China fires back at U.S. AI safety warnings, calling them fearmongering to lock in American advantage
| Source: THE DECODER
Tags: Dario Amodei, Anthropic, US-China AI, AI governance, AI safety, Sam Altman, OpenAI
China's Foreign Ministry and state-run Global Times rejected calls for an AI slowdown from Amodei, Altman, and Musk as "fearmongering" designed to lock in U.S. advantage, while China's security minister pushed for faster chip development and AI buildout — a direct diplomatic clash arriving 10 days before the Trump-Xi summit.
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The diplomatic fault lines around AI governance sharpened this week as China formally pushed back against calls for an AI slowdown from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI's Sam Altman, and Elon Musk. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun framed the warnings as "fearmongering" that serves narrow interests, calling for "open, inclusive, universally beneficial and ethical" AI development instead. China's state-run Global Times went further, accusing Amodei of waging a "silent AI Cold War" to stifle China's technological progress. The specific trigger was Amodei's push against "distillation" — training Chinese models on outputs from U.S. systems — which Beijing reads as market protection dressed up as safety concern. China's State Security Minister Chen Yixin explicitly named Anthropic's Mythos and OpenAI's GPT-5.5-Cyber as AI models capable of finding vulnerabilities and generating malware, while calling for more chip research and faster infrastructure buildout rather than any slowdown. Trump has made clear he also opposes voluntary AI pacing, citing the race with China. The exchange arrives 10 days before the planned Trump-Xi summit on September 24. With both Beijing and Washington opposing slowdowns, the coordinated industry push by AI labs collapses into an arms race dynamic — labs either slow unilaterally or accelerate to stay relevant.