{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.ricketts.senate.gov/news/press-releases/ricketts-chairs-subcommittee-hearing-on-american-ai-leadership-countering-communist-china/", "Ricketts Chairs Subcommittee Hearing on American AI Leadership, Countering Communist China", "2025-12-03", "2025", "2025-12", "Republican", "Senate", "NE", "Pete Ricketts", "R000618", "www.ricketts.senate.gov", "ricketts", "https://www.ricketts.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/?jsf=jet-engine:press-list&pagenum=", "scraper", "WASHINGTON, D.C. \u2013 Yesterday, Chairman Pete Ricketts (R-NE) led a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asia, The Pacific, and International Cybersecurity Policy. The subcommittee hearing highlighted the need to counter Communist China\u2019s challenge to American AI leadership.\n\n\u201cArtificial Intelligence will revolutionize daily life and its military uses will shape the global balance of power,\u201d Chairman Ricketts said. \u201cUnlike the moon landing, the finish line in the AI race is far less clear for the U.S.\u2014it may be achieving Artificial General Intelligence, human-level or greater machine cognition. Communist China, by contrast, is focused on rapidly diffusing AI across industry, manufacturing, robotics, and smart cities.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat\u2019s at stake is simple: a U.S.-led future that benefits the free world, or a China-led AI order that reshapes the global system in line with their authoritarian values,\u201d Ricketts said. \u201cThe risk could not be higher. This race will be won by whoever attracts the best talent, wields the best chips, and trains the best algorithms.\u201d\n\nRicketts announced his intent to introduce the SAFE Chips Act that would ensure the U.S. maintains its lead in AI development.\n\n\u201cAmerica\u2019s early lead rests in large part on our dominance of global compute power. At the core of compute are advanced AI chips, the best of which are made by American companies,\u201d Ricketts said. \u201cDenying Beijing access to these chips is therefore essential. President Trump had the foresight in his first administration to restrict specialized semiconductor manufacturing equipment from being sold to Communist China. Without cutting-edge tools, Chinese fabs produce AI chips that are inferior to ours. Today, our top chips are roughly five times more powerful than theirs, and we manufacture them at 10 times the annual scale.\u201d\n\n\u201cFurther controls by the Trump and Biden administrations on advanced AI chips have forced Chinese AI companies to smuggle U.S. chips to keep up,\u201d Ricketts continued. \u201cIf we sustain these limits while U.S. firms innovate and diffuse our technology globally, our compute lead will widen exponentially. That\u2019s why Senator Coons and I plan to introduce the SAFE Chips Act. This legislation would put in statute the Trump administration\u2019s current red lines on what AI chips are allowed to be sold to Communist China.\u201d\n\nWatch the Video HERE.\n\nRicketts\u2019 comments were made in a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asia, The Pacific, and International Cybersecurity Policy: Countering China\u2019s Challenge to\n\nAmerican AI Leadership. Witnesses in the hearing included Mr. Gregory C. Allen, Senior Adviser to the Wadhwani AI Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS); Mr. Tarun Chhabra, Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Head of National Security Policy at Anthropic; Dr. Chris Miller, Professor, the Fletcher School, Tufts University and Non-Resident Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute; and Dr. James Mulvenon, Chief Intelligence Officer, Pamir Consulting, LLC.\n\nTRANSCRIPT\n\n\u201cAlmost 70 years ago, Sputnik launched the greatest technological competition in US history.\n\n\u201cThe space race with the Soviet Union, which transformed global science and reshaped the Cold War.\n\n\u201cToday, we face a similar contest, this time with Communist China and even higher stakes.\n\n\u201cArtificial Intelligence will revolutionize daily life and its military uses will shape the global balance of power.\n\n\u201cBeijing is racing to fuse civilian AI with its military to seize the next revolution in military affairs.\n\n\u201cHowever, unlike the moon landing, the finish line in the AI race is far less clear for the US\u2014it may be achieving Artificial General Intelligence, human-level or greater machine cognition.\n\n\u201cCommunist China, by contrast, is focused on rapidly diffusing AI across industry, manufacturing, robotics, and smart cities.\n\n\u201cThese diverging visions were made clear this summer when both the US and Communist China released new AI strategies.