China has pushed back against urgent calls from U.S. technology leaders to slow down artificial intelligence development, dismissing their warnings as “fearmongering” and part of a “Cold War playbook.” The exchange highlights the widening divide between Washington and Beijing over how to manage AI risks while competing for technological supremacy.
Beijing’s Sharp Response to U.S. Tech Leaders
The controversy followed a lengthy essay published Saturday by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, which was endorsed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and SpaceX founder Elon Musk. In the essay, titled “We Must Pace The Frontier,” Amodei argued that companies should deliberately slow the pace at which they improve their AI models due to potential risks. He also claimed that a “Chinese lead in AI would pose grave danger for the United States and the world” and called for restrictions on selling key technology to China.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun told reporters Monday that such warnings are counterproductive. “Fearmongering, confrontation and malicious competition will only disrupt the process of global AI governance and serve no one’s interests,” Guo said. The state-run Global Times newspaper was more blunt, calling the proposed slowdown a “Cold War playbook” for the AI sector that is “packed with containment provisions targeting China.”
Trump Prioritizes Competition Over Safety Concerns
The U.S. response has been mixed. President Donald Trump rebuffed the warnings from industry leaders, telling reporters Sunday, “We’re leading China in AI. We’re the most sophisticated country in the world, and frankly I want to keep it that way because whoever wins AI wins.” He criticized “very negative forces” for raising issues “that won’t happen.”
Meanwhile, Altman said on X that his company would adopt one of Amodei’s proposed safeguards and emphasized the need for international coordination. Amodei himself likened the situation to a Cold War arms race, telling CBS that the two sides should work together but that he didn’t hold out much hope.
China Acknowledges AI Security Risks
While Beijing rejects external calls to slow its AI progress, it has acknowledged the need to address security risks. State Security Minister Chen Yixin said Sunday that China must “accelerate the establishment of a system for preventing and controlling AI security risks.” Writing in the state-run China Cyberspace magazine, Chen also said, “We must engage extensively in international cooperation,” identifying AI as “a new track for strategic rivalry.”
The differing approaches are likely to be a central issue when Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Trump meet on Sept. 24 in Washington.
Distillation Dispute Adds to Tensions
Amodei’s essay came just days after U.S. agencies published an alert accusing top Chinese AI companies of systematically copying cutting-edge AI models from American companies. Beijing rejected the accusation that its companies had been “distilling” U.S. models.
China has also rejected any outside input on how its companies should pace development. “They want to write the rules. I don’t think they want to follow anybody else’s,” said Ja Ian Chong, an associate professor of political science at the National University of Singapore and a nonresident scholar at Carnegie China, in a phone interview with NBC News.
“There’s the sort of talk of cooperation, but the behavior suggests otherwise, and underlying that behavior, I think, is this deep mutual suspicion,” Chong said.
Chinese companies now offer advanced AI performance at a fraction of the cost of U.S. models. President Xi has pitched China as a pioneer of open-source models, in contrast to most leading American companies. At the BRICS summit in India on Sunday, he offered member nations help to develop open-source AI. Xi has also outlined a potential global governance framework on AI among the Global South.
Chong said the distillation clash highlighted the suspicion toward China in both the White House and Silicon Valley. “It’s a bit like an arms race. And to get de-escalation there needs to be simultaneous neutral self restraint and it’s difficult to see how that would come about in this kind of environment,” he said.
Prospects for Domestic Regulation
Not everyone is pessimistic. While a U.S.-China agreement on curbing AI progress may be a long shot, the countries could separately pursue greater regulation, said Theo Bertram, director of the London-based Social Market Foundation.
“The idea that we could see the domestic introduction of some safeguards in both countries is not impossible,” Bertram said in a phone interview. “You do it domestically and it’s in everyone’s interest to learn and share and for there to be accountability. Some greater accountability is one way of trying to mitigate what is inevitably going to be a growing political and public demand globally.”