As the fight for global AI supremacy enters the bare-knuckles brawl stage, there is no shortage of purported hype men elbowing each other out of the way trying to influence President Trump as the U.S. steps repeatedly into the ring against China.
The economic, security, and political stakes couldn't be higher for the U.S., a fact underscored by the billions Beijing is pouring into catching up with U.S. technology and to box American companies out of the global market – one of their most critical strategic goals.
China, fully aware that the market has repeatedly crowned U.S. innovations as the winner, is prepared to go round after round trying to change the status quo.
Sitting ringside, our allies and partners have a choice between building their AI on the American tech stack or on the emerging tech stack that China hopes to frame as a cheaper alternative.
In this moment, President Trump faces decisions that will shape decades of international power, politics, and policy.
He needs bright minds, strategic support, and innovative creations, not clout chasers jockeying for the appearance of power simply by being in its proximity.
Enter former Trump Adviser Steve Bannon, once known for his allegiance to the president, he's now been relegated to a podcast.
Bannon swings absurdly at one of the industries his former boss has most thoughtfully championed.
Speaking to a reporter for a piece in an AI-focused Substack called Transformer News that is funded in part by the same woke AI folks who are watching closely as Anthropic tries to take the war out of warfighting at the Pentagon, Bannon decries the fact that chip makers and AI leaders sometimes talk to the president about chips and AI.
Bannon's complaint in the article boils down to this: He seemingly objects to industry experts having direct lines to the president on the subjects they know best.
Bannon's critique and approach oddly is very similar to the Biden administration’s policies that led to Beijing’s dramatic expansion of its own chip and AI investments.
Biden's policies have left U.S. firms facing state-backed competitors and complicated Trump's efforts to restore America's technology leadership.
This is an interesting approach from Bannon, someone who previously said that driving the Chinese state-backed AI hardware producer Huawei out of the United States and Europe is "10 times more important" than securing a trade deal.
Biden and Bannon's approach risks weakening U.S. leverage in White House negotiations and undermining efforts to keep American tech at the center of the global marketplace.
China would love to see the U.S. fight itself over outdated export controls as it attempts to grow Huawei and other Chinese tech companies into true rivals of America's AI behemoths.
Unfortunately, there are many outside voices pressing for failed Biden-era policies.
The Effective Altruism (EA) movement is, at this moment, toasting Anthropic's efforts to upend Pentagon AI contracting.
The EA movement, both championed and disgraced by convicted crypto bro and long-time democratic donor Sam Bankman-Fried, is building out an influence infrastructure.
The EA movement has proposed a litany of heavy-handed AI regulations, injecting extreme abstract arguments, rather than real-life dilemmas, into Washington's policy conversations around AI.
Dario Amodei of Anthropic, and others, closely linked to the movement are also injecting their dollars into the political conversation, donating to candidates and political action committees.
Among these voices is a reporter who often lampoons Republicans aligned with Trump's mission, advocating a U.S. clampdown on technologies that are currently driving the U.S. economy and ensuring U.S. technological dominance globally.
These efforts not only hurt President Trump, who Bannon says he supports, but they could also hurt the U.S. economy and impact U.S. national security, because they undercut companies building America's global AI leadership, hand Beijing an opening with our allies, and distract Trump from the real fight.
No War Room tweet or Substack interview is going to change that.
George Landrith is president of the Frontiers of Freedom Institute and author of "Let Freedom Ring . . . Again: Can Self-Evident Truths Save America from Further Decline?" Read more George Landrith Insider articles — Click Here Now.
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