# Hill and Valley Forum An invitation-only consortium of US lawmakers, venture capitalists, founders, and national-security officials convened to align Silicon Valley with Washington against China's technological rise. The name fuses "the Hill" (Congress) with "the Valley" (Silicon Valley). Axios called it defense tech's **"Rosetta Stone"** — the place where the language of the two worlds gets translated. ## Founding First convened in **March 2023** by [[Jacob Helberg]] — then a US–China Economic and Security Review Commission member, later Under Secretary of State — alongside venture capitalists [[Delian Asparouhov]] ([[Founders Fund]] / [[Varda Space Industries]]) and Christian Garrett (137 Ventures). The working group also drew in [[Peter Thiel]] and [[Vinod Khosla]]. The inaugural private dinner in Washington was held just ahead of [[TikTok]] CEO Shou Zi Chew's congressional testimony and was attended by then-Speaker [[Kevin McCarthy]] and FCC Commissioner [[Brendan Carr]]. ## Purpose The Forum exists to build "connective tissue" between government and the tech industry and to make the case for an aggressive, well-funded US response to China across AI, defense, manufacturing, and chips. Recurring themes include the AI arms race, reindustrialization and reshoring, naval and defense technology, and US–China techno-economic competition. Critics on the restraint right and left (e.g. Responsible Statecraft) argue it functions as a war-gaming and lobbying engine that conveniently aligns national-security framing with its principals' investment portfolios. ## Annual Summits - **2024:** Sessions on the "second space race," military applications of AI, and the US–China techno-economic war. - **2025 ("Rebuilding America"):** Headlined by [[Alex Karp]] ([[Palantir]]), [[Jensen Huang]] (Nvidia), [[Howard Lutnick]], Josh Kushner, and [[Vinod Khosla]]. - **July 2025 — "Winning the AI Race":** Co-hosted in Washington with the [[All-In Podcast]] hosts; [[Donald Trump]] delivered the keynote and signed AI-policy actions, with panelists from [[Palantir]] and [[Hadrian]]. This is the event that fused the Forum's policy network with the All-In media platform. - **March 24, 2026:** Washington convening featuring [[OpenAI]]'s Kevin Weil, Alphabet's Ruth Porat, and Emil Michael (Pentagon R&E nominee), framed around the US semiquincentennial. ## Scale and Influence Organizers claim no other private convening assembles as many sitting members of Congress and senators — more than Davos, the Munich Security Conference, or the Reagan National Defense Forum. That concentration of lawmakers in a room curated by tech investors is precisely what makes the Forum a node of structural influence rather than a conference. ## RWKB Significance The Hill and Valley Forum is one of the clearest institutional expressions of the Silicon Valley–Washington realignment: a privately run channel where [[Founders Fund]]-world investors, [[Palantir]]/[[Anduril]] defense-tech leadership, and the [[All-In Podcast]] media apparatus converge on the same China-hawk, AI-deregulation, reindustrialization agenda — and increasingly staff the administration that acts on it. See [[Defense Tech Conflicts of Interest]] and [[Revolving Door]]. ## See Also - [[Jacob Helberg]] - [[Delian Asparouhov]] - [[All-In Podcast]] - [[Founders Fund]] - [[Palantir]] - [[Defense Tech Ecosystem]] - [[Defense Tech Conflicts of Interest]] - [[Revolving Door]]