Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif), a top Congressional watchdog, found his latest calling supporting Gold Star families after 13 U.S. servicemembers were killed by a suicide bomber during Joe Biden’s disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal; which he discussed, along with his bills on sanctuary cities and patent reform, in an exclusive interview with the Washington Reporter.
Following the Afghanistan withdrawal, Issa helped spring one of the Gold Star family members from jail after a senseless arrest, hosted several Gold Star families at a nationally-televised town hall, defended one of the group’s organizers from media hit pieces, and more.
Vice President Kamala Harris’s pride about being the last person in the room for Biden’s decision to get out of Afghanistan concerns Issa, he said: “She has continued to find nothing to change if she were to face the same problem of an ally being overrun by an extreme terrorist network.”
“It’s not learning from history that concerns me, and that’s exactly what the debate showed, that’s what Harris’s continued stance shows, and that’s the part that is undeniable,” Issa said. “We’re staying on it because if we don’t learn from that history, then I’m afraid we’re going to repeat it and repeat it sometime relatively soon.”
Harris has never met with any of the Gold Star family members, even though Issa has repeatedly invited Harris, in public and in private, to meet with them.
Issa’s caution about the administration’s failures to learn isn’t baseless; the Reporter previously covered how the State Department has failed to reform any of its evacuation protocols even in the wake of their systemic failures in Afghanistan. Since August 2021, American embassies in Ukraine, Haiti, Sudan, and beyond have been fully or partially evacuated.
Along with serving on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Issa is also on the bipartisan Task Force on Artificial Intelligence (AI). As a patent-holding lawmaker, Issa is worried that government regulation is going to snuff out this growing industry.
The government’s tendency to create problems where none exist ”would have kept the Wright Brothers from getting off the ground, literally…One of the things that’s most frustrating, of course, is government thinking that they know what the truth is,” he said, referencing the government’s many failures exhibited during the COVID-19 pandemic. “If that’s the case, then Dr. Fauci told us everything we had to know with explicit accuracy as he guided us and we should insist that no data ever conflict with that. Of course, that’s ridiculous.”
Issa, who recently introduced a bill that would “deem any foreign official who violates the First Amendment rights of Americans on U.S. soil as inadmissible and subject to deportation from the United States,” pointed to Brazil as an ongoing cautionary tale. His latest legislation follows “the abuse of power by the Supreme Court in Brazil [by] targeting Elon Musk and blocking access to X.”
“A good example of this [tendency for government overreach] is in Brazil,” Issa said. “Years ago, it wanted to pass a law…where they were going to say all data had to be localized, that everything had to be on servers in Brazil, and none of it could pass [out of the country so] that Google would have to duplicate in Brazil, and presumably 190 other countries each time.”
While the bill was ultimately unsuccessful, it remains a cautionary tale about the government tendency to abuse its powers, something that Issa regularly sees firsthand from his perches on the Judiciary and Weaponization Committees this Congress.
For years, Issa has pushed back on the government picking winners and losers, dating back to his viral hearing moments during the Obama administration, in which he exposed that the government was classifying oil lobbyists as “green” jobs to cook the books.
The government’s desire to stifle private sector innovation is nothing new, Issa said, citing the Wright Brothers and their feud with the Smithsonian Institution, which claimed that the government-backed “aerodrome” was actually the first device capable of flight.
“Even years after the Wright Brothers were flying, this model that claimed to be first, the government-backed model, didn’t fly,” Issa said. “And that…should tell us all you need to know about government picking winners and losers. They can literally pick a plane that didn’t fly and say it won.”
Below is a transcript of our interview with Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.), lightly edited for clarity.
Washington Reporter:
Congressman Issa, thanks so much for talking today. Let’s start with one of your highest-profile priorities from this Congress: oversight into our failed withdrawal from Afghanistan, and leading the fight for accountability for the Gold Star families who have been denigrated by this White House. What is the latest on your work there?
