U.S. Treasury Secretary Warns Against Losing AI Race to China

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent declared that winning the artificial intelligence race against China is imperative for national security, stating there is "no day after tomorrow" if Beijing prevails. Speaking at a State of the Economy event, Bessent argued that a Chinese lead in AI would render other U.S. advantages irrelevant and urged the rapid expansion of data center infrastructure. He further alleged that some domestic opposition to these projects involves Chinese "agitprop."

President Donald Trump has echoed these warnings to oppose efforts to slow AI development. However, internal opposition is growing. Senator Bernie Sanders called for an immediate pause on AI development, citing safety risks, while Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro implemented strict permit requirements for data centers due to environmental and cost concerns. These tensions are heightened by warnings from Anthropic alignment-science lead Evan Hubinger, who suggested AI could potentially kill all humans.

Adding to the friction, a joint advisory from the National Security Agency, the FBI, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency accused six China-based AI companies—including Alibaba and DeepSeek—of conducting industrial-scale "malicious" knowledge distillation. The agencies allege these firms used millions of requests to extract proprietary capabilities from U.S. models like Claude and GPT since late 2024. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China rejected these allegations, asserting that its AI development stems from domestic innovation.