Beijing hits back at Anthropic CEO's call to curb China's AI development

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BEIJING — China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Monday bristled at the Anthropic CEO's call for the U.S. to curb China's artificial intelligence capabilities as part of a wider argument for a global slowdown on AI development.

In a lengthy essay published Saturday, Dario Amodei warned that a "Chinese lead in AI would pose grave danger for the United States and the world." To enable the U.S. to keep its technological edge, Amodei called for maintaining restrictions on sales to China of the most advanced AI chips and chipmaking equipment.

A spokesperson for China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Amodei's dire warnings about China were counterproductive and that all parties should work together on AI.

"Fearmongering, confrontation and vicious competition will only disrupt the process of global AI governance -- which serves no one's interest," spokesperson Guo Jiakun said at a press conference in response to a question about Amodei's essay.

For their part, Chinese leaders have also sounded the alarm about AI, warning of the risks posed by foreign entities with advanced capabilities. A top security official in China's government published an essay on Sunday in which he accused "certain nations" — a reference to the U.S. — of leveraging AI advantages to hinder other countries' innovation.

On Monday, President Donald Trump pushed back against calls for his administration to step in to slow down AI development, saying such efforts were part of a "SICK conspiracy" which could allow China to eclipse the U.S. on AI.

Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping are expected to discuss AI governance, among other topics, at a meeting planned on Sept. 24.

Chinese companies have developed powerful AI models that are often cheaper to use than advanced models from U.S.-based companies; by some measures, they are just as capable.

Among the concerns outlined in his essay, Amodei predicted that a swarm of AI "agents" could be able to take over the internet in six to 12 months unless researchers agree to slow down. He said that "global pacing will require cooperation with China, the autocratic country with by far the most advanced AI capabilities."

Xi has called for the setting up of a global AI governance framework among the Global South, while pitching China as a pioneer in establishing an open-source AI community.

In an editorial published Sunday, China's state-run Global Times newspaper dismissed Amodei's essay as a veiled call to "contain" China. It said that Amodei's essay may appear on the surface to be focused on global AI security, but, that it is "packed with containment provisions targeting China and is, in essence, a 'Cold War playbook' for the AI sector."

Amodei's essay was published a few days after the FBI, National Security Agency and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued a joint cybersecurity advisory last week. That advisory said Chinese AI developers had engaged in "aggressive, malicious" efforts in extracting, or "distilling," capabilities from some of the most advanced AI models in the U.S. like Anthropic's Claude and OpenAI's GPT.

China's Commerce Ministry dismissed the U.S. claims as groundless and said "distillation" has been commonly used by many AI companies. It also said that the U.S. was pursuing a "monopoly of the AI industry."

Both China and the U.S. want "to make sure the other side cannot establish a tech chokepoint over them," said Lizzi C. Lee, a fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute's Center for China Analysis.

"So from Beijing's perspective, there is an obvious question: if the U.S. wants China to cooperate on frontier safety while also restricting its access to frontier compute, what exactly does that cooperation look like?" Lee said.

In an essay posted Sunday on social media, Chen Yixin, head of China's Ministry of State Security, warned that, in the hands of "hostile forces and individuals with ulterior motives," this technology could pose a direct threat to "our political, institutional, and ideological security."

Citing the capabilities of powerful technologies from U.S. companies like Anthropic and OpenAI, Chen warned that "certain nations and organizations" now have the capabilities to "rapidly discover vulnerabilities at scale ... and execute complex hacking tasks." That, he wrote, poses "serious risks to my country's critical information infrastructure."

Foreign spying agencies are turning to AI to "aggressively harvest sensitive data, including critical national data, trade secrets, and citizens' personal privacy information," Chen wrote.

NPR

Rogue Elements: Ex- CIA official found with $40 million in gold bars for ‘work-related expenses’ reaches tentative plea deal

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A former CIA official found with $40 million of gold bars in his home has reached a tentative plea agreement after being charged with theft for fraudulently inflating his salary, according to court records.

A federal judge on Friday extended a deadline to formally indict defendant David J. Rush until Oct. 8, giving time for federal prosecutors and his attorney to finalize the plea deal and avoid a public trial that the parties said could involve significant litigation over classified material.

A joint court filing Thursday by the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Eastern District of Virginia and Rush’s lawyer did not outline the details of the tentative plea deal. The U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment Saturday, and Rush’s attorney did not not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Rush was charged with theft of public money in May. He was accused of fraudulently claiming 744 hours of military leave on his timecards after he was honorably discharged from the Navy in 2015 and of inflating his salary by falsely claiming degrees from Clemson University in South Carolina and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York, according to an FBI agent’s affidavit filed in court.