Rep. Darrell Issa:
I’m going to be with these Gold Star families, along with Utah’s attorney general and governor, and President Donald Trump, as he continues to put extra time into those who have fallen or have been injured in the withdrawal from Afghanistan, something he believes very strongly in.
Washington Reporter:
We recently wrote a piece about you inviting Kamala Harris to the Congressional Gold Medal ceremony for these Gold Star families. She didn’t show up to that. How do you see her responsibility factoring into our failures with Afghanistan?
Rep. Darrell Issa:
Well, I think the biggest challenge we have with her failure is not just that she was the last one in the room, but that she has continued to find nothing to change if she were to face the same problem of an ally being overrun by an extreme terrorist network. And that’s what I think everyone should be most concerned about, is that when asked if her values changed, she said, no, my values haven’t changed. But there’s a difference between values and a decision about what one would do in a situation, if you think that the withdrawal from Afghanistan, or, for that matter, leaving Afghanistan was not keeping their promises is a good idea, then I see the withdrawal from Syria, and our work there, I see a withdrawal from supporting the Kurds as they try to not be absorbed by the problems that we’re facing in Iraq, and for that matter, areas like the Armenians. So we have a number of areas that we as the United States have continued to be helpful in, from one president to the other, and yet in Afghanistan, we let terrorists have the day. It’s not learning from history that concerns me, and that’s exactly what the debate showed, that’s what Harris’s continued stance shows, and that’s the part that is undeniable. Our committee and myself personally and others, we’re not staying on the Afghan withdrawal for purely political reasons. We’re staying on it because if we don’t learn from that history, then I’m afraid we’re going to repeat it and and repeat it sometime relatively soon. That’s kind of where I think anyone who is a student of history would say that’s the challenge that every generation fails. We left almost 20 years of support in South Vietnam. We left it with a functional government, we left with an agreed-upon truce, and when the Chinese and the North Vietnamese violated that, what did we do? We did nothing, and they got to take a country. It’s exactly what happened in Afghanistan; they made a deal, and when they reneged on it, we did not do what, quite historically, Richard Nixon did. Richard Nixon had ceasefires, and he had negotiations for a protracted period of time under Henry Kissinger. And yet when it was necessary, he began bombing Hanoi again, and they came back to the table a little shell-shocked, both literally and figuratively. Eventually we got the deal that, had we at first, said, ‘you break it, we come back’ under Gerald Ford, history would be very different. Vietnam likely would be a functioning democracy like South Korea, rather than an economically successful place in which there is no democracy and no freedom for its people.
Washington Reporter:
Last month, we wrote a big piece about a lot of the work of your office on the Afghanistan withdrawal. Since we left Afghanistan, there have been constant embassy evacuations under the Biden administration, with no serious changes in policy. Going back to your time with these Gold Star families, how do you see them still being able to make a difference?
Rep. Darrell Issa:
Well, every time the Gold Star families stand up and say, ‘this isn’t over, and we’re not going anywhere, we’re going to be here and we’re going to be here no matter who the next president is, and we’re going to be here until we get both answers and change,’ they do a service for every man and woman who lost whatever it happened to be: their youth, their shyness, their limbs, or their life. They’re standing up for them and saying, ‘the only way to not have it be in vain is for us to demand accountability, and in this case, accountability and some procedural changes so this doesn’t happen again.’
Washington Reporter:
More broadly, we were just in your district, visiting the southern border. You recently introduced the Sanctuary City Accountability Act. How do you see this playing out between now and November and beyond?
Rep. Darrell Issa:
The important thing is that California and other sanctuary states have to be aware that these decisions cannot be made in a vacuum, where they make a decision to do exactly what’s occurred, which is to have a huge influx of undocumented individuals and groups who want to be supported by government, and then say it’s not our fault the federal government needs to come in. We need to change that. We need to make the states and the cities responsible for their actions. And that’s what we seek to do.
