‘Silent Cold War’: Why calls to slow AI have sparked new US–China frontier

Anthropic CEO urges restricted China access to AI tech, sparking accusations of US technological dominance strategies.

An AgiBot A3 humanoid robot on display at the 2026 Innovation For All (IFA) consumer electronics and appliances trade fair on September 8, 2026 in Berlin, Germany [Omer Messinger/Getty Images]

China has warned against “fear-mongering” after the CEO of a top artificial intelligence (AI) company in the United States sounded the alarm against AI advancement and called for restrictions on the sale of AI chips to China.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei on Saturday called for the development of the most powerful AI systems to be slowed down, warning that they could soon pose potentially catastrophic risks to humanity itself.

list 1 of 3 China slams US claims of ‘industrial-scale’ AI theft

list 2 of 3 Anthropic claims Claude AI used for missile projects, global espionage

list 3 of 3 Anthropic discloses 4th AI hacking incident as researcher quits over safety

His proposal also calls for Washington to restrict China’s access to advanced technology – prompting Beijing to accuse the US of using AI safety as a pretext to preserve its technological dominance.

The dispute comes as Washington and Beijing compete over increasingly capable AI models, with US President Donald Trump declaring, “Whoever wins AI wins.”

So, what has got AI giants worried, why is China being seen as a threat?

Why are AI tech giants raising the alarm?

Anthropic’s Amodei warned in an essay published over the weekend that AI capabilities have been advancing rapidly, and he proposed pacing the development of frontier models to give governments and researchers more time to manage their risks.

“Given the accelerating rate of AI capability development, it’s my worry that in 6–12 months such a swarm could be capable of taking over the entire internet with a persistent botnet (potentially causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damage), and that the scale of damage would continue to increase from there if AI becomes more powerful without the necessary guardrails,” he wrote.

His assertions were endorsed by his rivals – OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and SpaceX founder and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

In addition to AI safety, Amodei warned that a “Chinese lead in AI would pose grave danger for the US and the world” and urged Washington to maintain restrictions on cutting-edge AI chips and chipmaking equipment going to China. He also called for action against alleged “distillation” of US models by Chinese AI laboratories.

On Sunday, Trump rejected calls for a slowdown, describing some concerns as exaggerated.

“We’re leading China in AI. We’re the most sophisticated country in the world, and frankly, I want to keep it that way because whoever wins AI wins,” he said on Sunday.

China’s Foreign Ministry on Monday urged countries to pursue an “open, inclusive and benevolent approach to AI”.

“Fomenting various threats, engaging in confrontation and malicious competition will only disrupt the process of global governance of artificial intelligence and is not in the interests of any party,” said ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun.

The state-backed Global Times went further, describing Amodei’s proposal as a “Cold War playbook” whose real purpose was to curb Chinese AI development and preserve US technological dominance.

“This ‘silent AI Cold War’ is hypocritical and short-sighted,” it said.

What is the latest in the US-China AI race?

The US remains ahead in several of the most important features of the AI race, but China has been closing the gap, experts say.

American companies continue to dominate private investment and production of leading AI models. According to Stanford University’s 2026 AI Index Report, US companies invested $285.9bn in AI in 2025, compared with $12.4bn in China.

The US also has an advantage in the most advanced semiconductors needed to train cutting-edge models.

However, Chinese companies have demonstrated that they can produce resilient AI models despite US restrictions on their access to the most advanced AI chips.

In January, the release of Chinese AI startup DeepSeek made headlines after it caused share prices in US tech companies to plummet, claiming that its model would cost only a fraction of the money its competitors had spent on their own AI programmes to build.

DeepSeek sent shock waves throughout AI circles when the company published a paper in December stating that “training” the latest model of DeepSeek – curating and inputting the information it needs to answer questions – would require less than $6m worth of computing power from Nvidia H800 chips.

This is only a small fraction of the multibillion-dollar AI budgets enjoyed by US tech giants such as OpenAI for ChatGPT and US-owned Google for Gemini. OpenAI CEO Altman said that his firm’s latest programme, GPT-4, cost more than $100m to train, Wired reported in April 2023.

