Trump, Johnson Reject AI Slowdown, Warn of China Risk — SkimNews
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- Dario Amodei published an open letter calling to "pace the frontier" and slow down AI development
- Sam Altman and Elon Musk publicly voiced support for Amodei's proposal on X, while Alphabet's Demis Hassabis offered tentative backing
- Trump told the Financial Times the US is leading China in AI and "whoever wins AI, wins," rejecting the slowdown push as overreaction
- Mike Johnson told CNN's Jake Tapper that rushing to impose AI restrictions through an emergency congressional session would itself be a "national security threat"
- Johnson urged the public not to panic and warned that if Congress races to regulate AI, "we will lose the race to China"
Why it matters: Every major AI lab cited in the FT report — Anthropic, OpenAI, Alphabet, and Musk — backs slowing frontier development, making the Trump-Johnson pushback a rare case of politicians overruling near-unanimous industry consensus. With Anthropic's CEO publicly lobbying for restraint and Congressional leadership framing regulation itself as a security threat, the political incentive to outpace Beijing may foreclose the self-pause window the labs are asking for.
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