Q&A with AI Now Institute's Shazeda Ahmed on how the US-China “tech Cold War” narrative allows Big Tech to avoid regulation and how it informs US policy
There is a narrative in Washington, D.C., that we are in the midst of a tech cold war with China. Tweets: @juliaangwin , @nantarsya , @shiraovide , and @themarkup Tweets: Julia Angwin / @juliaangwin : The U.S. is warning of Chinese technological advancement while China is cracking down on tech. Is it a tech Cold War? Or just a convenient narrative for US companies to avoid regulation? China tech expert Shazeda Ahmed discusses in today's newsletter: https://www.getrevue.co/... Nantina Vgontzas / @nantarsya : My @AINowInstitute colleague Shazeda Ahmed: “The perception that the Chinese military will have autonomous weapons exceeding U.S. military capabilities very quickly is preventing any public deliberation about whether we even want autonomous warfare.” https://twitter.com/... Shira Ovide / @shiraovide : Good conversation between @JuliaAngwin & Shazeda Ahmed digging into the narrative of a U.S.-China tech “cold war” https://www.getrevue.co/... https://twitter.com/... @themarkup : “You know, if you regulate us, China wins the global ‘values war.’ So you really shouldn't regulate Facebook and, by extension, other big tech companies.” That's the gist of Big Tech's so-called “China defense.” And in some cases, it's been working. https://www.getrevue.co/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Shazeda Ahmed's argument lands in a debate that has been building for years: as early as 2019, coverage warned that misapplied Cold War analogies distort how AI should be regulated, and the Trump White House was internally split over how hard to restrict China's access to US tech. By 2020, US CTO Michael Kratsios was framing the government's light-touch AI regulatory framework around the prospect of an AI cold war with China.
Ahmed's contribution is to name who benefits from that framing: Big Tech, which per the relationships has argued that US regulation would hand China a 'values war' advantage — a tactic that has sometimes succeeded in Washington. The interview matters because it reframes national-security urgency as a deregulatory instrument.
First-order effects
- Big Tech's anti-regulation argument — that US rules would cede ground to China in a 'values war' — gains an explicit intellectual critique from AI Now, complicating its use in policy fights.
- US policymakers relying on the Cold War frame, as Kratsios did in laying out the administration's AI regulatory approach, face a documented challenge that the frame suppresses rather than enables public debate over autonomous warfare.
Second-order effects
- Regulators and lawmakers must separate legitimate dual-use concerns from competitive framing — a task the US is already failing at, with sources telling the Wall Street Journal it struggles to distinguish military-advancing tech from commercial AI.
- If the narrative's regulatory shield weakens, US tech firms face domestic rulemaking pressure they have so far deflected by invoking China, while China's own crackdown on tech undercuts the 'regulate us or lose' premise.
Third-order effects
- If Ahmed's critique holds, US AI policy splits along a structural fault: export controls and military competition governed by the Cold War frame, and domestic regulation judged on its own merits — with the boundary between them the central fight.
- The durable pattern is that geopolitical rivalry becomes a standing argument against domestic tech regulation, making the credibility of dual-use threat assessments the hinge on which both national security and consumer protection turn.
The trend: The US-China tech rivalry narrative is hardening into a standing justification for light-touch AI regulation at home, and critics like AI Now are forcing policymakers to defend that link explicitly.