US Lawmaker Urges US-China AI Safeguards Ahead of Xi-Trump Summit

US Representative Ro Khanna, the ranking member of the House Select Committee on China, called on Monday in New York for the United States and China to agree on international regulatory standards for artificial intelligence, comparing them to the guardrails that governed the atomic era. His remarks came two days before Chinese President Xi Jinping is scheduled to arrive in Washington for a closely watched summit with US President Donald Trump, where AI is expected to be on the agenda. Khanna's proposal reflects growing concern in Washington about the pace of AI development and the absence of bilateral rules governing its military and civilian use. The timing places the idea directly into the diplomatic run-up to the Xi-Trump meeting, giving it immediate political weight. Separately, the Financial Times reported that surging electricity demand from AI data centers is accelerating China's pursuit of nuclear fusion, underscoring how AI's energy footprint is becoming a strategic and industrial issue in its own right. No joint US-China framework has been announced, and it remains unclear whether AI governance will produce a concrete deliverable from the summit.

Global Impact

Geopolitically, a US-China understanding on AI safety would be the first meaningful bilateral guardrail on a technology both sides treat as strategic, potentially reducing the risk of an uncontrolled military AI race; failure to agree leaves the field to unilateral export controls and fragmented standards. Economically, divergent rules would force global firms to build separate AI stacks for each market, raising costs and slowing deployment, while a common standard would lower compliance friction for multinationals.