U.S. lawmakers are weighing how to curb the growing adoption of Chinese AI models by homegrown companies, as the people who run the machinery of power worry that cheaper tools from abroad are slipping into the hands of firms they’d rather keep on a tighter leash.
Who Gets Watched
CNBC said Chinese models are gaining traction among U.S. firms because they’re closing the performance gap with American rivals while being cheaper to use. That’s the basic pressure point here: companies chasing lower costs, and lawmakers moving in to decide which tools are acceptable for the corporate class and which ones trigger a probe.
The House Committee on Homeland Security and the House Select Committee on China announced in April that they would jointly investigate the growing adoption of Chinese-developed AI models. As an initial step in the probe, the chairmen of those committees sent letters to Cursor and Airbnb over their “use of or exposure to these risks” through AI developed in China. The state’s security apparatus doesn’t wait long when it thinks control is slipping.
Andrew Garbarino, chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security, told CNBC, “The Chinese Communist Party is no longer just nipping at our heels in artificial intelligence; it is racing to close the gap in some of the exact capabilities that will shape the future of cybersecurity.” Garbarino also said, “Recent reporting that a Chinese open-weight model can match leading U.S. models in certain vulnerability discovery and cybersecurity tasks is highly alarming.”
What Power Calls a Threat
A State Department spokesperson told CNBC, “The growing use of Chinese AI models by U.S. companies raises serious concerns,” and said those “AI models are designed to advance Beijing's narratives, censor dissent, and reflect CCP ideology and values.” That’s the language of empire talking about another empire, with workers and users left to absorb the fallout while officials argue over whose machine gets to set the rules.
A spokesperson for the U.K. embassy of the People's Republic of China said the country “opposes baseless allegations and malicious smears against its AI development.” The spokesperson added that “China's thriving AI sector is built on self-reliance and strength in science and technology.”
CNBC said some government departments have banned the usage of Chinese AI models including DeepSeek, but adoption by U.S. companies is not prohibited. So the bans hit downward, not across. Public agencies can block what they don’t like, while private firms keep shopping for the cheapest option that still works.
Tech chiefs have already been bragging about the bargain. CNBC said crypto company Coinbase's Brian Armstrong and AI startup Lindy's Flo Crivello have publicly touted the use of models from China to reduce costs. Cursor, which will be acquired by Elon Musk's SpaceX for $60 billion, built its Composer 2 model using Chinese AI model Kimi, developed by Moonshot AI. The company declined to comment on the probe. Airbnb told CNBC that its “AI activity runs overwhelmingly on U.S.-origin models,” and that it uses a “limited number of China-origin models, all of which are open-source and run only through approved U.S.-based service providers, keeping data and operations separate and protected.”
The Reform Trap
The ongoing joint House Committees' investigation is also looking into whether the U.S. is doing enough to tackle the rise of Chinese AI models. A committee aide, who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to discuss the ongoing probe, told CNBC that the committees are also examining whether the United States has a sufficient open-weight AI strategy to ensure American companies and cyber defenders are not forced to choose between expensive or restricted U.S. models and cheap, capable PRC-developed alternatives.
That’s the whole game in one sentence: keep the market open enough to feed the companies, but controlled enough to protect the national-security state from whatever it can’t fully own.
Andy Ogles, chairman of the Subcommittee on Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection, called for a “serious strategy” to ensure American models are a “real alternative” to those from China. Ogles said in June, “When the cheap, capable, easy option for an AI model is Chinese, the rest of the world will build on it.” He added, “If we do nothing, Chinese models become the default foundation of the global digital economy, carrying embedded censorship, uncertain security, and capabilities distilled from our own laboratories with the safety guardrails stripped out.”
CNBC said the administration could consider federal procurement bans, including restricting government agencies and private companies that serve the U.S. government from using Chinese AI models, according to Kyle Chan, a fellow in the John L. Thornton China Center at Brookings. Chan said, “However, it's ultimately impossible to ban China's open-source AI models because their model weights are available freely on the internet.” He added, “This could enter into first amendment speech issues.”
Daniel Remler, senior fellow in the technology and national security program at the Center for a New American Security, told CNBC that the Trump administration is “clearly worried” about the risks from American companies' adoption of Chinese AI models, but restricting their use is going to be difficult. Remler said the administration may be worried that action against the Chinese models could harm start-ups that use these models, or chill support for open models generally. He said one approach could be procurement requirements that discourage companies that want to do business with the government from using Chinese AI models, and another could be disseminating findings about risks and vulnerabilities associated with Chinese AI models to U.S. companies. Remler said, “Regardless, I do expect both the Executive Branch and Congress to communicate their interest not to see U.S. companies adopting these models.”
The apparatus is already speaking. The only question is how hard it plans to squeeze.