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 DeekSeek 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.