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POLITICO

How a ‘coalition of the willing’ wants to change the US agenda on AI

s American voters lash out against artificial intelligence and the influence of Big Tech, proponents of AI development fear the United States could lose its technological edge to China. Gina Raimondo is worried about losing more than that. Raimondo — the former Commerce secretary, Rhode Island governor and sometime patron saint of pro-business Democrats — warns that leaders in Washington and Silicon Valley need to show American workers they can win in an AI economy or risk crippling political instability and a crackdown on innovation. “If we rush ahead with blinders on to lead the world in tech, but leave the American people behind, we will not beat China,” Raimondo says. “We will have automated our decline. We will have weakened our democracy. And ultimately you will have federal legislation that stops AI development.” Make no mistake — Raimondo wants to win the contest for technological supremacy. But, she says, “You’re not beating China if you have a terrible domestic economy, politics and society.” That’s why this month Raimondo ruled out running for president in 2028 and teamed up with Eric Holcomb, the former Republican governor of Indiana, to launch a massively funded nonprofit to help workers meet the age of AI. The organization, RAISE US, has drawn support from a roster of enormous private companies (Amazon, OpenAI, Anthropic and Microsoft, to name a few) and a bipartisan group of governors. It is experimenting with workforce resiliency initiatives in several states, from blue Maryland to deep-MAGA Arkansas. The policy vision is decidedly more delicate than the blunt-force populist prescriptions gaining popularity, like moratoriums on data center construction. Calling the companies backing RAISE US a “coalition of the willing,” Raimondo said industry and government have a lot to prove to American workers. Some CEOs grasp that better than others, she said, without naming names. In a joint interview with POLITICO Magazine, Raimondo and Holcomb said they would step away from frontline politics to build RAISE US. Yet if they succeed, they could soon wield a different kind of power in the 2028 battle of ideas. That is in part because they are collaborating with potential presidential candidates, including Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore — rising stars on the right and left who could have an outsized impact on how voters view AI. That work begins, Holcomb said, with visible impact helping workers navigate a new world of technology. “We’re going to expect to see results on a daily basis.” This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Secretary Raimondo, you told my colleague Christine Mui that one of the reasons you’re working at the state level is because governors can move faster. What needs to happen before the end of 2026 to build the momentum you need? GR: You’re talking to two former governors, so we’re a little biased — but it’s just a fact, in today’s political world, governors can be bipartisan. Governors have to deliver, and therefore they just tend to be a little bit more practical. We want to take advantage of that. I think we already have quite a bit of momentum. We’ve come out of the gate with half a billion dollars and dozens of big companies supporting us. We already have four governors signed up with specific projects. In fact, we had a team yesterday in Maryland all day working on the ground with the folks in Maryland on the Service Year initiative [a paid opportunity to boost civic engagement among young people]. We want to start showing results right away in Maryland, Arkansas, Utah and Connecticut, and grow from there. EH: Not to be hyperbolic or exaggerate, but speed kills — slow speed kills. We don’t have time to wait or dither or experience paralysis by analysis. Governors are wired to track trajectories and trends, and make sure that you’re moving in the right direction on a daily basis, not annually. We’ll be tracking our projects. Gina mentioned Maryland. I’ve also been in Arkansas, in Little Rock, and we’re looking to accelerate a launch program that will better connect employers and employees with the throughline around obtaining the skillsets necessary for the jobs of today and tomorrow. We’re going to expect to see results on a daily basis, and then the trends that come from that. But we’re not waiting for the end of the year to report on the State of the State. When you say tracking on a daily basis, what does that tracking look like? What are you looking at on your phone? How are you receiving that data, and what are the metrics? EH: I’m a bit of a homer from Indiana, and we had some workforce development programs that were very successful in regards to apprenticeships, employer training grants, skilling up incumbent workers. Workforce readiness grants had 63,000-plus Hoosiers sign up for the program to get credentialed and connected to a better job. We were tracking it on a real-time basis. You have support from some of the biggest companies in America. There are also some big names in the tech space not on the list. What should we read into that? You see Amazon, OpenAI, Anthropic — there are a couple really big ones not on there. GR: This is the coalition of the willing. I hope and expect others will join, but these are the leaders. The people who have stepped up, Amazon, Microsoft, Open AI, Anthropic, they jumped at this opportunity right away — knowing it was a startup, knowing we’d have to figure things out together, because there’s a collective action issue here. No one company is going to be able to solve this on its own. These