Ranking Member Khanna and Select Committee Democrats Question Witnesses During Hearing on China’s Campaign to Steal America’s AI Edge
WASHINGTON – Today, Representative Ro Khanna (CA-17), Ranking Member of the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, alongside Democratic Members Rep. André Carson (IN-07); Rep. Shontel Brown (OH-11); Rep. Greg Stanton (AZ-09) and Rep. Jill Tokuda (HI-02), questioned witnesses at a Select Committee hearing on China’s campaign to steal America’s AI edge, which examined the country’s two-track campaign to acquire frontier AI capability despite U.S. export controls.
Ranking Member Khanna pressed witnesses on the implications of model distillation and asked whether they viewed it as the most significant threat in terms of how China will illicitly acquire advanced AI models.
“It is certainly a major issue,” said Dr. Kyle Chan, a Fellow at the Brookings Institution. “I do think that access to compute is up there.”
Mr. Yusuf Mahmood, Director of AI and Emerging Technology at America First Policy Institute, said other layers of the software stack were extremely important.
“For example, model weights. We are not in a position to safeguard our model weights if the CCP decides to steal them.”
Mr. Dmitri Alperovitch, Chairman of the Silverado Policy Accelerator, mentioned that he has spoken extensively with leading AI researchers, all of whom have consistently identified two key reasons Chinese companies have advanced so rapidly in developing their AI models.
“One is distillation of U.S. intellectual property by querying our models and getting our outputs. Two is access to U.S. compute, particularly leading chips that they have been able to use in this post-trading of distillation.”
Ranking Member Khanna then asked: “Would all of you recommend that the AI Institute at Commerce be beefed up in terms of safety regulations and security regulations?”
“One of the highlighted recommendations in my testimony is to significantly fund the Centers for AI Standards and Innovation,” Mr. Mahmood responded. “We believe it should be funded at around $50-$100 million a year because it has such an important mandate.”
Mr. Chan agreed with Mr. Mahmood’s remarks: “It is important for AI safety, AI standards, and for helping the industry develop in a beneficial way.”
Ranking Member Khanna concluded by stating that he has articulated a need for AI safety regulations to protect Americans, consumers, and jobs.
“Would it be fair to say that we need smart regulations for our own national security – that having AI regulations and having a strong, robust agency is needed for national security?” Ranking Member Khanna asked.
Mr. Chan replied: “I think it is very important that we have smart regulation. [It is important] that we have both innovation and progress and make sure that progress gets funneled back into our workers and our communities. I think we need to play an active role and by we, I mean Congress and the American people.”
During questioning from other Committee Members:
Rep. André Carson (IN-07) affirmed that the competition over artificial intelligence is a defining race, adding that the stakes could not be higher.
“Last week, Anthropic released a new model known as Mythos. It's so powerful that the company isn't even releasing it to the public. That's because hackers would use it to find bugs in the systems that essentially support our financial system and critical infrastructure. If China manages to create a model as powerful as Mythos, do you think they'll take the same precautions?”
Mr. Alperovitch answered: “This is not even a hypothetical because we know that China has built a vulnerability disclosure database where they mandate for researchers within China to disclose vulnerabilities first to the government before they release it publicly.”
Rep. Shontel Brown (OH-11) said that for a district like hers in Cleveland, strategic competition with China ultimately comes down to whether working people have an opportunity to secure well-paying union jobs, and whether China’s unfair labor and trade practices will continue to erode the industries on which her community depends.
“My district knows manufacturing, innovation and competition and we know what happens when Washington talks tough on competition but fails to protect workers here at home,” Rep. Brown said.
Rep. Greg Stanton (AZ-09) argued that the competition to continuously create more powerful chips will decide who wins the AI race.
“The area that I represent – the Pheonix, Arizona area – has quickly become a major world player in semiconductors manufacturing,” Rep. Stanton stated. “It’s termed ‘semiconductor ground-zero’ here in the United States. But we still have a critical gap: advanced packaging. For years, most advanced packaging has been done overseas while semiconductors industries like Intel and TSMC, which I represent…are growing their advanced packaging capabilities in Arizona.”
Rep. Jill Tokuda (HI-02) acknowledged that one of her primary concerns is China stealing American technology.
“We have China with no guardrails [and] no guidelines. I am concerned that we are currently abdicating our global role in a number of entities that play oversight in AI,” Rep. Tokuda acknowledged.
###