Bipartisan bill aims to ban Chinese AI from federal agencies
A bipartisan group of lawmakers on Wednesday vowed to keep Chinese artificial intelligence systems out of federal agencies while pledging to ensure the U.S. will prevail against China in the global AI competition.
'We are in a new Cold War, and AI is the strategic technology at the center,' Rep. John Moolenaar, the Republican chair of the House Select Committee on China, said as he opened a hearing on the matter. 'The future balance of power may very well be determined by who leads in AI.'
The hearing on Capitol Hill comes about five months after a Chinese technology start-up called DeepSeek introduced an AI model that rivaled platforms from OpenAI and Google in performance, but cost only a fraction to build. This raised concerns that China was catching up to U.S. despite restrictions on chips and other key technologies used to develop AI.
The ever-tighter race is now a central part of the U.S.-China rivalry. And so much is at stake that the U.S. must win, witnesses told the congressional panel.
The two countries are 'in a long-term techno-security competition that will determine the shape of the global political order for the coming years,' said Thomas Mahnken, president and CEO of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
Jack Clark, co-founder and head of policy at Anthropic, told the committee that AI has built-in values.
'I know that AI systems are a reflection of the societies that are built from. AI built in democracies will lead to better technology for all of humanity. AI built in authoritarian nations will… be inescapably intertwined and imbued with authoritarianism,' Clark said. 'We must take decisive action to ensure America prevails.'
Earlier this year, Chris Lehane, OpenAI's head of global affairs, told reporters in Paris that the U.S. and China were the only two countries in the world that could build AI at scale. The competition, which he described as one between democratic AI and autocratic AI, is 'very real and very serious,' and the stakes are 'enormous,' he said, for 'the global rails of AI will be built by one of those two countries.'
The 2025 AI Index Report by Stanford University's Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence center has the U.S. in the lead in producing top AI models. But the report notes China is rapidly closing the performance gap, reaching near parity in 2024 on several major benchmarks. It also shows that China leads in AI publications and patents.
At the hearing, Clark urged the lawmakers to maintain and strengthen export controls of advanced chips to China. 'This competition fundamentally runs on compute,' he said. The U.S. must control the flow of powerful chips to China, Clark said, 'or else you're giving them the tools they will need to build powerful AI to harm American interests.'
Mark Beall, Jr., president of government affairs at The AI Policy Network, said there are 'a number of very glaring gaps' in the U.S. export controls that have allowed China to obtain controlled chips. Lawmakers earlier this year introduced a bill to track such chips to ensure they would not be diverted to the wrong hands.
In another legislative step, Republican and Democratic lawmakers in both the House and the Senate on Wednesday introduced a bill to ban Chinese AI systems in the federal government.
'The U.S. must draw a hard line: hostile AI systems have no business operating inside our government,' Moolenaar said.
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Newsweek
33 minutes ago
- Newsweek
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Hamilton Spectator
an hour ago
- Hamilton Spectator
Donald Trump likens U.S. strike on Iran to WWII atomic strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
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The report contradicts statements from U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the status of Iran's The report contradicts statements from U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the status of Iran's Describing as 'scum' those journalists who reported on the assessment that there had been only limited damage to Iran's nuclear program, Trump said that the intelligence was 'very inconclusive' and concluded that the damage 'could have been very severe.' Saying that there had since been additional intelligence reports as well as physical visits, he insisted Wednesday that Iran's nuclear ambitions had instead been set back by 'basically decades.' 'They just went through hell. I think they've had it. The last thing they want to do is enrich,' he said, adding that the American bomb strike 'ended the war.' 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Trump provided no details on negotiations between Israel and Iran that might result in a longer-term peace deal between the bitter enemies, but he suggested that the American strikes on Iran had resulted in 'great progress being made on Gaza.' 'Because of this attack that we made, I think we're going to have some very good news.' Israel is still seeking the return of hostages taken by Hamas in the attack of Oct. 7, 2023. United Nations officials are managing a humanitarian catastrophe affecting Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Earlier this week, in a briefing for journalists, the head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Jonathan Whitall, said that more than 400 Palestinians have been killed, most of them 'shot or shelled trying to reach U.S.-Israeli distribution sites purposefully set up in militarized zones.' 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Newsweek
2 hours ago
- Newsweek
US to Withdraw from NATO Under Republican Bill
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Republican Senator Mike Lee has introduced a bill to withdraw the U.S. from NATO following the completion of an alliance summit in The Hague. In reference to the alliance's acronym, the Utah lawmaker introduced the Not A Trusted Organization (NATO) Act to take the U.S. out from the bloc which he said had "run its course." The act would direct President Donald Trump to provide notice of denunciation of U.S. membership in NATO, consistent with Article 13 of the alliance treaty, Lee said. His statement added that the threats that existed at its inception were "no longer relevant" and that Europe "would be paying their fair share instead of making American taxpayers pick up the check for decades." This is a developing story to be updated.
