{
  "id": 8040090,
  "title": "The US and China are locked in a smart Cold War",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/17/the-us-and-china-are-locked-in-a-smart-cold-war",
  "topic": "ai",
  "section": "AI",
  "published": "2026-09-17T14:24:30.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Al Majalla English",
    "slug": "al-majalla-english",
    "url": "https://en.majalla.com/node/333092/politics/us-and-china-are-locked-smart-cold-war"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "The US and China are embroiled in a fierce competition reminiscent of the Cold War, according to an essay penned by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. Amodei urged the AI industry to \"pace the frontier\" of artificial intelligence, advocating for a deliberate slowdown in the development of advanced AI systems. This sentiment quickly gained traction, with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman agreeing to match Anthropic's proposal and xAI CEO Elon Musk echoing Amodei's stance. Even DeepMind co-founder and chair Demis Hassabis supported Amodei's call.\n\nHowever, the proposal faced significant backlash. Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned, alleging that the AI industry was racing to create uncontrollable systems. His resignation post went viral, with over 171.9 million views. On the other hand, US President Donald Trump expressed disapproval, stating that China was the only one happy about the slowdown.\n\nAmodei's proposal consisted of three key steps. The first was to embed independent evaluators inside US labs, while the second called for democratic governments to coordinate on safety standards. The third and most contentious step involved agreeing with authoritarian governments, particularly China, to pace the frontier of AI development. This step was met with disdain by Chinese strategists and technologists, who perceived it as an attempt by Silicon Valley to establish a new regime of AI containment, ostensibly to ensure American technological supremacy but effectively preserving the status quo.\n\nFrom Beijing's perspective, the call to pace AI development can be seen as regulatory capture on a geopolitical scale. By defining \"safety\" strictly through the lens of advanced model capabilities, where US firms currently hold the lead, the US could increase compliance costs for global competitors, especially Chinese firms. Essentially, pacing could prevent China from narrowing the gap by innovating faster or deploying AI more rapidly, thereby maintaining the US technological advantage.\n\nAmodei's manifesto inadvertently revealed a contradiction. While he advocated for a \"pace\" to prevent catastrophic risks, he also acknowledged that this would eventually necessitate cooperation with authoritarian governments. This stance could potentially widen the US AI lead over China over the next three to five years, as the US continues to restrict China's access to advanced chips and imposes tougher measures to prevent model distillation and weight theft.",
  "summary": "The US and China are locked in a smart Cold War newspress_en Thu, 09/17/2026 - 15:24 Politics In an essay posted on 12 September, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called on the AI industry to “pace the frontier” of artificial intelligence, arguing that it should deliberately slow down how quickly the most advanced AI systems become more capable. Within hours, Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, said he would…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}