Beijing Looms Large Over American AI Politics - Newsweek

Much like the race for supremacy in nuclear arms and space exploration during the Cold War, the United States once again finds itself contending with a communist rival with vast capabilities in a cutting-edge field likely to define the world for generations to come. AI, however, in many ways poses an even more complex set of challenges as the U.S. and China move to set and advance their agendas.

As the debate over AI policy plays out in Washington, no issue animates support for an aggressive AI buildout more than the national security implications. In Newsweek’s AI Policy Scorecard, 86 members received the highest Booster score of 5 in National Security for their positions on AI issues tied to national security and competition with China. That’s more than the other four questions covering regulation, data centers, jobs and safety. The caucuses sit closer here than on any other question in the scorecard—Democrats average 3.9, Republicans 4.4.

“China is increasingly being invoked to justify differing policy positions on AI regulation,” Kyle Chan, fellow at the Brookings Institution’s John L. Thornton China Center who specializes in U.S.-China relations and emerging technologies, told Newsweek. “We can all agree that China is the elephant in the room for AI regulation, but we don’t agree on what’s the best approach for dealing with China.”

“In general, people looking for some kind of unifying force behind the AI debate are looking to China,” Chan said. “There’s an effort to find common ground on AI issues in the face of so much division.”

AI indeed remains a divisive issue in Congress. The largest share of lawmakers—191—received a Mixed score of between 2.8 and 3.2, while Skeptics outweigh the Boosters at 162 to 146, according to the AI Policy Scorecard data. But even among those who aim to rein in AI at home through stricter regulation, some lawmakers stand out as prominent proponents of the narrative that the field constitutes a powerful tool in the superpower contest with China.

In the Democratic camp, they include Senators Dick Durbin and Amy Klobuchar, each of whom has a 5 in the national security and China component of AI policy while scoring under 2 in the other categories concerning domestic policy, indicating a track record of seeking more stringent checks and balances on AI at home.

Among Republicans, Senator Josh Hawley emerges as one of the most prominent proponents of curbing unbridled AI expansion at home while pushing for supremacy against China in this field.

Seth Center, former State Department acting special envoy for critical and emerging technologies who co-led the first U.S.-China AI dialogue in 2024, argued the two positions may ultimately collide.

“You cannot hold a ‘beat China in AI consensus’ and a ‘slow down AI development and stop AI infrastructure projects’ view domestically forever without contradictions emerging sooner rather than later,” Center told Newsweek. “There is a synthesis, but politics seems to be making it less likely.”

Another significant group of lawmakers generally prefer boosting AI proliferation in the U.S. rather than imposing guardrails as the way to meet the challenge from Beijing.

Republicans within this faction include Representatives Elise Stefanik of New York, who is retiring from the House, Jodey Arrington of Texas, Richard McCormick of Georgia, Warren Davidson of Ohio and Steve Scalise of Louisiana.

Meanwhile, the lead Democrat in this group is Representative Jared Golden of Maine, also retiring at the end of this term, who ranks second behind Pennsylvania’s Senator John Fetterman as the top-ranked AI boosters in his party.

Jessica Brandt, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and former head of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s Foreign Malign Influence Center, pointed to “a broad consensus that AI could transform the balance of military and economic power globally for decades to come and have profound consequences for the rights and freedoms of millions of people around the world.”

“That shared understanding creates a simple, unifying logic: it’s better to win the race with China than to lose it,” Brandt told Newsweek.

Yet she argued that “the consensus breaks down over what ‘winning’ actually means,” as goals remain ill-defined by Democrats and Republicans alike.

And given Beijing’s notable advances in AI, Brandt argued that time was of the essence for outlining U.S. objectives and concrete strategies to pursue them.

“A year ago, the dominant conversation was: How can we beat China in the race to the frontier?” Brandt said. “Now the conversation is shifting to: How, if at all, can we pace the frontier without China?”

Meanwhile, in Beijing, a parallel debate is playing out among policymakers observing the same growing chorus of warnings from experts about the potential risks posed by runaway AI advances. After all, if models indicate AI could one day render humanity obsolete, unchecked proliferation could also theoretically challenge the dominance of the Chinese Communist Party, which Brandt defines as one of the top motivations coloring China’s discussions on safety.

But there are risks for Washington in this scenario as well, serving as yet another factor bringing both U.S. parties together on the links between AI and China policies.

If China doesn’t get AI safety under control, the consequences are swift and global, R. David Edelman, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Project on Technology, the Economy & National Security, told Newsweek: “The geopolitical risks of a cavalier approach to AI in Beijing could break out into a shooting war far quicker than many would care to admit.

“So regardless of what motivates lawmakers—whether they are concerned about advanced AI as an existential risk to humanity, as a critical way to grow the economy amidst global competition or as a risk to our national security in another country’s hands—all of those policies demand a thoughtful approach to China,” Edelman said.

There is also some logic to seeking cooperation.

“Both governments have an interest in regular channels for flagging and fixing vulnerabilities before they become crises,” Jessica Chen Weiss, former U.S. State Department official who serves as faculty director of Johns Hopkins University’s Institute for America, China and the Future of Global Affairs, told Newsweek.

“As China bets on open-weight models, its companies have a growing stake in sharing threat information and best practices,” Weiss said. “Technical dialogues could make both countries safer, starting with a common enemy: the ransomware gangs that exploit shared vulnerabilities.”

In fact, there is precedent for such collaboration.

Weiss pointed out that when California-based cybersecurity firm Calif used AI to detect a bug that could allow illicit access to accounts associated with popular Chinese messaging platform WeChat, the findings were reported to Shenzhen-based parent conglomerate Tencent.

“That is the kind of disclosure both governments should want more of,” Weiss said.