U.S. tech executives seem to like to compare the race for global AI dominance to the nuclear arms race – it’s huge, it’s terrifying, but we have to win it. Like they said in Oppenheimer, “I don't know if we can be trusted with such a weapon. But I know the Nazis can't.” Because America got the bomb first, we won World War II. Because we continued to make better bombs than the Soviets, we won the Cold War.
If we win the Artificial Intelligence (AI) race, then we inure ourselves against cyberattacks from terrorists, the CCP, the Russians, or whomever else.
However, the AI race is dramatically more complicated than the nuclear race was. Our technologies and economies are interconnected in ways they weren’t 80 years ago, and domestic loyalties are divided in ways they weren’t either.
Events in Davos have given me cause to ruminate on this, particularly the words and actions of Dario Amodei, the CEO of tech company Anthropic. A longtime Democrat donor, Amodei went on a rampage against the President’s America First policies at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Amodei took aim at the President’s policy of allowing US companies to sell chips used for AI to companies in China. This was a reversal of policy during the Biden years. Criticizing this change, Amodei said selling AI chips to China is like “selling nuclear weapons to North Korea” – which is, of course, insane hyperbole. This kind of commerce isn’t bad for the country or the future of humanity. It’s bad for Anthropic.
Companies like Anthropic don’t want American companies selling chips across the Pacific, making money to then fuel into their R&D. When Biden shut down access to Western suppliers, it catalyzed Chinese firms to integrate supply chains for all AI and computing infrastructure. These export controls proved a threat to national security because by restricting U.S. domestic chips from global markets, we lost control over those markets. As an unintended consequence, we created incentives for our rivals to create their own infrastructure when we should have been getting them hooked on ours.
This is an instance of how global supply chains have made “us vs them” more complicated than it was for Dr. Oppenheimer. But in this complicated “us vs them” 21st Century, Amodei definitely is not with us.
Anthropic’s leadership includes several former Biden administration officials, including National Security Council official Tarun Chhabra and former White House economic aid Elizabeth Kelly. “Anthropic is a safe haven for Biden officials who are diametrically opposed to President Trump's America First AI policy and are trying to weasel their way into the national security space,” one former Trump administration official reportedly said.
While they have made perfunctory statements of support for the White House’s AI plan, they are quietly trying to undermine the President with their lucrative lobbying efforts while putting Huawei-sounding talking points out right in the middle of Trump’s negotiations with Chinese President Xi Jinping. And Anthropic recently prohibited federal contractors from using its technologies for use with law enforcement.
Amodei himself has made himself an outspoken critic of President Trump. In a now-deleted Facebook post, he called Trump a “serious and legitimate threat to the rule of law” and compared him to a "feudal warlord."
Anthropic wants to create woke AI dominance, garnishing its corner of cyberspace with words like “shared sacrifice” and “equity” to conceal its greed. Trump has warned if we screw up policy on AI we’ll have “a couple of wokesters” brainwashing everyone while hoarding all the world’s wealth. Amodei wants to put all software engineers out of work while he is himself is worth an estimated $3.7 billion – which should tell you all you need to know about his true beliefs on “equity.”
The AI arms race could define the world order for decades to come. Its implications are massive, but still mostly unknown. I don’t know who can be trusted with such massive change, but I know the wokesters can’t. If a woke billionaire has taken a side on the issue, the right side is doubtless the opposite.
Jared Whitely is a longtime DC politico, having worked in the US Senate, White House, and defense industry. He has an MBA from Hult business school in Dubai.
