Bessent Warns US Faces Dire Consequences If China Wins AI Race

September 9, 2026 at 02:11 PM2 min

This digest was compiled by AI from multiple sources — links to the originals are below.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned on Tuesday that the US would face dire consequences if China wins the AI race. Speaking at a Breitbart News event in Washington, he said 'there is no day after tomorrow if China wins at this.' His remarks came as US agencies accused Chinese AI firms of extracting billions of tokens from American frontier models.

Key Facts

Bessent said 'there is no day after tomorrow if China wins at this' at a Breitbart News event in Washington on Tuesday.
US agencies said Alibaba, DeepSeek, Moonshot AI and other China-based AI companies extracted billions of tokens from US frontier AI models since at least late 2024.
The FBI, NSA and CISA said the token extraction was potentially taken 'with Chinese government awareness.'
Reuters reported the US and China were preparing to discuss AI safety risks in mid-September, before Xi Jinping meets Trump in Washington on Sept. 24.

Bessent's Warning

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned the US faces dire consequences if it loses the AI race with China. Speaking at a Breitbart News event in Washington on Tuesday, Bessent said 'there is no day after tomorrow if China wins at this.' He indicated the US's large defense budget would fail to protect the nation if China pulled away on AI. Bessent's comments appear aimed at voices in the US upset that large data center projects are being built in their backyards. Late last month, President Donald Trump warned that public backlash to the projects risks giving China the upper hand in AI.

US Agency Allegations

On Tuesday, US government agencies said Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., DeepSeek, Moonshot AI and other China-based AI companies extracted billions of tokens from US frontier AI models. The models included variants of Anthropic PBC's Claude, Alphabet Inc.'s Gemini and SpaceXAI's Grok since at least late 2024. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Security Agency and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said the actions were potentially taken 'with Chinese government awareness.' The allegations highlight US worries about open-weight Chinese models that are nearly as powerful as American versions at a fraction of the cost.

Upcoming US-China Talks

Reuters has reported that the US and China were preparing to discuss AI safety risks in mid-September. Those talks, if they happened, would come just before Chinese leader Xi Jinping meets Trump in Washington on Sept. 24.