China has dismissed what it said were “fearmongering” calls for the US to block Beijing’s AI industry, even as the top Chinese spy chief warned the evolving technology could threaten Communist party rule. The US tech entrepreneur and Anthropic chief executive, Dario Amodei, wrote an essay published over the weekend that called for a global slowdown in AI capabilities, but also said Washington should actively impede Beijing’s advancement in order to keep a technological edge. Warning that AI could give the Chinese Communist party a chance “to militarily dominate democracies”, Amodei said he believed “a Chinese lead in AI would pose grave danger for the US and the world”.
China’s ministry of foreign affairs responded to a question about Amodei’s essay by saying all parties should work together on AI. In his essay, Amodei predicted that a swarm of AI “agents” could take over the internet in six to 12 months unless researchers agree to slow down. He said that while “global pacing will require cooperation with China”, steps were needed to “keep democracies’ AI lead over autocracies as large as possible”.
Other tech bosses, including the OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman, the Google DeepMind chair, Demis Hassabis, and the SpaceX chief, Elon Musk, have posted general support for Amodei’s lengthy essay, although not specifically on China. While Beijing rejects its dominance in AI would be dangerous, it does share fears over the pace of development. The president of China, Xi Jinping, warned at a conference in July that AI should “always remain under human control”.
But the extent of the Chinese government’s concerns was shown in an article published on Sunday in the state-run magazine China Cyberspace, in which the country’s top intelligence official wrote that the technology could threaten the government’s hold on power. The head of China’s ministry of state security, Chen Yixin, wrote that “hostile forces and individuals with ulterior motives” were abusing AI to wage a “propaganda war and a cognitive war against us, directly threatening our political security, institutional security, and ideological security”. Chen referred specifically to US models such as Anthropic’s Claude and OpenAI’s GPT-5.5-Cyber models, which he said have been weaponised and were examples of new threats to cybersecurity.
While the public, governments and tech bosses are now warning of the dangers of AI, Donald Trump has dismissed such concerns outright. On Monday, the US president said the only “guardrails” that AI needed were a “STRONG AND SMART” president. Trump has been particularly sensitive to stock market changes, and AI stocks have slipped after concerns over the pace of AI growth were raised.
The US and Chinese leaders are expected to discuss AI governance, among other topics, at a meeting planned on 24 September. In an editorial published Sunday, China’s state-run Global Times newspaper dismissed Amodei’s essay as a veiled call to “contain” China. The contributed to this report
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