China hits back at Anthropic CEO’s AI slowdown call, calls it a ‘Cold War playbook’
&imwidth=600&imheight=450&format=webp&quality=medium "China hits back at Anthropic CEO’s AI slowdown call, calls it a ‘Cold War playbook’")
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei looks on after a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron during the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi on February 19, 2026. Photograph: (AFP)
China has criticised Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s call to slow frontier AI development, accusing the US tech sector of using a ‘Cold War playbook’ against China.
China on Monday pushed back against AI-fearmongering; it slammed Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's concern over the slowing down of AI development as a cold war playbook” to deter the technological rise of China. Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun, when asked about the concerns raised by the Anthropic CEO, said that China “promote an open, inclusive and benevolent approach to AI.”
Last week, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay “We Must Pace the Frontier” calling for a slowdown in AI development and suggesting a three-step framework to pace the development of frontier AI models. Chinese state-media Global Times published an op-ed commenting on Amodei's essay, “Targeting China’s AI: US ‘tech right’ unfolds Cold War playbook.” It claimed that Amodei's call on the surface seems rational but has a “hidden agenda.” The essay is “packed with containment provisions targeting China and is, in essence, a ‘Cold War playbook’ for the AI sector.” It claimed that the proposal is “choking off China first to widen the tech gap, and then seeking conditional negotiations with Beijing to slow down.”
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Amodei described China as “the autocratic country with by far the most advanced AI capabilities.” It was backed by almost all prominent faces in the AI industry. Musk said Amodei was “right,” while OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said pacing frontier development had become a major subject, and Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis said Amodei’s proposal pointed toward the “right path forward.”
Guo said that AI development should be concerned with “common well-being of all humanity” and urged countries to “promote its open, inclusive and universally beneficial development.” He added that “fearmongering, confrontation and vicious competition” will disrupt the process of “global governance of artificial intelligence” and will not be in anyone's interest. He did not specifically respond to slowing the pace of AI development.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Mao Ning, said, “I’m not familiar with the specifics. China advocates AI for good. We firmly oppose attempts to throw mud at China by distorting facts.” He was responding to the Anthropic safety reports, which claimed that it shut down multiple efforts to use its Claude AI models to train AI models in China.
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