China’s Foreign Ministry on Monday pushed back on calls from U.S. AI executives to slow the development of artificial intelligence, calling the warnings “fear mongering” and warning that the fight over AI is already being framed as a contest between rival power blocs. Spokesperson Guo Jiakun said, “Fear mongering, confrontation, competition will just disrupt [the] process of global AI governance,” after questions about Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and other U.S. tech leaders.
The people who will live with the consequences are not the ones setting the terms. That much is plain. Amodei, in a lengthy essay published Saturday, said a “Chinese lead in AI would pose grave danger for the United States and the world.” He called for keeping restrictions on sales to China of the most advanced AI chips and chipmaking equipment so the U.S. could preserve its technological edge. In the same essay, he warned that a swarm of AI “agents” could take over the internet in six to 12 months unless researchers agree to slow down. He also said that “global pacing will require cooperation with China, the autocratic country with by far the most advanced AI capabilities.”
Who Gets to Set the Pace
China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Amodei’s warnings about China were counterproductive and that all parties should work together on AI. That’s the language of governance from above, with both sides claiming to manage a technology that already sits inside state power, corporate power, and military-style competition. Chinese leaders have also warned about AI risks, but they’ve done it while defending their own position in the same hierarchy.
A top security official in China’s government published an essay on Sunday accusing “certain nations” — a reference to the U.S. — of using AI advantages to hinder other countries’ innovation. China’s Minister of State Security, Chen Yixin, went further in an article on Sunday, calling for the acceleration of construction of an AI security risk prevention and control system. He said AI had become “the main battleground for global technological competition and a new arena for strategic rivalry among major powers,” and said there was a need for “healthy and orderly” development of the technology.
Chen’s own warning showed what “order” means in practice. In an essay posted Sunday on social media, he said that in the hands of “hostile forces and individuals with ulterior motives,” the technology could threaten “our political, institutional, and ideological security.” He said “certain nations and organizations” now had the ability to “rapidly discover vulnerabilities at scale ... and execute complex hacking tasks,” creating “serious risks to my country’s critical information infrastructure.” He also wrote that foreign spying agencies are turning to AI to “aggressively harvest sensitive data, including critical national data, trade secrets, and citizens’ personal privacy information.”
The Security State Speaks First
That’s the apparatus talking in its own voice. Not workers. Not users. Not the people whose data gets harvested, whose privacy gets stripped, or whose lives get folded into a competition between governments and firms. The Ministry of State Security wants a prevention-and-control system. The U.S. side wants chip restrictions. Both are talking about control, just with different flags.
In an editorial published Sunday, China’s state-run Global Times dismissed Amodei’s essay as a veiled call to “contain” China. It said the essay may appear to focus on global AI security, but was “packed with containment provisions targeting China and is, in essence, a ‘Cold War playbook’ for the AI sector.” China’s Commerce Ministry dismissed U.S. claims that Chinese AI developers had engaged in “distilling” capabilities from advanced U.S. models as groundless and said distillation has been commonly used by many AI companies. It also said the U.S. was pursuing a “monopoly of the AI industry.”
The market noticed the fight, because markets always do when power struggles threaten profit. AI-related stocks slumped on Monday, with SoftBank, one of the biggest investors in OpenAI, down 10% in Japan. That’s the cost of a system where a handful of investors and executives can shake entire sectors while ordinary people are left to absorb the fallout.
Who Wins the Race
U.S. President Donald Trump also warned against the U.S. losing any strategic advantage in the AI arms race. During a trip to Ireland, he rejected the AI bosses’ calls, saying, “Look, we’re leading China in AI... and, frankly I want to keep it that way because whoever wins AI, wins.” On Monday, Trump pushed back against calls for his administration to step in to slow down AI development, saying such efforts were part of a “SICK conspiracy” which could allow China to eclipse the U.S. on AI.
Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping are expected to discuss AI governance, among other topics, at a meeting planned on Sept. 24. At the weekend, Xi said at the BRICS bloc summit in New Delhi that China will take the lead to help foster AI collaboration and development among developing countries. Xi has also called for the setting up of a global AI governance framework among the Global South, while pitching China as a pioneer in establishing an open-source AI community.
The language shifts, but the structure doesn’t. One side talks about containment. The other talks about leadership. Both are trying to define the rules for everyone else.
Chinese companies have developed powerful AI models that are often cheaper to use than advanced models from U.S.-based companies; by some measures, they are just as capable. Helen Toner, executive director of the Georgetown Center for Security and Emerging Technology and former OpenAI board member, said on CNBC’s "Squawk Box" Monday: "The best estimates tend to say China's very best models are something like six to nine months behind the very best U.S. models." She added, "If that means that we slow down and they just rip past us because they're pretty close behind — that's a problem," and said, "It's actually not clear how much of their advancements are sort of fast following. Where if the U.S. frontier slows, perhaps China also slows somewhat."
That’s the whole game in one sentence: slow the frontier, keep the edge, preserve the hierarchy. The people outside the boardrooms and ministries get told it’s about safety, governance, and national interest. The machinery underneath keeps moving anyway.