Beijing calls US AI-slowdown talk 'fearmongering'

China has rejected the Silicon Valley idea of "pacing" AI development. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun told reporters on Monday that "fearmongering, confrontation and malicious competition will only disrupt the process of global AI governance." State-run Global Times went further and called the proposal a "Cold War playbook" aimed at containing China.

The trigger was an essay by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei urging labs to deliberately "slow the pace" of model improvements. The same essay pushed for tighter US tech sales to China and warned that "a Chinese lead in AI would pose grave danger." OpenAI's Sam Altman backed one of Amodei's safeguards and said labs will need government help with "international coordination." Chinese researchers' reading is that a slowdown protects US incumbents and freezes out latecomers. Mixing a pause with export curbs didn't help the proposal look neutral.

Washington isn't sold on slowing down either. Trump dismissed the safety worries with "whoever wins AI wins." Beijing isn't brushing off risk entirely: State Security Minister Chen Yixin has called for a system to control AI security risks. Xi and Trump meet on Sept 24 in Washington, and AI competition is on the agenda.

Why it matters: a slowdown only works if every frontier player joins, and neither Beijing nor the White House is signing up.