A recent AI-focused Wall Street Journal editorial had a critical insight: “If what they see in their shops is truly dangerous, by all means be responsible and ‘align’ development.” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who criticized Anthropic’s proposal, recently noted: “We want America to succeed.” As Mark Zuckerberg has put it, America must “accelerate innovation and slow geopolitical rivals.”
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That is the paradox at the center of the AI debate. AI safety and the geopolitical AI race are often discussed as if they were separate issues. They are not. Calls for restraint may be justified when frontier systems pose genuine risks. But restraint by American frontier labs cannot be considered in isolation from the country’s principal strategic opponent. America should not choose between AI leadership and AI safety; it needs both.
The issue with AI is that you can’t reverse it now or put it back in the box. And the problem is not what American AI companies will do; I believe that when bitter rivals agree on the need for restraint, this will happen. But such responsible restraint cannot be considered in isolation from what China is willing to do. Can the West ignore the rise of China? (A population of 1.4 billion, rare earth minerals of 44 million tons, exports of $3.77 trillion, government debt 94% of GDP, etc.) The Chinese do everything they can to beat America.
The Communist Party governs through a centralized political system capable of directing enormous economic resources toward this new battlefield. Whatever one thinks of that system of directed capitalism, its ambitions in Artificial Intelligence — or in space, where China has also made major advances — cannot simply be wished away. The margin of AI leadership may be just a few months, because the innovation is quickly copied. Can the U.S. and China take joint action on AI risks? Only a naive person would place absolute trust in a red dictatorship where the bureaucrats reign.
It will be a disaster — and an act of hubris — if China wins the AI race. So, in a way, Donald Trump – I rarely agree with him 100 percent — is right in saying “we must not slow down.” America needs to win the race for Artificial Intelligence because a winning outcome for us will be a way to protect our way of life. Thus, AI leadership is not merely an economic or technological question. It is increasingly connected to national security, military capability, scientific research, and the ability to shape the standards governing a technology that is affecting the entire world.
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The Internet itself grew out of U.S. government-backed research. There is no reason to assume that the next technological transformation will come entirely from the private sector. A serious American frontier-AI research effort within the national-security establishment could produce capabilities and discoveries whose importance we cannot yet imagine.
The CEOs known by their first names — Dario, Sam, Elon, Jensen, Mark — must know what to avoid so AI does not become our Nemesis — created by our own intelligence. The goal should not simply be to build the most powerful AI. It should also be to understand what must never be created, and to build the safeguards necessary to keep increasingly capable systems under human control. Those involved in the race for superintelligence should come closer to the spirit of the words spoken by President Trump, Jensen Huang, and Mark Zuckerberg.
There is depth in the sacrifices made to forge this nation. The decisions being made now about Artificial Intelligence may eventually be judged as part of that larger American story. The world will be a far safer place if the U.S. stays the strongest player in a multipolar system; American leadership on all fronts is therefore necessary.
Dimitris Eleas is a New York City–based political scientist, writer, and independent researcher focused on international relations and political philosophy. His letters have appeared in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post.
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