Jackson School students in the Schmidt Program on Artificial Intelligence, Emerging Technologies, and National Power recently traveled to Washington, D.C., for a meeting with officials in the U.S. Department of Commerce—including Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo—to learn more about the department’s role in managing the risks while harnessing the opportunities associated with AI.

Secretary Raimondo, a Yale Law School graduate, along with other senior officials discussed the landmark CHIPS Act, export controls on semiconductor chips and other critical technologies, and the impact of AI on U.S.-China relations.

In addition to meeting with Secretary Raimondo, the students attended the Special Competitive Study Project’s AI + Energy Summit, which convened an array of public, private, and nonprofit sector leaders to discuss the exponential growth in energy demand to power advanced AI development in the U.S. The students also visited leading defense AI company Palantir Technologies and attended sessions at the U.S. National Security Council, featuring a meeting with White House Special Advisor for AI Ben Buchanan focused on the evolving policy and the regulatory landscape for emerging technologies.

“I am grateful to Secretary Raimondo and colleagues for these invaluable engagements with our Jackson students,” said Schmidt Program director and Jackson School senior lecturer Ted Wittenstein, who teaches the program’s flagship year-long course. “These sessions in Washington allowed Schmidt Program students to interact with a wide range of leaders across the law, technology, policy, and business communities who are grappling with AI-related global challenges from different vantage points.”

Jackson School grad student Fiona Bultonsheen came away from the trip with two key takeaways: there’s a need to pair STEM fields with the humanities to create innovative solutions for supply issues in the AI industry, and young leaders are best positioned to solve these problems.

“There was a theme throughout the trip: ‘be first, be fast’ in terms of iterating, pioneering, and meeting demands in the AI revolution,” said Bultonsheen, a student in the flagship class. “We covered great swaths of ground — from strategic competition with China, to critical minerals, to Taiwanese semiconductor chips — and each speaker stressed that multidisciplinary thinking is paramount to keeping the U.S. on the cutting edge of this technical renaissance.”

For Bultonsheen, the course offers important preparation “for a future working hand-in-hand with technical developers and policy professionals to create ideas that ramp up cybersecurity without curbing innovation.”

“Experiences like this trip are why I wanted to be a part of the Schmidt Program and, overall, a key reason why I chose Jackson,” she said.