not investing in Russia, China, Iran and North Korea,” Jaffer said. Instead, he said, the right approach is to invest in the U.S.
“It’s about the allocation of capital,” Jaffer said, adding that “too many Europeans and the European system views us as the enemy, views our technology companies as the enemy, when in fact, we’re actually the innovators who are creating this space and these opportunities.”
On the subject of censorship, and a free and open internet, Romney said he has concerns about how to balance the need to keep the internet “free and open” with the rise in disinformation.
“I wonder whether the day is coming when the American public stops looking at the internet for information because it’s so overwhelmed with information coming from bots — made up stories, made up pictures,” he said.
Romney said he doesn’t know what determines a free and open internet, and who decides what is disinformation. He cited censoring Russian bots in the U.S. as an example and asked whether that hampers freedom in online spaces.
David Kaye, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, acknowledged the complexity of the question. The right to freedom of opinion and expression is a right recognized at the international level, he said.
“The Human Rights Council (and) the U.N. General Assembly have very much pushed this idea that international human rights apply online as much as they do offline,” Kaye said. But, he noted, there are countries that are pushing back on that idea.
Restricting information can lead to censorship from authoritarians who have different views on disinformation, Kaye said.
Romney interjected, saying a free and open internet means an account can slander someone but not be held accountable because there’s no knowing if it’s an actual person or a bot is behind the account.
“Should we insist that the social media companies determine that there is an individual or an entity that’s actually posting something on the internet so that there is recourse if someone wants to bring an action against either a government or an institution or a person?” Romney asked.
Kaye suggested looking at the European Union’s Digital Services Act, which addresses this issue.
“Their fundamental approach is transparency, on the one hand, but also risk assessment,” where online companies are required to provide a risk assessment in order to prevent harm, like what Romney described, Kaye said.
“It is a very tricky and narrow path to walk between demanding transparency and recourse, and promoting and protecting rights to free speech,” he said.
But Jaffer pushed back, saying he worried about using the EU’s regulatory approach as a solution in the U.S. given the right to free speech.
“At the end of the day, what we’ve got to figure out is, how do we protect anonymous speech … while also addressing disinformation and misinformation, while also ensuring that we’re providing capabilities to people who live in unfree societies to talk about the things they want to talk about and get the news from us,” he said.