Talking TAC

You are the sponsor of the CFTC's Technology Advisory Committee, which held its first meeting on March of 2023.

The agenda covered a deep dive into decentralized finance and cyber resilience, which you just mentioned, and it's tough to avoid the crypto conversation.

It also introduced the concept of responsible artificial intelligence.

What do you see as the key priorities for this committee going forward?

It's been really fantastic to get that advisory committee up and running.

As I look at the priorities, I kind of went to the charter and sort of start there.

And so when I look at it, the charter, it talks about the role.

And so this would also be my priorities, right? That the technology advisory committee is going to sort of assist the CFTC in identifying and understanding the impacts and then the implications of technological innovation and in our markets and financial services, and then provide advice on application and utilization of these new technologies.

Also provide advice to the commission on the commission's own investment in technology, like for surveillance and enforcement, and then more broadly inform the commission's consideration of all these technological related issues to support our mission.

I believed in reconstituting the TAC that we needed to stack the membership with technology experts who could really help us understand the technology before we're making policy decisions related to technology.

I'm sure you've heard this, right? People come in and say, this is new, innovative technology, whether it's crypto.

whatever.

And so it needs entirely new regulation.

I hear that all the time.

I think, why? Once I boil it down, the risks look a lot the same.

And so what happens is these tech companies come in and they come to talk to me and I can only describe it as like a pitch, a sales pitch.

And so I found myself sort of not knowing which part is real, which part is more aspirational than reality.

And then just honestly, which part is frankly hogwash.

And so it's Here I am like asking what I thought was pretty standard questions for a regulator.

Do you have independent third party audits of your system? And I told, oh, that's not how technology works.

And so, you know, a lot of it was me sort of saying, I don't want to get pitched, right? I want experts to come in, tell us how the technology works.

And then when they understand the regulatory concerns or congressional concerns, and we say, okay, well, how do we address those specific concerns? And so that's ultimately going to be the priority.

wherever the technology goes and whatever the use case.