Sen. Bernie Sanders is under fire for hosting a Capitol Hill panel with Chinese-aligned AI officials while pushing a policy that would freeze U.S. data center construction, a move critics say hands strategic leverage to Beijing and stalls the innovation America needs to win the AI race.
Sanders is slated to appear on a Capitol Hill panel alongside Xue Lan of Tsinghua University and Zeng Yi of the Beijing Institute of AI Safety and Governance, with MIT’s Max Tegmark noting the event will focus on “AI existential risk and international cooperation.” Having officials tied to China’s Ministry of Science and Technology on a U.S. forum raises legitimate concerns about whose interests are being represented. From a Republican perspective, inviting actors with deep ties to the Chinese state to shape policy on American soil is at best tone deaf and at worst dangerous.
Those worries are amplified because Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced the Artificial Intelligence Data Center Moratorium Act, described by Sanders’ office as designed to “slow down the development of AI.” A moratorium on new or upgraded data centers would directly choke the infrastructure that powers AI research and commercial deployment. Critics warn this would cede ground to China just when speed and scale matter most for national security and economic leadership.
Voices across the tech and policy spectrum have warned the moratorium risks “rationing access to digital services” and could “impair U.S. competitiveness” by stalling necessary capacity growth. Even some Democrats balked, with Sen. Mark Warner calling the moratorium “idiocy” and arguing it would give China an edge. That bipartisan pushback underlines a simple fact: policy that slows American technological progress helps our strategic competitor.
Congressional critics have been blunt about the optics of the Capitol Hill meeting. Rep. Pat Harrigan warned, “This is the same China that just blocked Meta’s $2 billion deal to acquire Manus AI, a startup whose founders had already moved to Singapore and whose deal was already done and closed. Beijing decided it did not matter. They stepped in, killed the deal, and restricted the founders from leaving the country while it was under review.” He added, “China is aggressively locking down their most powerful AI assets and shutting American companies out,” and warned, “Bernie Sanders wants to hand them a seat at the table to help decide how America handles the same technology.”
The reaction online has been sharp and unapologetic. “Holy sh–,” Ruthless Podcast co-host Comfortably Smug posted on X. “It’s a bit on the nose that communist Bernie Sanders is looking to the Chinese Communist Party for their ‘leadership’ on AI,” conservative commentator Steve Guest wrote on X. These blunt takes reflect a wider unease among conservatives about mixing domestic policy formation with representatives of an authoritarian rival.
China’s model for AI governance is top-down and state-driven, and several of the visiting experts have supported expanding China’s role in writing global AI rules. Lan helped establish a CCP-backed national AI safety body, while Yi has pushed for mandatory safety and ethics frameworks and worked on UNESCO’s Recommendation on the Ethics of AI. Those approaches clash with the U.S. preference for competition-driven innovation and market-led development.
Industry groups warn the moratorium would hit everyday Americans by stalling services that depend on data-center capacity. Cy McNeill of the Data Center Coalition warned a freeze would risk “rationing access to digital services,” while the Center for Data Innovation called the bill dependent on “well-worn anxieties” rather than solid technical justification. For Republicans, the answer is clear: beat China through faster innovation, not through self-imposed halts to infrastructure.
House Energy and Commerce Chairman Brett Guthrie framed the stakes bluntly: “The stakes couldn’t be higher,” and cautioned that China already deploys next-generation technologies to advance surveillance and other authoritarian aims. Guthrie warned that an adversary’s technology stack could become a strategic chokehold, a scenario Republicans find unacceptable. The path to outcompeting Beijing is to accelerate investment, secure supply chains, and keep policy focused on American advantage.
Sen. Ted Cruz summed up a common Republican argument: “The way to beat China in the AI race is to outrace them in innovation, not saddle AI developers with European-style regulations,” and he emphasized that growth in AI will bolster national security, create jobs, and boost economic growth. That perspective pushes back on restrictions that amount to technological self-sabotage while demanding vigilance about foreign influence. Lawmakers should be scrutinizing who sits at the table and whether their models serve American liberty and leadership or Beijing’s authoritarian reach.
