Mike Gallagher is a former US Representative for Wisconsin's 8th Congressional District (2017–2024) and the founding chair of the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party ("Select Committee on China"). He led the committee from its 2023 establishment until he retired from Congress mid-term in 2024. A Marine Corps veteran with a PhD in international relations, he was among the more prominent China hawks in Congress.
Record on AI and technology competition
As founding chair, Gallagher set the Select Committee's early agenda on export controls and AI and national security: technology decoupling, outbound-investment screening, and tighter controls on advanced-semiconductor and chip-equipment exports to China. He was the lead author of the bill to force TikTok's Chinese owner, ByteDance, to divest or face a US ban, the highest-profile technology-decoupling measure of his tenure.
Gallagher's framing was more decoupling-focused than that of his successor as chair, John Moolenaar, whose approach has been characterized as oriented more toward competition and deterrence, preserving a US lead rather than severing links. He is named as founding chair on House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party and as the prior chair on John Moolenaar, and his agenda preceded the SCALE Act and the broader export-controls thread.
Move to the private sector
In March 2024, Gallagher announced he would leave Congress to become Head of Defense at Palantir Technologies (Source: forbes.com). He is also a distinguished fellow at the Hudson Institute (Source: hudson.org). The move placed a former leading congressional China hawk inside one of the defense-AI vendors most enmeshed with the Pentagon, an instance of the policy-to-industry path in the defense-AI space (Defense / Military — AI Deployment, AI and National Security).
Relationships
- related: House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, John Moolenaar, Palantir Technologies, Export Controls (AI), AI and National Security, Defense / Military — AI Deployment
Provenance note: Biographical anchor built from Hudson Institute and Forbes; current role (Palantir Head of Defense) corroborated across Hudson, UC San Diego 21st Century China Center, and EXIM.gov bios.
[[companies/palantir]]referenced; confirm/create on next companies/ rotation.