U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn praised Vanderbilt University for convening leading voices in military, intelligence, and technology during a fireside chat at the 2025 Summit on Modern Conflict and Emerging Threats.
“I am thrilled that Vanderbilt is doing this,” playing a key role in advancing national security research and awareness—through the summit and the founding of the Institute of National Security, “I am just so pleased that your attention is in this area,” Blackburn said. “To me, it is a very exciting time, not only for the work you all are doing here at Vanderbilt, but for our state, for our region.”
Blackburn spoke with Brett Benson, associate professor of political science and Asian studies, in a keynote conversation that explored the risks and opportunities emerging technologies pose for national security.
She emphasized the need to maintain U.S. leadership in artificial intelligence and quantum computing and outlined her efforts to support these goals without stifling innovation.
She described a series of bipartisan efforts to stimulate federal support for quantum research and commercialization, including legislation to establish testbeds for near-term quantum technologies and to build a new quantum manufacturing institute.
Blackburn pointed to Chattanooga’s efforts to deploy the first commercially available quantum network as an example of the state’s leadership in the field. “We want those innovations to be here,” she said. “And that is something that we as a government should want.”
Blackburn highlighted the Pathfinder program, established in 2021 to foster collaboration between academics and soldiers in co-designing solutions, as a model for aligning military needs with university research. Vanderbilt has been involved in the program since its inception. She praised the university’s contributions and said public-private-academic partnerships like Pathfinder are essential to advancing national defense.
“It puts the warfighter with the researchers that are here at the university,” she said. “It allows the warfighter to say, ‘Here is a problem set,’ and it allows the researchers to say, ‘Let’s solve this, and here is a toolbox that we can use.’ We need more of that.”
She acknowledged the challenge lawmakers face in keeping up with rapid technological change and emphasized the need for legislative flexibility.
“Congress moves at a snail’s pace. A new technology can go through a complete generation of its life in 18 months,” she said. “You cannot legislate to the technology. You have to make certain that you’re putting a framework in place, but not to the specific technology.”
Blackburn returned several times to the theme of collaboration, especially between the U.S. and its allies. She warned of what she called a “new axis of evil”—Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea—and said their growing cooperation demands a coordinated response.
Global dominance “is China’s goal, and we know they are working tirelessly on it,” she said.
“AI is going to be our biggest development,” she said. “If China wins that, they’re going to be able to break a lot of encryptions (technology) that we rely on. Quantum provides the rails that a lot of your AI is going to run on. China would like to dominate this market by the time we get to 2030.”
The senator closed by encouraging institutions like Vanderbilt to continue investing in national security scholarship and public awareness.
“Vanderbilt is playing a role, and each of you are playing a role by being here, by caring about our nation’s security, caring about emerging threats and educating people about these threats,” she said. “Protecting the privacy and security of our nation’s people is vitally important and it comes from educational research institutions like Vanderbilt.”