WASHINGTON—On Thursday, senators from the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation discussed the need to accelerate U.S. artificial intelligence innovation to maintain global leadership in AI development.
“The United States leads today, but what I would like to say is, it is a race. Leadership is absolutely not guaranteed.” Dr. Lisa Su, CEO and Chair of Advanced Micro Devices, said.
According to the 2024 Stanford AI Index, the United States currently ranks first in quantity and quality of AI models, but China has been closing the quality gap.
At a hearing Thursday, titled “Winning the AI Race: Strengthening U.S. capabilities in Computing and Innovation,” members of Congress and witnesses discussed the importance of American investment in AI development globally to preserve U.S. dominance.
“This future can be almost unimaginably bright, but only if we take concrete steps to ensure that an American-led version of AI, built on democratic values like freedom and transparency,
prevails over an authoritarian one,” Sam Altman, CEO and co-founder of OpenAI, said in his testimony.
OpenAI is a leading American artificial intelligence company and the developer of ChatGPT, a free online chatbot. OpenAI launched OpenAI for Countries on Wednesday to help grow global AI adoption using OpenAI’s tech as the foundation.
Chinese AI firm DeepSeek shook the tech world when it launched its new AI model in January. It claimed that its AI model performs as well as OpenAI while using less energy and less advanced hardware.
“The number one factor that will define whether the United States or China wins this race is whose technology is most broadly adopted in the rest of the world,” said Brad Smith, Vice Chair and President of Microsoft Corporation. He argued that whoever creates a global network of trust in and access to their technology first will most likely win the AI race.
Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell, the top Democrat on the committee, suggested creating a “tech NATO” where the five democracies with the most sophisticated technology set rules and advisories on the technology supply chain and implementation. She emphasized the importance of creating international alliances in the technology sector.
While Democrats on the committee stressed the importance of protecting users and their intellectual property from AI through regulation, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, chairman of the committee, criticized strong regulation of AI.
Cruz said he would create a new bill “that creates a regulatory sandbox for AI modeled on the approach taken by Congress and President Clinton at the dawn of the internet.”
The Telecommunications Act of 1996, signed into law by Clinton, intended to promote competition and deregulate the tech industry.
“To lead in AI, the United States can not allow regulation, even the supposedly benign kind, to choke innovation or adoption,” Cruz said.
Several committee members emphasized the importance of the U.S. winning the AI race so that American values remain in high regard globally.
“We’re trying to win a race so that American values prevail internationally,” Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, said.
Erin Drumm is a reporter for the Medill News Service covering politics. She graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 2024 with a BA in American Studies and is now a graduate student at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism specializing in politics, policy and foreign affairs.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.