RANKING MEMBER RO KHANNA CONVENES EMERGENCY HEARING CALLING FOR U.S.-CHINA AI AGREEMENT

Washington, DC — On Wednesday, September 23 at 1pm ET, Silicon Valley Representative Ro Khanna, Ranking Member of the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, will convene a first-of-its-kind virtual hearing calling for a U.S.-China agreement to responsibly pace the development of AI and to address shared risks, like loss of control and misalignment. The hearing comes the day before Donald Trump is scheduled to meet with Xi Jinping at the White House

“The American people are deeply concerned about the future of AI and the potential risks. We urgently need an agreement with China on basic inspections and safety standards. We have convened the world's leading experts to testify on what agreement is possible. After multiple requests to OpenAI and Anthropic, they haven’t committed to testifying. Going forward, we will use all options to compel their appearance once we are in the majority,” said Ranking Member Ro Khanna. 

In addition to calling on American companies to testify, Ranking Member Khanna also sent letters this week to leading Chinese AI companies, including Moonshot AI, Alibaba, and DeepSeek, requesting commitments to join American AI labs in a binding international agreement to responsibly pace the development of the technology. In the letters, he also explains why this agreement between U.S. and Chinese AI labs must be enforceable and verifiable, just like any agreement between our governments.

The hearing will give members of the Committee an opportunity to question leading AI researchers and safety experts about the risks of AI, best practices in AI governance, and the path forward toward binding international safeguards to ensure safety and human control of this technology. 

Witnesses:

• Dr. Geoffrey Hinton, Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto and Nobel Laureate

• Lt. Gen. John (Jack) N.T. Shanahan (USAF, Ret.), Adjunct Senior Fellow, Center for a New American Security
• Matt Sheehan, Senior Fellow, Asia Program and Co-Director, China AI Initiative, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
• Miriam Vogel, President and CEO, EqualAI
• Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh, Professor and Director of the AI: Futures and Responsibilities Programme, University of Cambridge

Date: Wednesday, September 23rd at 1pm ET

A livestream of the hearing will be available HERE. 

Members of the press may RSVP or direct questions to julia.snodgrass@mail.house.gov