Leadership

Utah's Governor Cox and Military Installation Development Authority propose Utah playing a leading role in nuclear and artifical intelligence technologies. The form of this leadership seems largely to be a matter of siting nuclear reactors, radioactive waste dump sites, and data centers in the state. Utah's leadership is mainly about cheap resources, tax breaks, and lax regulation. This is a plantation economy that impoverishes the majority, channeling the benefits to a small power elite. This is no kind of true leadership.

Nuclear and artificial intelligence technologies are clearly important, whatever role they might play in the future. Utah could take on a true leadership role. True technological leadership is a matter of the expertise of the people. Expertise can be organized in a variety of ways, in industrial corporations, in governmental agencies, and in civil society groups such as universities.

Nuclear technology is vast and involves expertise in a very broad array of disciplines. Applications include energy production, weapons, and medicine. Nuclear technology continues to be a key source of international conflict. It is a cornerstone of industrial and military power. On the other hand, mining and waste disposal bring disease and ecological degradation, and are thus vectors of disempowerment. Politics is therefore a field of major importance for nuclear technology. Geology is important not just for locating raw materials but also for understanding the pathways by which waste materials might escape their disposal sites over their long half-lives of radioactive toxicity. Biology and public health expertise is important for tracking and managing the risks of exposure to radioactive materials. All of these fields of expertise are invigorated by engagement across a range activities, from research and development to application.

Artificial intelligence is similarly vast. There are computer science and computer engineering challenges involved in making these systems more effective and efficient. There are sociological problems, to understand how these systems are changing the way people behave, are changing the structure of society. There are political problems, to understand how these systems empower some groups and disempower other groups, and how regulation might ameliorate the most negative of these shifts.

Our Utah officials could take bold steps to cultivate real leadership in nuclear technology and artificial intelligence. This means investing in people and organizations, rather than a race to the bottom, selling off assets at discounted prices.