\n\n\u201cThe Trump administration\u2019s AI Action Plan centers on openness, markets, and liberal norms: cutting red tape, building data centers and other AI infrastructure, exporting our full AI technology stack\u2014including hardware, models, software, applications, and standards\u2014to allies and partners, countering Beijing in international forums, and enforcing export controls.\n\n\u201cBeijing\u2019s AI Plus strategy champions state control, sovereignty, and sustained high-level diplomacy to shape the global environment.\n\n\u201cWhat\u2019s at stake is simple: a US-led future that benefits the free world, or a China-led AI order that reshapes the global system in line with their authoritarian values.\n\n\u201cThe risk could not be higher.\n\n\u201cThis race will be won by whoever attracts the best talent, wields the best chips, and trains the best algorithms.\n\n\u201cAmerica\u2019s early lead rests in large part on our dominance of global compute power.\n\n\u201cAt the core of compute are advanced AI chips, the best of which are made by American companies.\n\n\u201cDenying Beijing access to these chips is therefore essential.\n\n\u201cPresident Trump had the foresight in his first administration to restrict specialized semiconductor manufacturing equipment from being sold to Communist China.\n\n\u201cWithout cutting-edge tools, Chinese fabs produce AI chips that are inferior to ours.\n\n\u201cToday, our top chips are roughly five times more powerful than theirs, and we manufacture them at 10 times the annual scale.\n\n\u201cFurther controls by the Trump and Biden administrations on advanced AI chips have forced Chinese AI companies to smuggle US chips to keep up.\n\n\u201cIf we sustain these limits while US firms innovate and diffuse our technology globally, our compute lead will widen exponentially.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s why Senator Coons and I plan to introduce the SAFE Chips Act.\n\n\u201cThis legislation would put in statute the Trump administration\u2019s current red lines on what AI chips are allowed to be sold to Communist China for 30 months to preserve our edge.\n\n\u201cXi Jinping has made clear he has no intention of remaining reliant on American technology.\n\n\u201cThe CCP\u2019s recent Fourth Plenum doubled down on the goal of technological self-reliance.\n\n\u201cThe US and our allies, including the Netherlands, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea, control nearly every critical node of the supply chain, which is the most complex in human history.\n\n\u201cThis is a structural advantage that Beijing cannot easily overcome.\n\n\u201cTogether, we must collectively enforce semiconductor export controls and close loopholes so Xi Jinping\u2019s strategy fails.\n\n\u201cTo win the AI race, we must also confront our vulnerabilities.\n\n\u201cComputing alone is not enough, and Communist China has advantages elsewhere.\n\n\u201cAI data centers require massive energy.\n\n\u201cCommunist China generates twice the electricity we do and is rapidly expanding capacity while our grid ages.\n\n\u201cChina leads in domestic AI adoption and is exporting its tech globally, while US adoption lags.\n\n\u201cIt produces 27 million more STEM graduates per decade than the US, even as we face an AI talent shortage.\n\n\u201cCommunist China now leads in open AI models, accelerating diffusion of its technology, standards and influence.\n\n\u201cIt also dominates critical minerals and rare earth elements, which are the lifeblood of AI tech and hardware.\n\n\u201cCommunist China completely controls the sector with near monopolies in magnets, cobalt, and lithium.\n\n\u201cCommunist China\u2019s recent restrictions on global exports show how it can use that leverage to dominate the world and what leverage that creates for it.\n\n\u201cPresident Trump\u2019s recent critical minerals deal with Australia and other allies is a good first step, but far more is needed.\n\n\u201cSome argue these advantages mean that Communist China will inevitably win the AI race.\n\n\u201cThey said the same thing during the space race.\n\n\u201cThey misunderstand Americans\u2019 resolve and ingenuity.\n\n\u201cThey were wrong then, and they are wrong again this time.\n\n\u201cBut success will require the right policies and sustained investment.\u201d", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T20:09:11Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.ricketts.senate.gov/news/press-releases/ricketts-chairs-subcommittee-hearing-on-american-ai-leadership-countering-communist-china/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.4071171171963215, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}