Referring to Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei statement to slow the pace of frontier AI research as a “cold war playbook” full of anti-China rhetoric, the Chinese replied that the “Silent AI Cold War” by the AI company is short-sighetd and hypocritical.
On Saturday, Amodei released a statement calling for a collective decision to slow down the pace of frontier AI research, warning that AI reaching recursive self-improvement (RSI) can have far-reaching effects on humanity.
While advocating for slowing down AI research, Amodei also claimed that Chinese Communist Party (CCP) associated AI labs will not agree with US companies’ proposal to slow down and would try to gain military dominance. Amodei then suggested putting a ban on sale of AI chips, or semiconductor equipment to China and to crack down on unauthorized “distillation” by companies in China and other “authoritarian countries.”
Reacting to the comments made by Amodei, China’s state backed The Global Times news website published two scathing columns against him, calling his tactic hypocritical and basically an extension of US Pax Silica initiative.
This silent AI cold war is hypocritical and short-sighted. Its true purpose is to attempt to curb China’s AI development through technological barriers and regulatory monopolies, uphold Washington’s monopolistic hegemony in cutting-edge technology, and exclude China from the global AI governance system, essentially following in the footsteps of Washington’s so-called Pax Silica initiative, which seeks to excludes China,” read an excerpt from a report in The Global Times.
The articles in The Global Times have been published ahead of the highly anticipated US-China talks in Washington mid-September 2026 where the two giants are expected to hold first bilateral AI safety talks.
Anthropic, in the past, has accused China based AI companies of carrying distillation on its Claude family of AI models to train their own domestic LLMs.
“ Anthropic is facing growing competition from rapidly advancing Chinese open-source models, which are challenging the closed-source frontier model approach represented by Anthropic in terms of cost, performance, and the global developer ecosystem,” read another excerpt from a Global Times article.
Also Read: China Slams US Accusations of ‘Systematic’ Copying of Frontier AI Models
