Former Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich called Wynton Hall’s instant bestseller, CODE RED, “exhilarating,” adding that it has “given me a whole bunch of new ideas.”
“I have to say this has been exhilarating. You’ve given me a whole bunch of new ideas,” Gingrich told Hall of his new book, Code Red: The Left, the Right, China, and the Race to Control AI, during Saturday’s episode of Gingrich 360.
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During the interview, Gingrich asked Hall to elaborate on what he means when he describes AI as “potentially the defining national security challenge of the next decade.”
“We often hear AI described as a tool,” Hall said. “It is a tool, but it’s also political power. And increasingly within the AI warfare space, I think it is going to become essential.”
“When we talk about beating China, I think we can beat China without becoming China and maintain our values,” the author continued. “We’re seeing the use of AI right now in Iran and certainly in the Maduro raid.”
Hall elaborated:
I think when you talk to folks in the military and leadership in the defense tech space, they really understand and explain that having that speed efficiency, and also as we move toward things like RSI, recursive self-improvement — which is AI potentially, theoretically, one day being able to constantly update and improve itself — that whoever gains that advantage is going to have full spectrum battlefield dominance in things like cyber security, encryption, hacking of missile systems, hacking of infrastructure.
We really have to understand that we are in a real sprint. And I think, thankfully, you’re seeing a lot of leadership around that — whether you’re talking about the War Department, President Trump, and just military leadership who have long understood that technological innovation brings battlefield opportunities for us to keep not just our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines safe, but here at home as well as asymmetric threats start to emerge.
“We’ve already seen a pretty big jump in both Pentagon spending and general government spending on AI related contracts. Are we doing enough in that direction?” Gingrich asked.
Hall answered that he believes “we should do more,” adding, “one of the things that’s important is, a lot of the traditional warfare machinery that we’ve seen, we know that the costs are exceptionally high.”
“And now, with the AI innovation, that cost curve can be brought down,” Hall added. “Also, the efficiency can be brought up. One of the advantages — not just in the actual weapons themselves — but is in the intel process for AI.”
“Because if there’s one thing that AI really excels in,” the author continued, “is massive pattern recognition.”
“So you’ll be able to take all of that intercepted communication — whether it’s satellites or images, surveillance — and sift and sort that in what would have taken months, if not longer, in teams of hundreds or thousands. And you now able to that in a matter of days with a small team,” he added.
Hall went on to say that this also “extends” to “the domestic side,” noting that he has a chapter in Code Red about “how we can use AI toward a conservative vision of a smaller, more efficient government as well.”
“It’s important for us to understand there are real landmines and real challenges — ethically, morally, in security — I think personally, politically in the bias space is going to be a real big battle,” Hall said elsewhere in the interview.
“But it’s also important to recognize there are roses of opportunity, and that maybe it’s not as scary as you thought, because, quite frankly, you’ve been using AI for quite a while,” the author added.
On the topic of many Americans already using AI on a daily basis — perhaps without even noticing — Gingrich noted, “You get so used to things,” adding, “I’m told that there’s an exquisite timing system worldwide which enables your automatic teller machine to work, and that if that timing system wasn’t there, you literally couldn’t match up around the world.”
“I’ve been in places in rural Africa where I got money out of an ATM,” Gingrich added. “It sort of works. Which also, by the way, is a reminder that in certain kinds of conflicts, you may have an attack on the very structure of how you live, where the ATMs don’t work, the phones don’t work, GPS doesn’t work.”
“And that’s part of why we have to continue to invest, I think, in being able to defend ourselves,” Gingrich said. “I have to say this has been exhilarating. You’ve given me a whole bunch of new ideas.”
Alana Mastrangelo is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on Facebook and X at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
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