US House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast warned that “America is the superhero” and China the “supervillain” in the contest for global artificial intelligence (AI) leadership on Thursday, just two days after US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said America’s “biggest risk” on AI is China getting ahead.
The United States and China remain locked in an increasingly competitive race for worldwide AI supremacy, with many American officials concerned that China is eroding the US’ early lead.
“The AI race is not just an economic race, national security race, but I think it’s a moral race for our country,” said Jim Banks, a Republican senator from Indiana, adding that the US cannot afford to lose this race to its “biggest adversary”.
Speaking at the Hudson Institute event titled “Securing America’s AI Advantage: a Discussion on US Export Control Policy with Senator Jim Banks and Chairman Brian Mast”, the pair examined how AI was emerging as a key factor that would define Washington and Beijing’s relationship, framing it as a bipartisan issue.
“AI has the ability to create superpowers, whether it creates a supervillain or whether it creates a superhero, that depends on the actions that are taken,” Mast, a Republican congressman from Florida, told the conservative Washington think tank, comparing the technology to the spider that turned Peter Parker into Spider-Man.
Banks and Mast’s comments come just two days after Bessent told the Economic Club of New York that the “biggest risk” of the technology was China surpassing the US.
The administration of US President Donald Trump retains strict export controls on advanced chips destined for China, although it has avoided Biden-era blanket bans, as Washington seeks to preserve its edge in global AI development.
“I am one of the point people on our AI policy. I am the point person in terms of the economic relationship with China,” Bessent said.
“I could tell you that the reason the Chinese are willing to have a discussion on AI is because we are ahead, so we have to stay ahead.”
Last month, the US and China agreed to hold formal discussions on AI governance following Trump’s trip to Beijing to meet with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping.
Historically, the two countries have taken different approaches to developing AI.
The US AI sector has largely relied on private investment, with companies focused on developing the top-performing models and building out the best compute – the processing power that is used to train and run AI models.
Meanwhile, China has increasingly emphasised open-source and open-weight models, as well as large-scale industrial deployment across industries with heavy subsidies from Beijing and local governments.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT helped reinforce America’s early lead in the global contest, but advances by Chinese firms such as DeepSeek in 2025, and China’s push to become a world leader in the sector by 2030, have begun to close the gap.
This has led to the Trump administration placing an increasing emphasis on competing with China as part of its AI policy.
Last month, Trump’s policy appeared to shift away from a laissez-faire approach that prioritised innovation after he signed a long-awaited executive order on AI that asked companies to voluntarily share advanced models before release.
It came less than two weeks after Trump postponed signing a similar order, saying that it could hinder US competitiveness with China in the field.
“We’re leading China, we’re leading everybody, and I don’t want to do anything that’s going to get in the way of that lead,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office at the time.
Even a small lead in AI capabilities over China could have significant implications, Mast argued.
“It matters that we have six days to have a model that identifies holes and then works to plug the holes,” he said.
“Versus if they’re six days ahead of us and they have six days to say, ‘We’re going to exploit something on your side,’ that even just that little bit makes a difference.” -- SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
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