Trump Rejects Combining US-China AI Efforts, Calls Fears Hoaxes
Departing the White House after his summit with Xi Jinping, Trump said the US would not integrate AI development with China and dismissed warnings about AI risk as comparable to past hoaxes.
President Donald Trump said Saturday the United States will not combine its artificial intelligence efforts with China’s, arguing that American leadership in the technology makes cooperation with Beijing unnecessary, according to Al Jazeera.
“I would rather not integrate, because we’re leading by a lot. When you’re leading, you don’t open it up to each other,” Trump said as he departed the White House, according to the report. The remarks followed a three-day summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping that concluded this week in New York.
AI Fears Dismissed as Hoaxes
Trump’s comments came in response to concerns raised by US lawmakers and technology executives that rapid AI development could pose risks to humanity, Al Jazeera reported. The president dismissed those warnings by comparing them to issues he has previously called hoaxes, including climate change and the Russia investigation into his 2016 campaign.
“What they wanna do is stop our progress, because we’re leading China by a lot. And we’re going to keep it that way,” Trump said, according to the same report.
The framing positions AI safety concerns as a competitive threat to US advantage rather than a technical risk warranting independent scrutiny — a stance that puts Trump at odds with some members of his own party and industry figures who have pushed for guardrails on frontier AI systems.
A Narrower Deal Than a Merger
Despite rejecting integration, the White House did announce a more limited step: the US and China agreed to establish a bilateral communication channel for AI-related incidents, Al Jazeera reported. Trump indicated that substantive AI discussions did not take place during the Xi summit itself.
That outcome tracks with what emerged from the broader summit. Xi and Trump agreed to a $30 billion tariff cut and a new AI safety dialogue channel during their New York meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, alongside commitments to continue trade and military talks. Trump’s Saturday remarks clarify that the AI channel is narrowly about incident communication and risk management, not joint development or shared research.
Trump has also begun rebranding the technology in official communications, referring to “artificial intelligence” as “super intelligence,” according to Al Jazeera — a linguistic shift that underscores the administration’s framing of AI as a race to be won outright rather than a technology to be jointly governed.
Domestic Friction Over the China Relationship
The AI comments land amid broader unease within Trump’s own party about the administration’s posture toward Beijing. Republican senators voiced dismay at Trump’s warm reception of Xi during the summit, citing allegations that China had provided material support to Iran during its ongoing conflict with the United States. That criticism focused on the optics of engagement rather than the substance of any single agreement, but it reflects the same underlying tension visible in Trump’s AI remarks: treating China simultaneously as a strategic rival and, in narrow technical channels, a counterparty worth talking to.
Congressional unease with China’s technology footprint extends beyond AI diplomacy. US defense officials are separately investigating whether F-35 parts were diverted through Hong Kong in violation of export controls, a case that illustrates the security concerns shaping Washington’s broader wariness of technology exposure to Beijing even as the two governments open new lines of communication on AI risk.
What Comes Next
The bilateral AI communication channel announced after the summit has no defined scope beyond incident coordination, and Trump’s Saturday remarks make clear the administration does not intend to expand it into joint development. With no formal AI cooperation framework in place and the administration framing AI primarily as a competitive advantage to be protected, the practical effect of Saturday’s comments is to close off, for now, any near-term prospect of a broader US-China AI accord — even as trade and military dialogue continue on separate tracks.
Found this useful? Share it.
