US security remains paramount in the continued rise of AI, according to Treasury Department secretary

In a post-COVID world, startup investing has grown beyond meeting in Silicon Valley coffee shops to talk business with new projects. This means investors are expanding their horizons to write checks across borders.

As investments grow globally, there’s still a concern stateside for security and making sure the U.S. protects its businesses, meaning it must monitor foreign inflows while still promoting innovation. “In our mandate, national security isn’t specifically defined because in many ways it’s an evolving concept,” Paul Rosen, assistant secretary of the treasury for investment security, said at TechCrunch Disrupt 2023.

As technological developments change, so does Rosen’s position.

For example, consider data and sensitive personal information, which are hot topics for both average Americans wanting to retain privacy and big corporations wanting to gain information on users.

Data is ubiquitous and whenever a company is developing new strategies, there’s a huge reliance on it, Rosen said. “One of the things that we think about is, well, what is the risk to national security if troves of data — whether it’s personal information [or] data around IP or others — get into the wrong hands?”