Congress Is Back

Two Hearings We Are Watching This Week

September 03, 2025

Good morning. Congress is back in full gear so let us know what you are working on. Here is what we are watching today. 👇

Accelerating American Space Leadership

A piece in ArsTechnica several weeks ago made waves when it posited that, as of today, China is likely to beat the U.S. back to the moon. It was a provocative piece that elicited a ton a reaction online.

This morning, the Senate Commerce Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing on this very subject. From their notice:

[The hearing] will also explore the strategic, economic, and scientific importance of American dominance in low Earth orbit (LEO), lunar operations, Mars exploration, and deep space missions. The hearing will assess how U.S. policy and investments can foster America’s competitive edge in the face of growing challenges from adversarial nations, like China, whose rapid space advancements pose a direct threat to U.S. leadership in the domain.

Source: SpaceX

While the hearing will focus on more than just who’ll be the first country back to the lunar surface since America did it over 50 years ago, the relationship between our ambitions for both the Moon and Mars are intertwined.

We’ll be watching to hear how lawmakers are thinking about the shared goal of reaching both before China.

AI Healthcare Hearing Today

The House Energy and Commerce Committee will look to keep the conversation going around AI within our healthcare system with a hearing today titled “Examining Opportunities to Advance American Health Care through the Use of Artificial Intelligence Technologies.”

In a pre-hearing memo, the committee highlights AI’s promise and current deployment within biomedical research and development, at the Centers for Medicare Services, and through the strengthening of public health.

From identifying trial participants to drug development to diagnosis and treatment, AI is proving to be a powerful tool. We heard a lot of this at the White House’s “Make Health Tech Great Again” event a month ago. The committee memo puts some quantitative details on that message, noting “the success rate of the 21 AI‐developed drugs that have completed Phase I trials as of December 2023 is 80 to 90 percent, compared to 40 percent for traditional methods.”

Like AI in many other industries, the legislative agenda is limited (and for good reason) so don’t expect a “healthcare AI” bill in the near future.

But as the tool is adopted more and more by patients, providers, practitioners, and government agencies it is important that Congress maintain an acute understanding of the technology and how it’s deployment is improving, in this case, Americans’ health.

Chinese Robots Rising

Source: Reuters

Back in June we published “The Biggest Industry in the History of the Planet,” A piece based off a comment made by venture capitalist Marc Andreessen regarding embodied AI—also known as robots.

In it, we noted the urgent approach China is taking to capitalize on this:

Xi Jinping has declared humanoid robotics a strategic priority, publicly visiting AI robotics factories and linking the sector to China’s future industrial dominance.

It wasn’t just bluster.

The Financial Times reports that “Chinese factories are installing about 280,000 industrial robots every year, or half the global total.”

This acceleration only punctuates the need for an American strategy on embodied AI. Some ideas (as mentioned in our June piece) include “securing key inputs like rare earth minerals, magnets, and affordable raw materials like steel and aluminum that will be needed to build this fleet of autonomous devices. Additionally, establishing a ‘Clean Robotics’ standard, similar to the Clean Networks initiative in 5G, could set a framework for safe, transparent, U.S.-aligned embodied AI systems.”

The future is automating and China wants to win. It’s time we step up our game.

Thanks for reading and have a great day!

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