Now Reading: Tom Cotton warns US firms over reliance on Chinese AI
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Tom Cotton warns US firms over reliance on Chinese AI
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…
The Story in Brief
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.
The Indian Opinion
This latest warning from a senior US senator repeats familiar fears about Chinese technology, but the real story is the market's vote. American startups are choosing Chinese open-weight models because they work and are cheap. Banning them may hurt US competitiveness more than China's. The question is not whether China is aggressive, but whether US companies will follow government diktat when profit and performance point elsewhere. Watch how Microsoft handles its reported DeepSeek consideration.
Source: thehansindia.com
This story was synthesised by AI from the source linked above.