That same document also revealed that investigators searched Rush’s home and seized about 300 gold bars worth more than $40 million, plus about $2 million in U.S. currency and about 35 luxury watches.

The FBI affidavit said Rush had obtained the gold bars from the U.S. government for “work-related expenses.” 

Rush’s attorney has said the charge against him isn’t related to the gold bars, which she described as “a sensational tidbit.”

A Justice Department attorney said during a June court proceeding that Rush wasn’t supposed to have the gold bars at his home.

AP

Why Canada? America's northern neighbor seems an unlikely target for a trade war

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Canada might seem an unlikely target for a U.S. trade war.

No country on Earth buys as much from the United States as its northern neighbor. For American farmers, Canada is second only to Mexico as an export market.

A North American trade pact — negotiated by President Donald Trump during his first term — means that most American products enter Canada duty-free. Rankings of the world’s most open economies usually put Canada near the top.

But when Trump looks at Canada, he says, he sees a predator out to cheat the United States and strangle its industries.

America has been “ripped off for 50 years by Canada,” the president declared Saturday when asked if he was considering pulling out of the three-way agreement he signed with the leaders of Canada and Mexico in late 2018.

Relations between the U.S. and Canada have deteriorated since their latest trade talks collapsed Aug. 21st, 2026. Trump has goaded Canada's leaders with personal attacks and portrayed the longtime U.S. ally as weak. After alienating the Canadian public last year by repeatedly floating the idea of making Canada the 51st state, he signed an executive order last month directing the federal government to change Lake Ontario's name to “Lake America.”

Each side blamed the other for the failed negotiations. Trump slapped 50% tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian products three weeks ago to protest what he described as discrimination against U.S. auto, dairy and alcoholic beverage exports.

When Canada's government retaliated Tuesday with tariffs of its own, the president moved to ban imports of the dairy byproduct whey, most alcoholic beverages and motorcycles and mopeds from Canada, though he said several products, including toilet paper, bedsheets and fishing rods, would be removed as tariff targets.

Landing on the list of nations with allegedly unfair trade policies is a jarring turn of events for Canada, a country that built its economy around international commerce. Canada’s trade is equal to 64% of its economic output, the World Bank says, versus 25% for America.

The conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington ranked Canada No. 14 (out of 184 economies) on its Index of Economic Freedom; the United States landed eight spots lower at No. 22. The libertarian Fraser Institute in Vancouver likewise ranked Canada No. 11 (out of 165 countries and territories) on its Economic Freedom of the World report.

Before the latest blowup, Canada’s effective tariff rate on U.S. imports was about 2.4%, less than half the 5% that the United States imposed on Canada, according to calculations by Oxford Economics. Most U.S. exports enter Canada duty-free under the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement that took effect on July 1, 2020.

Despite keeping its economy open to trade overall, Canada does protect several domestic industries. Barry Appleton, co-director of New York Law School’s Center for International Law, calls Canada “a modestly protected economy with two or three genuinely closed sectors.’’

The U.S. has complained for decades, for instance, about what it calls unfair subsidies for Canadian softwood lumber producers. Canada disputes those allegations.

In his 2023 memoir, Robert Lighthizer, U.S. trade representative in Trump’s first term, described Canada as “a quite parochial — and at times quite protectionist — country.’’ The system Canada set up to protect its dairy industry, Lighthizer wrote, “would make a Soviet commissar blush.’’

Canada shields its dairy producers through a convoluted system that imposes tariffs of more than 200% on most dairy products — nearly 300% on some items, such as butter — once they've exceeded a quota, according to Leonard Polzin, a specialist in dairy markets at the University of Wisconsin.

Polzin said the Canadians have a strong incentive to protect their politically sensitive dairy industry from competition with America. Wisconsin alone produces more milk than all of Canada. American dairy producers are so adept at producing large quantities of low-cost milk, Polzin said, that if Canada opened its market completely “we would dump so much product there’s no way they could remain as a viable industry.’’

Trump claimed falsely on social media Tuesday that “Canada doesn’t let our Great Dairy Farmers sell into the Canadian Market.’’