The increasing AI-related competition between the world’s two largest economies has also seen Washington and Beijing put in place hostile policy measures against each other.

The US has imposed restrictions on China’s access to advanced semiconductors and chipmaking technology, arguing that cutting-edge chips could strengthen Chinese military, intelligence and surveillance capabilities.

The Trump administration has maintained controls on the most advanced chips, including Nvidia’s Blackwell processors, while allowing some less powerful chips to be sold to China.

Meanwhile, China possesses advantages in other areas of the AI supply chain, most notably in the production of critical rare earth minerals used in advanced technology and in generating more than twice as much electricity as the US, giving it access to the huge amounts of relatively cheap power needed to operate AI data centres.

In October, China tightened export controls for five critical rare-earth metals, as well as restrictions on the export of specialist technological equipment used to refine rare-earth metals.

Can either side claim a moral high ground?

Both Washington and Beijing portray their approach to AI as the more responsible one, but both are also pursuing the technology for national security and military purposes.

In June, the Trump administration ordered an acceleration of AI use across US intelligence and “warfighting” domains.

The US military confirmed in March that it used advanced AI tools in its war against Iran to rapidly process information, while insisting that humans make final targeting decisions.

The confirmation came amid calls at the time for an independent investigation into the bombing of a school in southern Iran that killed at least 156 people, mostly children.

Moreover, several reports have confirmed that Israel relied heavily on AI during its genocidal war on Gaza, which has killed nearly 73,800 Palestinians since October 2023 and turned most of the territory into rubble.

In July 2025, Francesca Albanese , the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, released a report mapping the corporations aiding Israel in the displacement of Palestinians and its genocidal war on Gaza in breach of international law. US tech and AI giant Palantir was one of the companies mentioned in the report.

In March 2021, US companies Google and Amazon agreed to a $1.2bn deal to supply cloud technology to Israel’s government and defence establishment. Known as Project Nimbus, the agreement gives Israeli authorities access to computing infrastructure capable of storing and processing large volumes of data and using tools such as facial and emotion recognition, biometric analysis and the handling of demographic information.

Moreover, the Pentagon has separately clashed with Anthropic over the company’s refusal to allow its models to be used for fully autonomous weapons or mass surveillance.

China has criticised the expanding military use of AI, warning this year against giving algorithms the power to “determine life and death”.

However, in July, research by Reuters news agency said Chinese military-linked researchers had used outputs from leading US AI models to help advance China’s defence capabilities, including for surveillance purposes.

An AP investigation last year found that AI and other technologies have become part of a vast Chinese surveillance apparatus used to track dissidents and minorities, including Uighurs and Tibetans. However, it found that US technology companies played a major role in supplying the technology that helped build that system.

Moreover, in February, the two economic powerhouses declined to join a declaration on governing the deployment of AI in warfare at an international military AI summit in Spain.

Calls by technology leaders to slow AI’s development raise questions about their ability and willingness to control the technology, according to Aya Ibrahim, a senior visiting fellow at the AI Now Institute.

Ibrahim told Al Jazeera that the warnings come as companies face enormous financial pressure to develop increasingly powerful AI systems.

“There is a lot of money that is dependent on them getting this out and, frankly, getting it right,” she said, adding that there are “increasing doubts about their ability to do either”.

She also questioned the framing of AI development as a race, saying it could encourage companies to develop the technology as quickly as possible while overlooking the consequences.

“The race narrative is inherently problematic because in many ways, you’re setting us up for a race to the bottom,” Ibrahim said.

“So you win and then what do you win and at what cost?”

