As their heads were measured and fitted for custom-made felt cowboy hats, the 100 or so guests assembled in Utah’s scenic Wasatch Mountains in November 2023 had ample reason to feel special. The group of AI executives, venture capitalists, government officials, and policy folks, had been handpicked to attend a secretive three-day retreat focused on the national security implications of artificial intelligence.
Presiding over the confab was Alexandr Wang, the young CEO of data-labeling AI startup Scale AI. Wang’s company was seven years old and already worth $13 billion at the time, but the event at the Montage Deer Valley, cohosted with longtime Scale AI angel investor Nat Friedman, was clearly intended to signal Wang’s status as more than just the latest Silicon Valley wunderkind. Sitting alongside gray-haired Pentagon top brass, the 26-year-old Wang held forth on the U.S.-China AI arms race and other weighty topics.