In fact, the United States agreed in the USMCA to allow Canada to continue the supply management system in return for giving American dairy farmers more access to the Canadian market. And American dairy producers have made headway: U.S. dairy exports to Canada rose more than 11% last year on top of an 8% increase in 2024, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The United States already runs a hefty trade surplus in dairy with its northern neighbor, exporting $1.3 billion worth of dairy products to Canada last year while importing just $585 million, according to the USDA.

Overall, the United States runs a trade deficit with Canada — $27.3 billion last year — and Trump isn’t happy about it.

But the gap between what the U.S. sells to Canada and what it buys can be explained by one industry: oil. Canada exported more than $85 billion worth of crude oil to the United States in 2025.

Refineries in the U.S. Midwest need heavy sour crude oil from Alberta’s oil sands deposits.

“It’s the only oil they can use,” Appleton said. “They can’t use Texas crude. They can’t use Venezuelan crude. They’re not set up for it. It would take years and billions of dollars to shift over.’’

What’s more, the Canadian oil sells at a discount to the benchmark U.S. crude oil.

The neighboring countries need each other economically. Canada sends about 70% of its exports to the United States. U.S. refineries need Alberta’s oil. American farmers need Canadian potash fertilizer. Communities on the northern U.S. border rely on electricity generated in Canada.

So there’s a strong incentive for the two sides to come to an agreement. Inu Manak, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said that since the U.S. ban on some Canadian products is not set to take effect until Sept. 29, they have time to resume negotiations.

“This is not going to happen for three weeks,” she said. “So it’s like, ‘We’re going to retaliate, but not yet. There could be a way out of this.’’

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said his country remained open to an agreement: “Canada is always ready to strike a fair deal.”

Trump said Saturday that once Canada treats American farmers better by lowering tariffs, “you’ll probably see a deal with Canada fairly soon.” Speaking in Dublin alongside Ireland’s prime minister, the president said that Canada, just like Iran, “wants to make a deal very badly” with his administration.

Trump and his trade negotiators also are pushing to get Canada to surrender some of its manufacturing to the United States — a tough sell in Ottawa, according to Manak.

Appleton noted that the trade dispute jeopardizes the USMCA, which helped create a thriving automotive industry that straddles the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

“We had the best integrated North American economy going,’’ he said. “And now we don’t. … This is like having a very bad standoff with your 14-year-old. Nobody’s happy in this game.’’

AP Contributors - Rob Gillies in Toronto and Darlene Superville in Dublin. 

China warns of emerging terrorism risks and urges elimination of breeding grounds

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A Chinese envoy on Friday warned of emerging terrorism risks driven by the misuse of new technologies, urging the international community to enhance cooperation and eradicate the breeding grounds of terrorist activities.

Sun Lei, China's deputy permanent representative to United Nations, made the remarks at a UN Security Council open briefing marking the 25th anniversary of the 9-11 terrorist attacks in the United States.

Prior to the meeting, attendees observed a moment of silence to mourn the victims of the 9-11 attacks.

During the session, the Security Council issued a presidential statement reaffirming that terrorism remains one of the most severe threats to international peace and security. The statement also expressed deep concern over the exploitation of emerging technologies, including the internet, satellite communications, virtual assets, and drones, for terrorist purposes.

"Over the past 25 years, international counterterrorism cooperation has continued to deepen, and a global counterterrorism architecture with the United Nations at its core has gradually taken shape. Meanwhile, the threat of international terrorism persists, terrorist activities have become decentralized and fragmented, and emerging technologies are being misused for terrorist purposes," said Sun

To address these technological risks, Sun called for refining global governance rules and regulatory frameworks, while enhancing capacity building for developing countries in utilizing new technologies to combat terrorism.

The Chinese envoy stressed that the international community must strengthen solidarity, uphold the UN's central coordinating role, and intensify crackdown on terrorist activities while eliminating their root causes.

"The Security Council should work to promote the political settlement of hotspot issues, resolve differences through dialogue and negotiation, and eliminate the breeding grounds for terrorism. At the same time, it should oppose the politicization and weaponization of counter-terrorism and avoid linking terrorism to any particular country, ethnicity or religion," said Sun.

He also called for strengthening border control, intelligence sharing, and joint counter-terrorism operations, and bolstering law enforcement and independent response capabilities of developing countries.

Sun said China will continue to actively participate in global counter-terrorism cooperation under frameworks such as the UN, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and BRICS.

China will share its counter-terrorism experience and assist other countries in capacity-building, thereby playing a constructive role in advancing global counter-terrorism cooperation, said the Chinese envoy.

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