US Senator and Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance speaks to a Fox News reporter in the spin room after participating in the Vice Presidential debate with Minnesota Governor and Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz hosted by CBS News at the CBS Broadcast Center in New York on October 1, 2024.
Charly Triballeau | AFP | Getty Images
Vice President JD Vance on Tuesday said that the U.S. will safeguard American artificial intelligence and chips and block efforts to “weaponize” the critical technologies.
“Some authoritarian regimes have stolen and used AI to strengthen their military intelligence and surveillance capabilities, capture foreign data and create propaganda to undermine other nations’ national security,” Vance said in an address at France’s AI Action Summit in Paris.
“I want to be clear, this administration will block such efforts, full stop,” Vance added. “We will safeguard American AI and chip technologies from theft and misuse, work with our allies and partners to strengthen and extend these protections and close pathways to adversaries attaining AI capabilities that threaten all of our people.”
Much of the focus from the the AI Action Summit this week has been centered on China’s AI model DeepSeek, which claimed to achieve performance on par with OpenAI’s o1 reasoning model at a far lower cost. Vance didn’t mention DeepSeek by name — however, Trump’s second in command took aim at cheap, heavily subsidized technologies.
“We’re all familiar with cheap tech in the marketplace that’s been heavily subsidized and exported by authoritarian regimes,” he said.
In a suggestive swipe toward U.S. allies present in the room, Vance added that it “never pays off” to work with firms operating under such authoritarian regimes.
Collaborating with such parties means “chaining your nation to an authoritarian master that seeks to infiltrate, dig in and seize your information infrastructure,” the U.S. VP added.
Europe should embrace AI ‘frontier’
Vance also took aim at Europe on Tuesday, saying that officials in the continent have become too heavily focused on regulating AI and adding guardrails to the tech rather than embracing the opportunity and its growth potential.
Touting America as “the leader” in AI, Vance said that the U.S. wants its European allies to foster a more favorable attitude to the technology than it has done to date.
“Just because we’re the leader doesn’t mean we want to or need to go it alone, of course,” Vance said, adding that “America wants to partner with all of you, and we want to embark on the AI revolution before us with the spirit of openness and collaboration.”
“But to create that kind of trust, we need international regulatory regimes that fosters the creation of AI technology rather than strangles it, and we need our European friends in particular to look to this new frontier with optimism rather than trepidation.”
The EU has taken a strict regulatory approach to AI, introducing first-of-its-kind legislation to safeguard against risks posed by the technology. The bloc’s landmark AI law, which recently became enforceable for the first time, imposes tough restrictions and threatens hefty fines for breaches.
ECB President Ursula von der Leyen on Tuesday said the EU would mobilize a total of 200 billion euros ($206.5 billion) for AI investments in Europe, noting that the race for leadership in the technology had not yet been won by China or the U.S.