Anthropico首席执行官敦促限制中国获取人工智能技术，引发了对美国技术主导战略的指责。

2026年9月8日，在德国柏林举行的2026年国际消费电子及家电展览会（IFA）上，展出了一款AgiBot A3人形机器人。[Omer Messinger/Getty Images]

美国一家顶级人工智能 (AI) 公司的首席执行官对人工智能的发展发出警告，并呼吁限制向中国出售人工智能芯片。对此，中国警告不要散布“恐慌”。

人类学研究所首席执行官达里奥·阿莫迪周六呼吁放慢最强大的人工智能系统的开发速度，并警告说，这些系统可能很快就会对人类自身构成潜在的灾难性风险。

列表 1/3：中国抨击美国关于“工业规模”人工智能窃取的说法

人类学声称克劳德人工智能被用于导弹项目和全球间谍活动（共3项，此列为第2项）

3/3 Anthropic公司披露第四起人工智能黑客攻击事件，一名研究员因安全问题辞职（列表3）

他的提议还要求华盛顿限制中国获取先进技术——这促使北京指责美国以人工智能安全为借口来维护其技术主导地位。

这场争端正值华盛顿和北京在日益强大的AI模型领域展开竞争之际，美国总统唐纳德·特朗普宣称：“谁赢得了AI，谁就赢了。”

那么，究竟是什么让人工智能巨头们感到担忧？为什么中国被视为一种威胁？

为什么人工智能科技巨头们要发出警报？

人智库的阿莫迪在周末发表的一篇文章中警告说，人工智能能力发展迅速，他建议放慢前沿模型的开发速度，以便让政府和研究人员有更多时间来管理风险。

“鉴于人工智能能力发展速度的加快，我担心在 6 到 12 个月内，这样的僵尸网络可能就能控制整个互联网，形成一个持续存在的僵尸网络（可能造成数千亿美元的损失），而且如果人工智能在缺乏必要防护措施的情况下变得更加强大，那么损失规模还会继续扩大，”他写道。

他的断言得到了竞争对手的认可——OpenAI 首席执行官 Sam Altman 和 SpaceX 创始人兼特斯拉首席执行官 Elon Musk。

除了人工智能安全问题，阿莫迪还警告说，“中国在人工智能领域的领先地位将对美国和世界构成严重威胁”，并敦促华盛顿继续限制尖端人工智能芯片和芯片制造设备流向中国。他还呼吁对中国人工智能实验室涉嫌“提炼”美国模型的行为采取行动。

周日，特朗普拒绝了放缓经济活动的呼吁，称一些担忧被夸大了。

“我们在人工智能领域领先于中国。我们是世界上最先进的国家，坦白说，我希望保持这种状态，因为谁在人工智能领域获胜，谁就赢了，”他周日表示。

中国外交部周一敦促各国对人工智能采取“开放、包容、仁慈的态度”。

“煽动各种威胁、进行对抗和恶意竞争只会扰乱人工智能的全球治理进程，不符合任何一方的利益，”该部发言人郭家坤表示。

官方媒体《环球时报》的报道更为激烈，称阿莫迪的提议是“冷战剧本”，其真正目的是遏制中国人工智能的发展，维护美国的科技主导地位。

报告称：“这场‘无声的人工智能冷战’是虚伪且目光短浅的。”

中美人工智能竞赛的最新进展如何？

专家表示，美国在人工智能竞赛的几个最重要方面仍然领先，但中国一直在缩小差距。

美国公司继续主导着人工智能领域领先的模型的私人投资和生产。根据斯坦福大学发布的《2026年人工智能指数报告》，到2025年，美国公司在人工智能领域的投资额将达到2859亿美元，而中国仅为124亿美元。

美国在训练尖端模型所需的最先进半导体方面也具有优势。

然而，中国企业已经证明，尽管美国限制它们获取最先进的人工智能芯片，它们仍然可以生产出具有弹性的人工智能模型。

今年1月，中国人工智能初创公司DeepSeek发布人工智能解决方案，导致美国科技公司股价暴跌，成为新闻头条。该公司声称，其人工智能模型的成本仅为竞争对手开发人工智能程序所需成本的一小部分。

DeepSeek 在 12 月份发表了一篇论文，称“训练”DeepSeek 的最新模型（即收集和输入回答问题所需的信息）只需要价值不到 600 万美元的英伟达 H800 芯片的计算能力，这在人工智能领域引起了巨大震动。

这只是美国科技巨头（例如OpenAI的ChatGPT和谷歌的Gemini）数十亿美元人工智能预算的一小部分。据《连线》杂志2023年4月报道，OpenAI首席执行官奥特曼表示，该公司最新的程序GPT-4的训练成本超过1亿美元。

