Bruce Reed had seen the pitfalls of letting Big Tech run roughshod over government. He was determined not to make the same mistakes.
, a contributing writer at Politico Magazine, is a journalist based in Washington whose work examines the complicated intersections of technology and society.
The meeting, Reed says, hardened his belief that generative AI is poised to shake the very foundations of American life. “What we’re going to have to prepare for, and guard against,” Reed says, “is the potential impact of AI on our ability to tell what’s real and what’s not.” Reed agreed to two interviews for this piece, one in his office and one by phone, to discuss tech policy and AI.
Reed is a surprising instrument of this transformation. For much of his career, he’s been aligned with a moderate faction of the Democratic Party that tended to befriend Big Tech and distance itself from the anti-business rhetoric common in more liberal corners. In the ‘90s, he was an architect of controversial centrist Clinton administration policies, including welfare reform and the 1994 crime bill.
Reed is fueled by a chance to get it right this time. Twenty years ago, hardly anyone could predict just how huge and far-reaching the effects of social media could be. Today, everyone seems to understand that the consequences of AI will be massive, even if they are just as undefined at this point as they were in the beginning of social media. To Reed, that means a huge opportunity — and a window that is closing by the day.
Reed looks on as President Clinton speaks to reporters during a meeting at the White House on May 21, 1999. As Clinton’s deputy domestic policy advisor, Reed tackled big centrist policies like welfare reform. | Tim Sloan/AFP via Getty Images A few years later, Silicon Valley was booming, and the American economy wasn’t. After Barack Obama became president, Reed was put in charge of chairing the so-called Simpson Bowles Commission, aimed at cutting the national deficit, including by, just maybe, cutting social projects. It didn’t work: The commission couldn’t agree on its recommendations, and in 2011, Reed joined the Obama White House as then-Vice President Joe Biden’s chief of staff.
On cycling out of the White House, many Obama officials headed to northern California, to Silicon Valley — but Reed did not. | Helene Labriet-Gross/AFP via Getty Images Hertzberg hated the end run around his beloved state legislature. But he understood why it had happened: California lawmakers had struggled to answer the public’s call for politicians to do something to guard their privacy in online spaces.
On the one hand, few were thrilled with the result; privacy advocates judged it inexcusably weak, and the tech industry found it unworkably overreaching. On the other, it remains the most sweeping set of rules ever passed on privacy in the United States — a country that has for decades struggled to do much of anything to contend with the Internet age. “Bruce,” says Steyer, “is sometimes vilified by people who don’t ever pass anything.
Reed got the deputy chief of staff job instead, freeing him both to travel with Biden, which he does frequently, and to dig in on policy. “This should be like pushing on an open door,” Wu recalls Reed saying, of the country coming up with some sort of baseline for what it expects when it comes to Americans’ personal data. But in Washington, few doors swing easily.
Nelson said that through the months-long process of working on the document, she came to realize that success in Biden’s White House, and in Reed’s office, meant embracing a straight-forward way of speaking about complex topics. The ability to boil policy down to everyday language is, say aides, something Biden values in Reed.
When Alondra Nelson arrived at the White House, she, under Reed’s guidance, began working on what she would end up calling a “Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights.” | Stephen Voss/Redux Pictures These days, Reed chairs a regular meeting in the White House’s Roosevelt Room for senior administration officials focused exclusively on AI. Scheduled for three times a week, National Economic Council director Lael Brainard, national security adviser Jake Sullivan, director of the Office of Legislative Affairs Shuwanza Goff, and Office of Science and Technology director Arati Prabhakar are regular attendees; Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo has participated.
As Reed sees it, it’s all connected. Washington’s failings on social media led to an uptick in everything from online bullying to an increase in digital sex trafficking. Washington failing on AI would mean undercutting the very foundations of American life. Some critics thought the orders were toothless, but administration officials argued that it was what was possible in a month.
The order’s success hinges on federal agencies carrying it out. But there are those who think the White House has already set the wrong tone.
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