Washington Reporter:
You have more patents than basically everyone in Congress combined. You’re working on Congress’s AI Task Force. What do you see as the role of government in regulating or not regulating this sector? In that same vein, you recently rolled out the Preventing Abuse of Digital Replicas Act. Where does your background in the tech sector come in here?
Rep. Darrell Issa:
It comes in because the existing tools are really not sufficient in some cases. However, the existing standards are. In other words, under trademark law today, if you create something that is confusing as to its origin, then in fact, the trademark holder has the right to stop you and to be compensated for the loss. The problem is, if I make a deep fake of you, under current law, it’s not treated the way a trademark is, and that’s what we’re seeking to do, is simply take existing rules of the road, existing standards, and then just make the small changes necessary to make them apply to the technology that now is creating a different type of theft of intellectual property. But you asked an important question, which is: regulate or support blank or blank? Well, the most important thing is, don’t start off with regulate. Start off with problem-solving. If it isn’t a problem, let’s not solve it. And then a lot of people are trying to solve the could be, would be, might be, by saying, ‘well, you’ve got to create databases and let us look for problems. Do not ingest this.’ Those kinds of restrictions would have kept the Wright Brothers from getting off the ground, literally. A good example of this is in Brazil. Years ago, it wanted to pass a law, and it did essentially come to that, where they were going to say all data had to be localized, that everything had to be on servers in Brazil, and none of it could pass so that Google would have to duplicate in Brazil, and presumably 190 other countries each time. And of course, some of them, like Luxembourg, might be a little little on the small side. But also, if you did that, the benefit of large databases would go away. And so fortunately, they and Spain and others didn’t carry the day, but they wanted to. One of the things that’s most frustrating, of course, is government thinking that they know what the truth is. If that’s the case, then Dr. Fauci told us everything we had to know with explicit accuracy as he guided us and we should insist that no data ever conflict with that. Of course, that’s ridiculous. Today, because people did argue and did do studies, we know differently. Well, same is true in the development of AI. If we tell AI what to ingest, we tell AI how it has to deal with answering, then there’ll only be one form of AI. It will be the one that government built.
Washington Reporter:
You’re on both the Judiciary and Weaponization committees. How do you think that the government, should Donald Trump win and maybe even if he doesn’t, scale back weaponized government?
Rep. Darrell Issa:
We have to guard against both administrations, Harris’s, who would like to continue the growth and weaponization with their slant on it, and the natural tendency by any bureaucracy to simply try to grow its importance. Yes, the latter is more benign under a Trump administration, but it still has to be pushed back on. You also see this with the proposals in Congress, where they want to set up commissions and study groups that only spend X millions of dollars, or maybe only a single billion. Well, that’s sort of like saying Medicare was only going to be less than the 20th of its size as a percent of GDP. Bureaucracies grow and so we’re going to have to be prepared in both cases. I mentioned earlier the Wright Brothers, but just to give you an interesting one, you do know the history of the Wright Brothers are credited with being the first to have a successful powered flight under the definition of flight. What people don’t know is backed by the Smithsonian Institution, there was a claim that they actually had an earlier version, that earlier flight capability was given to them, and as a result, their patent was invalid, and that was the Langley Controversy. And they went back and forth. And one of the things that culminated it was the Smithsonian took an aircraft that now we know, in retrospect, had been highly modified to employ some of the things that weren’t known at the time that the Wright Brothers had done. They put it on a U.S. ship, steamed it at full speed so it could take off from the deck, in hopes that it would successfully fly, and it didn’t. So even years after the Wright Brothers were flying, this model that claimed to be first, the government-backed model, didn’t fly. And that should tell us all you need to know about government picking winners and losers. They can literally pick a plane that didn’t fly and say it won. Flying is one of those things that even a layperson see which one works better.
Washington Reporter:
Congressman Issa, thanks so much for chatting today.