‘Next Frontier of Warfare’: Ex-Navy SEAL Turned GOP Congressman Readies for Bipartisan Battle Over AI

Morgan Luttrell arrived in Congress this year with rare firsthand experience with the double-edged potential of AI.

During the Trump administration, Luttrell helped create the Department of Energy’s Artificial Intelligence and Technology Office, which works with universities and other federal agencies to apply AI and machine learning to everything from fusion energy research to sewage management. That work taught Luttrell a lesson that’s increasingly relevant to his new job as a lawmaker: AI can be a potent tool for many purposes, including making hackers’ jobs easier, and America faces skilled foreign cyber adversaries—especially China and Russia—who are “pushing to be first in this space,” as Luttrell told The Messenger during a recent phone interview.

“This is the next frontier of warfare,” Luttrell said, “so I just went all in.”

Last November, Luttrell—a former Navy SEAL with degrees in psychology from Sam Houston State University and neuroscience from the University of Texas at Dallas—was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Texas’s 8th district near Houston. Now, between his AI experience, his unique role on two key committees and his desire to find bipartisan solutions to some wonky problems, he’s positioning himself as an important voice in conversations on Capitol Hill about pressing digital security issues, especially AI.

Policymakers are worried that AI will make that torrent of cyberattacks even worse. A week ago, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) hosted a major summit in D.C. that brought in executives from the industry's largest firms, and President Joe Biden recently convened leading AI companies at the White House and secured voluntary pledges from them on privacy and security issues. That kind of meeting between government and industry was “a good idea,” Luttrell said, although he cautioned that the feds shouldn’t get too heavy-handed when it comes to AI.

“Big government’s too slow to keep pace with the advances in the artificial intelligence space,” he said. “Let the industry lead, and don't let the government stifle innovation.”

For Luttrell, this perspective is informed by how he’s seen other countries approach AI. “They're letting this thing run and letting it develop,” he said, “and I would hate to see legislation [or] some regulation [or] oversight get in the way of our ability to advance the technologies.”

Luttrell isn’t against all AI regulation, but he said that the right level of oversight is “something that we're figuring out” in Congress.

Luttrell is well positioned to be part of that process. Despite being a freshman lawmaker, he holds the distinction of being the only House member who sits on the cybersecurity subcommittees of both the armed-services and homeland-security committees. Those panels oversee agencies like the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and military components like U.S. Cyber Command.

Luttrell’s time in the Trump administration service gave him a front-row seat to these and other agencies’ “extremely impressive” cyber defense operations, he said, as well as a profound new understanding of just how many attacks the government fends off every day.

“You hear about the one-offs of the cyberattacks here and there that make the media,” he said, “but to know … how often it happens, it’s really mind-blowing.”

While partisan rancor has engulfed lawmakers’ work on many issues, Luttrell said he doesn’t really see that happening with cybersecurity. “I think we're getting along famously,” he said. “Everybody understands and appreciates … the importance of it.”

Other lawmakers share this sentiment. “As with cybersecurity, which I have always seen as an area of cooperation between the parties … the House’s approach to AI education and regulation has been refreshingly productive and bipartisan,” Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), the vice chair of Congress’s bipartisan AI caucus, said in a statement. “All of us want to make this work.”

Luttrell even voiced openness to the idea of placing new regulations on the companies that operate America’s critical infrastructure—such as hospitals, power plants and manufacturing firms—a major priority for President Joe Biden’s team. Republicans have mostly opposed or questioned those regulations, arguing they will unnecessarily burden small critical infrastructure operators.

“We don't really actively want to increase the regulatory process and put burdensome rules and regulations” on companies, Luttrell said. “But one thing that we do understand is that this is different. The cyber threat area … is just so different. And because we understand that, I think we're gonna have the ability to work together more in harmony.”

But the White House shouldn’t get its hopes up that Luttrell will be in its corner on other hot-button cybersecurity issues.

Luttrell shares the view of other conservative lawmakers that CISA has gone too far in working with tech companies to take down mis- and disinformation, a project that has become a major right-wing bête noire. Congress has to “figure out exactly how we can course-correct that shift,” he said, adding that it would be appropriate for lawmakers to place new limits on the agency’s work combatting misinformation,“to make sure that they don't come off the rails.”

Luttrell likewise opposes any effort by the Biden administration to set national standards for cybersecurity curricula in schools, something that could help the White House achieve its goal of expanding the heavily strained cyber workforce. “I don't think the federal government has any business whatsoever in education, period,” Luttrell said. “It belongs in the states.”

Still, Luttrell and the White House share one important conviction: It’ll be hard to protect the country from hackers if Americans don’t understand their individual responsibilities in this area.

Luttrell lives in Magnolia, Texas—“way out here in the country,” as he put it—and in that 2,600-person town, he said he does his best to explain the U.S.’s security challenges to his neighbors. “Don't think that they can't reach out and touch us in the middle of the state of Texas,” he tells them.