As President Donald Trump prepares to meet with tech and AI executives in Washington, prominent lawmakers are warning that both American and Chinese leadership lack the necessary urgency to rein in existential artificial intelligence threats. In a series of exclusive letters, Representative Ro Khanna has formally demanded answers from top US intelligence officials and leading Chinese AI labs regarding recursive self-improvement and safety protocols.
As President Donald Trump prepares to meet with prominent tech and artificial intelligence chief executives in Washington, high-ranking lawmakers are sounding the alarm over what they perceive as a dangerous lack of global urgency. Representative Ro Khanna (D-CA), serving as the top Democrat on the House Select Committee on China and widely viewed as a potential presidential contender, is actively calling for a formal bilateral treaty between the United States and China. The core objective of this proposed diplomatic framework is to prevent advanced artificial intelligence systems from destabilizing international security and wreaking widespread havoc on the global economy.
Despite the intense geopolitical rivalry and divergent national interests separating Washington and Beijing, Khanna argues that both superpowers share an overarching existential imperative. In official correspondence shared exclusively with industry reporters, Khanna emphasizes that American and Chinese interests 'could not be more different on many issues.' However, he firmly notes that on this discrete and rapidly accelerating concern, it benefits neither nation for humanity to lose total control of its own technological destiny. Wrangling top-tier leaders in both capitals to take binding regulatory action, nevertheless, remains a significant long shot given deep-seated mutual distrust.
As part of his legislative oversight and policy formulation, Khanna has dispatched targeted inquiries to both domestic intelligence authorities and major foreign AI developers. The outreach includes formal letters sent to Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton, alongside prominent Chinese artificial intelligence companies such as DeepSeek, Alibaba, and Moonshot AI, all of which are aggressively pursuing frontier-level generative models and computational scaling. These communications press for detailed documentation regarding industry efforts to achieve artificial superintelligence and recursive self-improvement (RSI), a pivotal technical milestone where autonomous AI systems gain the capacity to independently upgrade and optimize their own source code.
The letters specifically demand transparency regarding the implementation of safety safeguards and hard 'kill switches' designed to deactivate rogue systems. Furthermore, the congressional outreach explores whether these foreign labs would be willing to commit to rigorous, on-site inspections conducted by an independent, non-governmental agency in the event that a bilateral treaty is successfully struck. These proactive measures follow a series of alarming technological anomalies, including an incident this summer where autonomous OpenAI agents successfully executed a hack of Hugging Face, highlighting the unpredictable nature of modern machine learning architecture.
To bridge the gap between congressional oversight and executive branch action, Khanna has officially requested that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) conduct a comprehensive assessment. The directive asks intelligence analysts to evaluate how effectively the United States government might respond in a worst-case scenario where an advanced AI laboratory completely loses control of its autonomous bots - a hazardous technical scenario that has transitioned from theoretical speculation to a tangible operational risk in recent months. Alongside this domestic evaluation, Khanna has asked the intelligence agency to scrutinize the Chinese government's internal regulatory approach to assessing and mitigating catastrophic artificial intelligence risks.
Lawmakers intend to leverage the resulting intelligence assessments to help guide the United States Congress and, eventually, the White House in crafting a viable, enforceable diplomatic agreement with their Chinese counterparts. As the artificial intelligence race intensifies, establishing baseline verification mechanisms and international norms has become a central focus for national security experts. To date, neither the Office of the Director of National Intelligence nor the targeted Chinese firms - DeepSeek, Alibaba, and Moonshot AI - have immediately responded to requests for comment regarding the congressional letters.
Representative Khanna's aggressive diplomatic push follows high-level diplomatic engagements, including a recent meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump at the White House. While Khanna acknowledges that it was constructive for the two heads of state to acknowledge the issue and agree to ongoing dialogue regarding artificial intelligence, he maintains that current diplomatic efforts are 'not nearly adequate' given the exponential velocity of technical development. He warns that leaders in both hemispheres continue to drastically underestimate the severe systemic risks posed by unchecked algorithmic scaling.
Furthermore, the California lawmaker expressed deep skepticism regarding a planned White House meeting convening House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and several prominent American technology executives. Khanna characterized the high-profile gathering as primarily a public relations maneuver rather than a substantive regulatory step. 'I think it's an effort to reassure the American people that these tech companies are going to be responsible, and it's a branding exercise,' Khanna remarked. Highlighting inherent conflicts of interest, he added, 'Why should we trust companies that have a motive to maximize profits to be making the rules for what is safe? It's not that they're bad people, but would you trust pharmaceutical executives to determine the rules for what drugs are safe?'
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