# Tom Cotton warns US firms over reliance on Chinese AI 2026-08-08T23:05:57+00:00 | World & Diplomacy | Indian Opinion Desk Corroboration: 1 independent outlet Republican Senator Tom Cotton has urged the Trump administration to curb American companies' growing reliance on Chinese artificial intelligence models. In a letter to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Cotton called for tighter export controls and a government-wide ban on contractors using Chinese models like DeepSeek, claiming nearly 80 percent of US startups build applications on Chinese platforms. He cited Airbnb's Qwen-powered chatbot and Cursor's Kimi-based coding agent as examples. Cotton warned of potential backdoors and lower-quality code from Chinese models. The Arkansas senator proposed supporting an open AI ecosystem in the US to compete globally. He said American dominance depends on offering models for all applications, from cutting-edge defence to commercial use. ## Coverage - thehansindia.com Tags: DeepSeek, export controls, national security, open-weight models, Tom Cotton, US-China AI rivalry Canonical: https://indianopinion.org/tom-cotton-warns-us-firms-over-reliance-on-chinese-ai/ License: Summary and commentary (c) Indian Opinion, reusable with attribution. Facts belong to the linked sources. Cite: https://indianopinion.org/tom-cotton-warns-us-firms-over-reliance-on-chinese-ai/#story-in-brief Review state: restored archive article, accurate at time of publication, not offered to search indexes.