Khanna Pressures ODNI, Chinese AI Labs on Safety Treaty — SkimNews
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- Rep. Ro Khanna sent letters to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and to DeepSeek, Alibaba, and Moonshot AI seeking documentation on their work toward "superintelligence" and recursive self-improvement, including any safeguards and "kill switches."
- Khanna asked the three Chinese AI companies whether they would commit to inspections by a non-governmental agency if a US-China treaty were struck, acknowledging they are unlikely to respond in full.
- Khanna proposed a US-China treaty banning recursive self-improvement and monitoring frontier AI labs, telling The Verge that Trump and Xi Jinping's agreement to hold an ongoing AI dialogue is "constructive but not nearly adequate."
- DeepSeek, Alibaba, and Moonshot AI did not respond to an earlier Khanna letter asking them to commit to slowing AI development alongside OpenAI and Anthropic; neither the companies nor ODNI responded to The Verge's requests for comment.
- Trump posted on Truth Social the morning of his Xi meeting that "Super Intelligence (SI) will be a big topic of discussion, but I want to leave it exactly where it is. That is China's position also," signaling no appetite for new AI rules.
- Khanna dismissed a planned Tuesday White House meeting between Trump, Speaker Mike Johnson, and American tech executives as a "branding exercise," asking "why should we trust companies that have a motive to maximize profits to be making the rules for what is safe?"
- House China Committee Chair John Moolenaar (R-MI) has expressed skepticism that China would uphold any treaty, while Sen. Bernie Sanders has separately called for a US-China AI accord.
Why it matters: Khanna's letters create the first formal congressional record demanding that Chinese AI labs disclose RSI work and accept outside inspections, framing AI safety as a US-China diplomatic issue regardless of whether a treaty ever materializes. With Trump publicly siding with Beijing's hands-off stance and the three named Chinese firms already silent on Khanna's earlier outreach, the treaty proposal is unlikely to advance — but it puts DeepSeek, Alibaba, and Moonshot on notice and gives safety-focused lawmakers a concrete ask to point to.
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