Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson have pushed back on growing calls within the AI industry to slow the pace of development, arguing that doing so risks letting China overtake the United States. Their comments follow an open letter from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei urging the sector to "pace the frontier," a call that drew public support from OpenAI's Sam Altman, Elon Musk and, more cautiously, Alphabet's Demis Hassabis. The disagreement highlights a growing divide between leading AI executives, who are increasingly voicing safety concerns, and political figures wary of ceding competitive ground.

Speaking to the Financial Times, Trump said the US is currently leading China in AI and that he intends to keep it that way, adding "whoever wins AI, wins." Johnson, in an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper, went further, describing hasty AI restrictions as a potential "national security threat" and warning that an emergency congressional push to regulate the technology would cause the US to "lose the race to China." Both urged calm rather than immediate legislative action, contrasting sharply with the industry's push for a more cautious approach.