Donald Beyer

On Monday’s broadcast of Bloomberg’s “Balance of Power,” Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) said that arguments about China on AI regulation are “relatively thin” because China has “a lot of regulation” and is “open” with its AI models and “We do have to cooperate with them, but we’ve got to make sure that we have our own guardrails in place, too.”

Co-host Kailey Leinz asked, “President Trump has framed this as being a race, a competition with China that the U.S. needs to win, where is the line between doing enough to establish guardrails and making sure this technology is safe, while also not falling behind an adversary?”

Beyer answered, “Well, the old but China argument, I think, is relatively thin. I’m glad he’s talking to Xi about it. But China’s been in a very different place. First of all, all of their AI companies are owned by the Chinese government, so they have a lot of control, a lot of regulation already, far more regulation than we have. They also have open-weight, open-source models. Ours are tightly controlled by private companies like Anthropic and Google. Theirs are open, and so, you can see what’s in them. They’re sharing them with nations and companies all over the world. We do have to cooperate with them, but we’ve got to make sure that we have our own guardrails in place, too.”