State Department speaker: 'U.S. goal is to dominate AI'

Ambassador at Large for Cyberspace and Digital Policy Nate Fick, right, spoke at the Stanford Law School in Stanford, Calif., with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, left, and Jennifer S. Martínez, dean of law school in 2022

Last night I attended an open lecture at nearby Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. The speaker was Nathaniel Fick who is a former Marine officer and currently works for Tony Blinken.

In 2022 Nate Fick became the State Department’s first ambassador at large for cyberspace and digital diplomacy. He has a broad portfolio and works with the National Security Agency and the White House, on driving Washington’s foreign digital agenda. See an interview with him here.

His talk was sponsored by a Marine Corp organization at Bowdoin that is endowed with more than $200,000 to annually host prominent former Marine speakers.

Early in his speech he stated that he lives in Maine and had been nominated for his position by US Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) who wanted to 'elevate this strategy' of attaining US dominance in AI.

Previously Fick had chaired an AI task force at the deep-state organ Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) of which he is a member. 

Fick complained about the United Nations becoming 'authoritarian' - which translates to the US-NATO having lost control of the international body because of western colonial arrogance. For example, Malaysia recently stated that Israel should be expelled from the UN - a year ago they'd not have dared to do that.

He also stated that the US is trying to create the 'rules of the road' for the cyber security game. He claimed that there are now two camps in the AI movement - the US and China. He talked about Blinken's recent trip to China (which Fick joined) and accused China of doing 'preemptive cyber attacks' on the US.

He spent alot of time on China and Russia claiming that Russia has lost 600,000 troops in the Ukraine war and had also lost its manufacturing capabilities - thus China is now bailing Russia out by providing technology. At that point I stated from the audience, 'that's a lie'.

Fick also reported that he often goes to Estonia where he has been supporting their cyber security operations and that 20,000 Space X Starlink devices have been provided to Estonia to assist Ukraine in the west's proxy war on Russia. 

After his formal talk Fick and another retired Marine officer (moderator) sat on chairs and discussed his book and other issues. The moderator at one point noted that 'We haven't had much success in our wars since WW2'. He went on to conclude that the 'military is having a hard time recruiting these days except for the Marine Corps'. They both then remarked that 'young folks don't even want to work for defense contractors - instead they wish to get into environmental engineering and work on climate change'. They urged the students in the audience to serve the nation not understanding that working on climate change serves the world.

Fick finally came out and claimed during the Q & A session that 'the US is in a competition over which AI operating systems will be dominant - those of the democracies or the authoritarians. If we lose this race the consequences will be catastrophic'. 

One Bowdoin student put this question to Fick: 'Do you have conflict over feelings about our support for Israel'? She began the question saying that many students at the college and around the nation are very upset about US policy. 

Fick never directly answered the question but gave a long filibustering response about how Blinken continually goes to the Middle East trying to bring about peace - and concluded by saying 'we are almost there right now with a ceasefire'. Of course we all know that Blinken has been running interference for Israel since the start of this genocide.

I followed the student to the audience microphone and said I was a Vietnam war-era Air Force veteran and became a peace activist during the war. I asked him if the US was providing Israel with Starlink similar to how it is being provided to Estonia so they can assist Ukrainian attacks on Russia? He replied no. I then asked if the US was providing Israel with Reaper drones, AWACS and other space-based intell, recon and targeting data for their genocidal attacks on Palestine and Lebanon? He quickly replied 'You didn't ask me that', and I stated 'I am now'. Fick then answered with a quiet 'yes' and nothing more.

There were about 100 people in the audience during this event - maybe half were students with many others seemingly former Marines and their wives. Surprisingly when I asked my questions to Fick no one in the audience told me to 'sit down and shut up' as I had expected.

Bruce