00:01Thank you. Mr. DeBar, there is reportedly a backlog of contracts awaiting approval at the Department of Commerce, with only five or six being approved per day.
00:11NOAA alone has 5,700 contracts set to expire this year.
00:16These contracts include everything from post-hurricane flood assessments to janitorial services.
00:22Recently, NOAA came close to letting the contract expire for the Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System.
00:30The system is critical for weather forecasters to access weather data from satellites, radar, surface stations, and computer models, and to issue weather warnings.
00:39More recently, a data center at Texas A&M was shut down for several days because of bottlenecks in the Department's contracting process,
00:48depriving Texas emergency and water managers of critical drought forecasts that help them manage reservoirs and track storm surge data and hurricane forecasts in real time.
01:00There are other critical contracts for Texas that are in Commerce's contracting backlogs, such as routine maintenance repairs, to NOAA's aging Hurricane Hunter fleet.
01:12Can you commit to addressing the problems with the Department of Commerce contract process and resolving the backlog of contracts?
01:21Yes, Chairman.
01:21The Department of Commerce plays an underappreciated role in U.S. science policy, something you have a great deal of experience with,
01:32emphasizing applied science, technology transfer, and commercialization to drive economic growth.
01:37Given your experience managing national laboratories and advancing tech transfer at the Department of Energy,
01:44what lessons could the Commerce Department apply to better accelerate public-private partnerships and the commercialization of federally funded R&D?
01:54So, Senator, my kind of philosophy around federal government spending is it should be the equivalent of venture money.
02:05It should be the equivalent of triggering money to get the private sector moving in a certain direction.
02:10Certainly discovery science is a big part of it, but how do you translate it, as your question posed, is vitally important.
02:18So, taking a look at the structure around Beidol and Weiler-Stevenson that actually makes that possible, but how do we make that easier?
02:29And also, how do we set up better communities for people to see what we've invented or supported invention, either in the private sector or in the universities?
02:39And how do we make it easier for people to go do that, is certainly something I did at DOE and would look to push that forward at Commerce.
02:48Thank you. I look forward to working with you in that regard.
02:52Finally, the United States has been a global leader in technological innovation due to our free enterprise system and strong rule of law.
03:00Our nation's leadership in critical emerging technologies, like artificial intelligence,
03:04will hinge on whether we embrace entrepreneurial freedom or instead adopt a European-style command-and-control regulatory scheme.
03:14You correctly recognize that the United States must continue to outpace China and remain the global leader in AI.
03:22What is at risk if we go the direction of Europe and the Biden administration and adopt heavy-handed AI regulations
03:29requiring prior approval before new innovations can be implemented?
03:34So the AI sector, and you can't even say sector, but the AI applications are so darn broad,
03:40everything from energy to agriculture to financial services, and I could keep going, is so wide
03:47that regulating something with that breadth and that width and people's ability to invent things across those
03:56and many other industries would impede economic progress and that whole sector.
04:04And productivity for the whole economy and the welfare for everyday American citizens.
04:10So free enterprise and allowing everyone to develop across those and every other industry is vitally important for a broad set of reasons.
04:20During the Biden administration, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, NIST,
04:26NIST, including the AI Safety Institute, looked at the worst of the European Union tech regulation,
04:32policing, quote, misinformation as a part of, quote, measuring AI and its, quote, risks.
04:40This was all nonsense.
04:42If confirmed, how will you restore NIST to its apolitical statutory mission and eliminate Trojan horse social policy?
04:51So NIST has certain strengths that is clearly a leader in the world, and one's on standards,
04:59one's on identifying the kind of the capabilities of certain technologies and measuring those.
05:09And so those, you know, I think trying to have NIST stick to the traditional area that it does very well in
05:15versus expanding it into other areas, yeah, I think that's probably the right way to go for NIST in this particular area.
05:24Terrific.
05:24So my final question is required of all nominees.
05:27If confirmed, do you pledge to work collaboratively with this committee to provide thorough and timely responses to the committee's requests
05:34and to appear before the committee when requested?
05:37Yes, Senator.
05:39I have letters of support from various organizations for Mr. DeBar's nomination,
05:44and I ask unanimous consent for them to be inserted in the hearing record without objection, so ordered.
05:51Senators will have until the close of business on Friday, May 2nd, to submit questions for the record.
05:56The nominee will have until the close of business on Monday, May 5th, to respond to those questions.
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