Trump Rejects AI Slowdown Push as China Calls It Cold War Fearmongering, Widening Geopolitical Split Over Safety Versus Strategic Competition

President Trump rejected calls from Anthropic, OpenAI and xAI CEOs to slow frontier AI development, stating from his Ireland golf resort on September 13 that whoever wins AI wins and that negative forces are bringing up things that won't happen. Trump said the US leads China in AI and he wants to keep it that way, dismissing industry leaders' warnings about rogue AI risks as exaggerated. His comments came two days after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay warning that AI agents could take over the internet within six to twelve months, joined by endorsements from OpenAI's Sam Altman and Elon Musk. Speaker Mike Johnson called for meetings rather than legislation, while Democratic Senator Ruben Gallego warned that dangerous AI systems won't care about national borders if guardrails fail. China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun responded on Monday September 14, calling the slowdown push fearmongering, confrontation and vicious competition that will only disrupt global AI governance. State-run Global Times went further, describing the proposal as a Cold War playbook for the AI sector packed with containment provisions targeting China. The dual rejection from Washington and Beijing eliminates the possibility of coordinated global pacing, leaving safety advocates without political backing in either superpower. Markets reacted sharply Monday, with semiconductor stocks falling and analysts warning that any enforced slowdown could undercut the massive data-center spending driving tech valuations. The political environment means frontier labs face pressure to race rather than pause, regardless of their own stated safety concerns.