The National Security Institute hosted an off-the-record senior congressional staff roundtable, “Training to Win: How Broad Access to Data Drives America’s AI Advantage.”  Moderated by NSI Founder and Executive Director Jamil N. Jaffer, this discussion convened senior staff from key committees and offices working on artificial intelligence for a focused conversation on how access to data shapes U.S. technological and national security leadership.

The roundtable explored why broad access to high-quality training data is essential to preserving America’s AI advantage, and how congressional debates around fair use, copyright, and intellectual property will influence U.S. competitiveness in the coming years.  Participants assessed what is at stake if U.S. developers lose the ability to train state-of-the-art AI systems on diverse datasets, how fair use has historically supported American innovation, and how Congress can avoid regulatory approaches that risk constraining the data resources that underpin U.S. leadership—particularly as China accelerates its own data-driven AI development.