Image courtesy of RAFT.
Recently, Vice President JD Vance delivered some hard truths to our European friends at the Paris Artificial Intelligence Summit. In short, he broke down the inevitable results of excessively regulating AI: it would hurt small, innovative startups the most; it would discourage American R&D investments; and, last but certainly not least, it will drive nations around the world into the arms of the Chinese Communist Party.
The Vice President’s message should be well received following last month’s DeepSeek panic. The Chinese company’s apparent breakthrough sent markets into a frenzy, and President Trump said it “should be a wake-up call” for American tech companies. I can’t imagine many of America’s innovators slept through this alarm – we have ground to make up.
DeepSeek sparked such a reaction largely because it’s performed so well in tests compared with rival American AI models like OpenAI, DeepMind or Llama. Remember when Facebook first came onto the scene and destroyed Myspace? Or when Apple wiped the floor with Motorola and Nokia?
It’s our job to ensure that American AI models don’t become the next Myspace, and that requires more innovation and less regulation – our national security, as well as the national security of our friends and allies around the world, depends on it.
First, just as the vice president did with our allies in Paris, we need to look ourselves in the mirror and accept some hard truths. There’s no denying that we’re at an institutional disadvantage to the CCP when it comes to developing these new technologies.
I’m not referring to the fact that China has roughly nine times as many engineers as the U.S., or that they have as many as 15 times more science and technology graduates. I’m referring to the fact that American tech companies rightly abide by the principles of responsible AI – the consideration of societal impact, legal standards, and ethical values. The Chinese Communist Party simply does not share these concerns.
That’s why the risk of losing this race is so high – it would mean nations around the world adopting and deploying Chinese AI models that can be used for malign purposes. We know that DeepSeek gathers data on its users – very similar to the way TikTok collects data – and censors responses to comply with the CCP’s speech controls. Vice President Vance was right to warn our allies that “partnering with them means chaining your nation to an authoritarian master that seeks to infiltrate, dig in, and seize your information infrastructure.”
America’s responsible, ethical AI technology standards are the very reason our partners and allies are right to follow U.S. leadership in this space. We need to be responsible, but we also need to recognize that unnecessary regulation will slow innovation and make it harder for U.S. companies to compete with China.
If the U.S. and our allies can accept this reality – that innovation and responsibility are not mutually exclusive – and then translate it into policy that encourages competition, then we’ll have appropriately responded to China’s wake-up call.
If you ask DeepSeek what happened in Tiananmen Square in June 1989, it’ll respond, “I am sorry, I cannot answer that question.”
We need to ask ourselves, “How are we going to outpace China and ensure U.S. leadership in AI?” Fortunately, and unlike DeepSeek, we have an answer: American competition.
