Republicans blame AI concerns on Democrats
Por Cheyenne Haslett — POLITICO – TOP Stories
The Trump administration has landed on a messaging strategy to combat growing calls that AI will soon spiral out of control: it is Democratic hysteria.
“Every Democrat senator suddenly races to a microphone to talk about AI after being eerily silent for months and months and months,” Attorney General Todd Blanche said at a White House briefing on Tuesday. “So to talk about the timing of this as being nothing but an effort to influence the midterms, I shouldn’t have to say that out loud. Of course that’s what it is.”
President Donald Trump has called it another “hoax” perpetrated by the “Radical Left Dumocrats” and Speaker Mike Johnson likened the intense focus on AI threats to Democrats’ warnings about climate change. He pointed to a comment from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) in 2019 that “the world is going to end” in 12 years because of climate change. She was referring to a UN report that said the world had until 2030 to reduce emissions and limit warming the oceans to a dangerous degree.
“What the president is saying is you’re not all going to be dead in 10 years,” Johnson said. “That’s a hoax.”
The Republican messaging overlooks the fact that the latest round of AI fears and chatter originated last weekend when the CEOs of Anthropic and then OpenAI said their industry is moving too fast and should slow down. And dozens of Republicans – in the House, Senate and state capitals – have expressed concerns over the consequences of AI’s rapid development. Even Elon Musk, Trump’s one-time government-slashing ally, said Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei “is right” and previously voiced support for a regulatory body to oversee AI.
The president, Blanche and others have maintained that the perceived Democrat-led fear mongering will only distract people from what should be the ultimate goal: Beating China in the AI arms race.
“We can’t lose the AI race to China, right? President Trump says that. Everybody says that,” Blanche said.
Despite GOP assertions, Democrats have been focused on AI for longer than a week, including a House Democratic Commission on AI launched in 2025, a March proposal for a moratorium on data centers by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Ocasio-Cortez, and 2023 bipartisan AI safety legislation from Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), among other efforts.
“The future of humanity is at stake. We need binding international safety rules, not voluntary standards from the industry,” Sanders said Tuesday.
There is widespread bipartisan interest in setting guardrails and concern about the AI industry outpacing society’s understanding of the technology.
Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) and Rep. Nathaniel Moran (R-Texas) are leading bills to require a “kill switch” that could pull the plug on out-of-control AI systems, with support from Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), who said the U.S. needs infrastructure to protect against AI becoming a “superweapon.” Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.) has worked for months on a comprehensive, bipartisan AI oversight package.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) proposed a licensing regime for AI companies “to protect consumers and promote transparency.” And Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), who is leaving Congress at the end of his term, has dismissed the argument that regulation will strangle U.S. innovation and hand the industry to China as “fear mongering.”
“I do think we must have some degree of guardrails and that the same laws and rules that apply to humans are going to have to apply to a world of AI, and there are other existential questions that have to be raised,” he said in a recent interview with POLITICO.
Owen Dahlkamp contributed to this report.
Fonte: POLITICO – TOP Stories
