Sarah Rogers: Free Speech, AI Diplomacy, and What America Owes Its Allies
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AI is gonna be more important, not less important. And so the proliferation of a Western AI stack to be
a top priority for anyone who cares about freedom. The rules around AI are changing fast. There's a lot of regulation abroad around digital safety and this information that's in some ways becoming the petri dish for lobbying groups and organizations in America to
bring that here. I think when we send signals in this policy domain, they should be signals that are consistent with free speech. The economist Tyler Cowen talks about AI with a western soul, and I completely agree with him that that is the greatest soft power tool we can possess.
How can the US government encourage private sector to encourage free speech at their companies even if they don't have the ability to buy a company like Elon does and to quit his fingerprint off?
I think we need to
Every major communications technology has produced the same instinct. Control it before it controls you. The printing press brought fears of heresy. The Internet gave rise to a disinformation apparatus funded in part by the US government itself. Sarah B. Rogers inherited that apparatus. As Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy, she took over an office that had been submitting content removal requests to platforms like Twitter and Meta and funding NGOs to determine what Americans were allowed to see online. She is now running the opposite operation. Her argument is also strategic. Econom
Please welcome to the stage, Catherine Boyle and Sarah Rogers.
Under secretary Rogers, it is an honor to have you here. As you've been, I would argue, one of the most vocal proponents of free speech and digital freedom in this administration, Free speech and anti censorship are arguably, I would say, the most important American battles of our time. Now, a lot of people do not know how free speech and these battles are linked to public diplomacy in the State Department. So to start, what is public diplomacy? So one of
my favorite parts of getting this nomination was watching all my friends and family wait a polite beat to ask that question after congratulating me. So when we think of diplomacy, we're ordinarily thinking about the relationship between the American government and foreign governments. Two ambassadors shake hands, strike a minerals deal. That's diplomacy. Public diplomacy is different. It is my privilege and charge to lead the relationship between the American government and the foreign public. And so that includes things like educational and cultural exchanges like the Fulbright program. It in
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