{"slug": "why-the-midterms-and-china-fears-will-complicate-action-in-washington-to-ai", "title": "Why the midterms and China fears will complicate action in Washington to regulate AI", "summary": "The House is set to vote this week on the Ratepayer Protection Act, which would force tech companies to pay for infrastructure tied to data center development, even as President Trump hardens his position against AI regulation and the House prepares to adjourn Thursday until after the November midterm election. Trump, who meets Chinese President Xi Jinping this month, said the U.S. is \"leading China in AI\" and dismissed extinction concerns, while the American Enterprise Institute's Ryan Fedasiuk and Satvik Pendyala wrote there is only a \"24-36 month window for the United States to make preparations for a Chinese AI industry that is no longer compute-constrained.\" The Senate has not taken up the Ratepayer Protection Act, and other measures including the bipartisan Frontier Act and a Sanders-backed bill to ban superintelligent AI systems remain stalled.", "body_md": "Pressure is mounting on Washington to make a real effort to tackle the dangers of rapidly developing artificial intelligence, but events on the political calendar are likely to make any debate slow and complicated.\n\nPresident Trump, for his part, appears to be hardening his position that policymakers should stay on the sidelines.\n\nWith lawmakers focused on the midterm elections and Trump himself gearing up for a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping this month, meaningful action appears unlikely to even be fully debated before winter, though the House is set to vote this week on AI data center costs.\n\n\"Congress is a deliberative body [and lawmakers] need to catch up,\" House Speaker Mike Johnson said on Sunday in one of many signs in recent days that any action will be slow.\n\nIn a flurry of comments over the past five days, Trump has repeatedly downplayed the need for AI regulation.\n\nMany of the calls for new government safeguards, he said, were coming from \"negative forces that are bringing it up that shouldn't be bringing it up.\"\n\n\"The Trump Administration has stopped AI 'people' from doing bad, or potentially bad, 'things,' like Dario (Anthropic!), who is now pretending to be a 'perfect little angel,'\" Trump wrote.\n\nThe president even brushed off worries of AI leading to human extinction, saying, \"I don't have any\" concerns about that. He also pushed back on the notion that he is downplaying the dangers and maintained that AI would be \"more good than bad by a lot.\"\n\nTrump's focus on China\n\nTrump's remarks about AI are highly focused on China, with Xi's state visit set for next week.\n\n\"We're leading China in AI, we're the most sophisticated country in the world. And frankly, I want to keep it that way,\" he said in response to a question on AI regulation that didn't mention China.\n\nThere is now only \"a 24-36 month window for the United States to make preparations for a Chinese AI industry that is no longer compute-constrained,\" Ryan Fedasiuk and Satvik Pendyala at the American Enterprise Institute wrote in a recent paper.\n\nViews like that have led to a sense — both inside and outside the Trump administration — that any moves seen as slowing AI development may be ill-advised, even as US tech CEOs warn that unchecked growth poses existential dangers.\n\nFor its part, China also appeared uninterested in slowing the rapid pace of its own AI development.\n\nA spokesperson for China's Foreign Ministry on Monday called Amodei's essay \"fearmongering\" and said that \"confrontation and vicious competition will only disrupt the process of global AI governance which serves no one's interest.\"\n\nA vote scheduled in Congress this week\n\nMeanwhile, the House is set to vote this week to address voters' concerns about data centers, but there's no clarity on when, or if, it will become law. The Ratepayer Protection Act could force tech companies to pay for the infrastructure associated with data center development. The Senate has not taken up the bill.\n\nStill, scheduling a House vote is an about-face after lawmakers recently suggested the bill might not receive a vote before the election. It would also represent a significant shift from the Trump administration's approach, which calls for voluntary commitments from tech companies to ensure that data centers do not raise electricity bills in surrounding communities.\n\nThere is no dearth of bills to rein in AI. The Frontier Act is one bipartisan effort that would force new safety and transparency rules. Another bill, being pushed by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and others, would ban the development and deployment of superintelligent AI systems.\n\nBut the House is also scheduled to adjourn this Thursday and not return to Washington until after the November election.\n\n\"It's past time for Congress to get off the sidelines and do its job,\" Representative Lori Trahan of Massachusetts, one of the Frontier Act's authors, wrote on X in response to Jacob Coxon, a former Anthropic researcher whose viral warnings about AI spurred renewed fears.\n\nYet many leaders are much more noncommittal. Johnson said on Sunday that there was an urgency to act on AI, but he told CNN that a meeting with the White House would be needed before any action could be considered.\n\nHe added, \"Right now, (we) all have very different ideas on what the guardrails should be.\"\n\nBen Werschkul is a Washington correspondent for Yahoo Finance.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/why-the-midterms-and-china-fears-will-complicate-action-in-washington-to-ai", "canonical_source": "https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/why-the-midterms-and-china-fears-will-complicate-action-in-washington-to-regulate-ai-162259365.html", "published_at": "2026-09-14 16:22:59+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-09-14 16:58:43.136263+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-policy", "ai-safety", "ai-infrastructure"], "entities": ["Donald Trump", "Xi Jinping", "Mike Johnson", "American Enterprise Institute", "Ryan Fedasiuk", "Satvik Pendyala", "Ratepayer Protection Act", "Frontier Act"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/why-the-midterms-and-china-fears-will-complicate-action-in-washington-to-ai", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/why-the-midterms-and-china-fears-will-complicate-action-in-washington-to-ai.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/why-the-midterms-and-china-fears-will-complicate-action-in-washington-to-ai.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/why-the-midterms-and-china-fears-will-complicate-action-in-washington-to-ai.jsonld"}}