Rep. Mike Waltz, R-Fla., tapped to be President-elect Donald Trump's national security adviser, told Newsmax on Tuesday that terror threats that have crossed a wide-open southern border are the biggest risks to national security.
He added to "The Record With Greta Van Susteren" the risks are not social justice, climate change, and parents at school board meetings targeted by the Biden administration and Democrats the past four years.
"We know ISIS, al-Qaida, and others are taking advantage of the southern border, actually working with Mexican cartels that are not only working with terrorist groups, they're working with Chinese suppliers of fentanyl that are killing literally more Americans than we lost in Vietnam and a number of other wars every single year," Waltz said.
He also said Trump wants to make sure the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and other agencies "have resources directed in the right place."
"Are they more worried about parents at school board [meetings] and climate change and social justice than they're worried about criminal gangs and terrorists infiltrating or others who may be radicalizing Americans online?" he said. "As national security adviser, making sure the entire interagency, as they say in Washington, D.C., defense, state, intelligence community, CIA, FBI, are focused on the true threats [is] in line with what the president sees as the way to secure the country.
"That's a big part of my job … getting all of these agencies moving in the direction of the president's agenda."
Waltz said another huge impact on national security will be maintaining the United States' standing as the leader in artificial intelligence, which he called "the race of the 21st century that will affect everything that we do."
"It can be an era of tremendous opportunity, literally curing cancers and diseases in the medical field," he said. "There are thousands of studies a day that are kind of put out there by researchers. How can you comb through all of that and find the next great protein or cure for those diseases?
"On the flip side of that, within a few years, literally, humans will no longer make the best algorithms. The machines will make [their] own algorithms. How do we put the appropriate guardrails around that? And what we can't have [are] the world's best AI chips, databases, and algorithms in the hands of our adversaries. So, this truly is the race. AI is the race of the 21st century that will affect everything that we do. And the United States right now is in the lead, and Donald J. Trump is going to make sure we maintain that lead."
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Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.
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