Why Do We Need AGI? The Right Has a Simple Answer: "Because China"
On my flight to New York yesterday, the mini-television screen on the seat in front of me was playing CNN in between ads. One of them caught my eye. The subtitles painted a picture of American innovation, threatened by China. I took a quick photo of the final shot:
The American Edge project, the ad’s funder, is a Meta-backed political action group working to oppose tech regulation and antitrust enforcement for one reason: China.
American Edge launched in 2019 as a non-profit and established an affiliated foundation—a mechanism that allows it to raise money for ads without disclosing all its funders. Soon after its founding, ten digital rights and transparency organizations called for its disbandment, arguing Meta’s interests were already sufficiently represented and there was no justification for the existence of an external group to argue in favor of the tech giant without having to disclose Meta’s financial support.
Its ads were shown during commercial breaks for the Trump-Biden presidential debate. They’re disseminated via the organization’s X, YouTube, and, apparently, CNN (via in-flight entertainment). One ad opens with a man named Edward from Seattle looking directly into the camera. Without providing specifics, he says AI has helped strengthen his small coffee company. Then he addresses the threat: “But some politicians are creating unnecessary fear about AI that will only empower China to leap ahead of America. Our leaders need to stand up to China and protect America’s competitive edge.”
Presumably, the politicians accused of “creating unnecessary fear” are the few who have called for some level of oversight of a technology described by the people who make it as capable of bringing the end of human civilization. At the AI Action Summit last month, J.D. Vance warned against “excessive regulation” which could “kill” the AI industry at its beginning stages. Creating perceived winners and losers is the Trump team’s modus operandi. Here are some simple ones: AI regulators (losers); AI innovators (winners).
It’s slightly inconceivable that Edward, a small business owner and coffee lover shown strolling down the streets of Seattle, is quite so concerned about China’s artificial intelligence development. It’s also not exactly a coincidence that Edward mentions his firm works with “minority coffee roasters all across America”—American Edge has attempted to make its efforts appear grassroots (and, presumably, not too conservative) by appealing to and funding minority rights groups. Another ad shows Tammy, a grandmother of nine, shaking her head at her iPad as she ostensibly encounters something indicative of the “censorship and control our adversaries believe in.”
The ad on American Edge’s home page, titled “Must Win,” skips the human interest angle and lectures more directly about why America’s innovative “edge” ensures our national and economic security. Images of semiconductors, fighter jets, Americans in conference rooms, and robotic hands are accompanied by uplifting music.
The positivity then comes to an abrupt halt. The screen turns red. “China has a darker vision of AI,” the voiceover and on-screen text announce. The underlying image, the Tank Man photo taken in Beijing in 1989 during the Tiananmen Square massacre, is highly misplaced.
Photo taken from American Edge ad, “Must Win”
I’ve written before about the relationship between China hawkishness and AI hype, which has become more mainstream in the first few months of Trump’s second term. Part of that is due to external developments: the Chinese firm DeepSeek released its R1 model which achieved performance benchmarks on par with some American models despite the restraints on GPUs faced by China-based firms. Those headlines sharpened the China hawks’ claws and forced American AI CEOs to explain how this happened (OpenAI, which stole the contents of the Internet to create its models, including copyrighted materials, hilariously accused DeepSeek of mining its data.)
Now, the right is trying to tie the concept that “advanced” AI is an existential need to the idea that China is an existential threat. Conditions are favorable for such a convergence. Trump’s inner circle now includes individuals we’re casually referring to as “techno-fascists.” While Silicon Valley has right-wing and reactionary roots, we are for the first time buckled in the backseat as an unelected, unconfirmed tech billionaire sits shotgun and tells his boss, our president, where to go. The increasingly interwoven interests of Trump and big tech make “China” a convenient foil, and one Trump is comfortable with. He has been blaming China for Americans’ woes since 2015, and has yet to do anything to address the issues underpinning his complaints, such as deindustrialization and unemployment. (No, tariffs or threats thereof aren’t helping.)
Incentives abound for AI executives, like Musk and Trump’s new buddies-of-convenience Sam Altman and Mark Zuckerberg, to vilify China. They’re centered on investment and go like this: we need more money to build the coolest thing ever—artificial general intelligence (AGI)—which we can’t define but which must, at all costs (and by all we mean all) be “controlled” by America. The irony, of course, is that if Big Tech and its advocates like American Edge continue to successfully lobby against AI regulations, it won’t be the United States government that controls whatever they end up creating. It’ll be one or two billionaires who may or may not have a blue passport.