are the folks who stepped up to lead, to take a bit of a risk on a startup. How much have you found people at the leadership level of either AI companies or AI-forward companies open to self-criticism and constructive feedback on the way they engage with the public sphere? GR: It’s a mix. CEOs are like anyone else. Some of them are just intensely focused on their business and their profit and their product. And others are that, plus they feel like it’s their job to see the big picture and do what’s right for America, American workers, the American economy in the long run. I’m reminded of efforts over the last decade to build bipartisan, cross-industry support for solutions around the energy transition or climate change. It’s one thing to get big companies and big political figures on board on day one, and it’s another thing to sustain that over time. Have you looked at some of those past examples for mistakes not to repeat? EH: Yes. And we’re not trying to overcomplicate this. We’re going to lead by example, and I think our past work in public service has demonstrated that — and why folks on both sides of the political aisle trust us to continue with that demeanor and upholding our end of the bargain. I sincerely believe that for America to be successful and victorious, it’s going to be — as it always has been — on the backs of the American worker. Does that mean that the two of you stay out of partisan politics while you’re running this? EH: It does not mean, for me, to stay out of it. But I’m focused on the job I’ve got right now. I’m not going to engage in front and center-stage politics. GR: I agree with that. I’m doing this full-time. You asked about recent examples. When people ask what the analogy is for RAISE US, the closest analogy I can really think of is the Council on Economic Development. It was created in the 1940s, as World War II was ending. Business leaders and CEOs were nervous that millions of GIs were coming back to America and needed jobs, and at the same time the war demand was dwindling. Where were all the GIs going to work? It was employer-led, with some of the companies — Studebaker, GE, Dow, the big companies of that time — it was very hands-on, on the ground, tactical, just like Eric said a few minutes ago. And it was quite successful. There was no spike in unemployment when the war ended, like everybody thought there would be. They wound up creating a movement around the country, which is what we hope to create: a movement to define what it means to be a good employer in the age of AI. I have no doubt we will make mistakes. But I also think we will show, over the next however many years, actual, practical, on-the-ground incentives for companies, new ways to support people as they’re transitioning from jobs, hopefully a service model, because we all think that AI is squeezing entry-level people. Finally, hopefully, we can have an at-scale, “earn while you learn” apprenticeship initiative for manufacturing. At some point in time when Congress decides to act in a bipartisan way, there will be national AI legislation. And I hope they’ll look into the work we’ve done and take the things that worked and put it into federal legislation. It’s hard to imagine now, but could you envision a world where there’s a real AI optimist on a presidential ticket in 2028? GR: Gosh, that feels so far away. I don’t know. EH: It’s the last thing on my priority list to spend time thinking about, when we are so knee-deep in what we’re doing. Hopefully what may drive that optimism is when we flip the script and start to use AI to help an individual progress and improve and have more options and more affordability. When that starts to happen, then the mood may change for the better. Secretary, I noticed that you, a few weeks ago, said explicitly that you’re not going to run for president in 2028. Was that in preparation for this announcement? GR: Yes. I want people to know this is what I’m doing. It’s outside of politics, but also working with the government. Job training isn’t enough to solve this problem, if it’s going to be as big as I think it is. Just saying, “Oh, we’re going to skill up a bunch of construction workers to build data centers” — that’s good, but that is not nearly enough to get ready. I didn’t want anyone to think, “Oh, she’s just doing this to run for office.” That’s not what this is about. EH: What drives me is simply — good policy makes good politics. We’re focused on the policy execution, and we’ll leave it to others to, hopefully, point to the good news that comes from it. There’s so much rhetoric about beating China on AI, and I’m not sure that your average worker is all that concerned about beating China on a geo-strategic level, if they’re not really feeling a benefit to themselves in whatever beating China means. GR: I’ll tell you what beating China means — and what it doesn’t mean. Beating China means staying ahead in the technology, having the best chips and the best models. It also means having a stable political picture in the United States, a strong economy in the United States, a population that is broadly prosperous and employed, a functioning democracy. That’s how you beat China. I can promise you, if we rush ahead with blinders on to lead the world in tech, but leave the American people behind, we will not beat China. We will have automated our decline. We will have weakened our democracy. And ultimately you will have federal legislation that stops AI development. I want to beat China, too. I want to be crystal clear about that. You’re not beating China if you have a terrible domestic economy, politics and society. You have to find a way to do both. And I believe that we can. EH: No pressure.