世界两大经济体在人工智能领域日益激烈的竞争，也导致华盛顿和北京对彼此采取了敌对的政策措施。

美国限制中国获取先进半导体和芯片制造技术，理由是尖端芯片可以增强中国的军事、情报和监视能力。

特朗普政府一直对包括英伟达 Blackwell 处理器在内的最先进芯片实行管控，同时允许一些性能较低的芯片出售给中国。

与此同时，中国在人工智能供应链的其他领域拥有优势，最显著的是生产先进技术所需的关键稀土矿物，以及发电量是美国的两倍以上，这使其能够获得运营人工智能数据中心所需的大量相对廉价的电力。

10 月，中国收紧了五种关键稀土金属的出口管制，并限制了用于提炼稀土金属的专用技术设备的出口。

双方谁能声称自己占据道德制高点？

华盛顿和北京都将自己对人工智能的态度描述为更加负责任的态度，但双方也都在出于国家安全和军事目的而追求这项技术。

6 月，特朗普政府下令加快在美国情报和“作战”领域使用人工智能。

美国军方在3月份证实，他们在对伊朗的战争中使用了先进的人工智能工具来快速处理信息，但同时坚持认为最终的目标选择是由人来决定的。

当时，各方呼吁对伊朗南部一所学校遭炸弹袭击事件进行独立调查，该事件造成至少 156 人死亡，其中大部分是儿童。随后，这一消息得到了证实。

此外，多份报告证实，以色列在对加沙发动的种族灭绝战争中大量依赖人工智能，这场战争自 2023 年 10 月以来已造成近 73,800 名巴勒斯坦人死亡，并将加沙大部分地区夷为平地。

2025年7月，联合国被占领巴勒斯坦领土人权状况特别报告员弗朗西斯卡·阿尔巴内塞发布了一份报告，揭露了协助以色列违反国际法，驱逐巴勒斯坦人并发动针对加沙的种族灭绝战争的企业。美国科技和人工智能巨头帕兰提尔（Palantir）是报告中提到的公司之一。

2021年3月，美国公司谷歌和亚马逊达成一项价值12亿美元的协议，向以色列政府和国防部门提供云计算技术。这项名为“Nimbus项目”的协议使以色列当局能够使用计算基础设施来存储和处理海量数据，并运用面部和情绪识别、生物特征分析以及人口统计信息处理等工具。

此外，五角大楼还曾与 Anthropic 公司就该公司拒绝允许其产品用于完全自主武器或大规模监控一事发生过冲突。

中国批评人工智能在军事领域的应用日益广泛，并在今年发出警告，不要赋予算法“决定生死”的权力。

然而，路透社7月份的一项研究称，与中国军方有关联的研究人员利用美国领先的人工智能模型的输出结果，帮助提升中国的国防能力，包括用于监视目的。

美联社去年的一项调查发现，人工智能和其他技术已成为中国庞大监控体系的一部分，用于追踪异见人士和少数民族，包括维吾尔族和藏族。然而，调查还发现，美国科技公司在提供构建该系统所需的技术方面发挥了重要作用。

此外，今年 2 月，这两个经济强国在西班牙举行的国际军事人工智能峰会上拒绝签署一项关于规范人工智能在战争中部署的宣言。

AI Now Institute 的高级访问研究员 Aya Ibrahim 表示，科技领袖呼吁放慢人工智能的发展速度，这引发了人们对他们控制这项技术的能力和意愿的质疑。

易卜拉欣告诉半岛电视台，发出这些警告之际，各公司正面临巨大的财务压力，需要开发功能越来越强大的人工智能系统。

“有很多钱都取决于他们能否把这件事说清楚，坦白说，还得确保说得对，”她说道，并补充说“人们越来越怀疑他们是否有能力做到这一点”。

她还质疑将人工智能发展视为一场竞赛的做法，称这可能会鼓励企业尽快开发这项技术，而忽视其后果。

“种族叙事本身就存在问题，因为在很多方面，它都在让我们陷入一场竞相降低标准的恶性竞争，”易卜拉欣说。

“所以你赢了，然后你赢了什么？代价是什么？”