House Speaker Mike Johnson rejected calls for a moratorium on advanced artificial intelligence development, arguing that slowing U.S. companies while China continues advancing would create national-security risks, while supporting independent audits and greater transparency as narrower safeguards.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom.
House Speaker Mike Johnson said Tuesday that the United States cannot impose a moratorium on artificial intelligence development without risking its technological advantage over China, staking out a middle position in Washington’s rapidly intensifying debate over AI safety.
Johnson said companies concerned about the pace of their own development are free to voluntarily slow their work but rejected government-imposed restrictions that would broadly halt American AI progress.
“They can self-regulate. They don’t need the government to tell them to slow it down. If they want to slow it down, they should,” Johnson said.
“We cannot have a moratorium on the development of AI, OK? Because then we will lose our edge to China, and that has serious national security implications for every American family.”
Johnson’s remarks come as executives and researchers at some of the country’s most prominent AI companies have publicly warned that increasingly capable systems may be advancing faster than existing safeguards.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei recently called for companies to “pace” development of frontier models long enough for safety measures and independent evaluations to keep up. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Elon Musk have also expressed support for greater caution around increasingly powerful systems.
Those warnings have generated calls in Congress for everything from mandatory safety evaluations and emergency shutdown mechanisms to a temporary pause on certain frontier AI development.
Johnson rejected the most sweeping option.
His argument is that unilateral restraint by the United States would not necessarily slow AI development globally. Instead, he said, it could allow China to close or erase America’s technological lead while retaining freedom to develop its own advanced models.
The speaker nevertheless did not advocate leaving AI companies entirely without oversight.
“I think you need independent auditors. I think you need transparency from the people who are developing this,” Johnson said. “I think there’s some there’s some really important ideas that can be guardrails.”
He described the challenge as finding a “balanced and thoughtful” approach that addresses legitimate safety concerns without stopping American innovation.
That distinction places Johnson somewhere between advocates seeking mandatory limits on frontier AI and President Donald Trump’s more skeptical response to recent warnings.
Trump has dismissed predictions that advanced AI could destroy humanity and has argued that existing federal criminal and regulatory authority is sufficient to address misconduct by technology companies.
The president has also repeatedly framed AI leadership as a strategic competition with Beijing, saying restrictions that unnecessarily slow American companies could benefit China.
Johnson said he spoke with Trump Monday night and that the administration intends to bring executives from major AI companies to the White House within the next week.
The gathering is expected to include leaders of the country’s major frontier-model developers.
Johnson said discussions would focus on “the responsibilities of the companies to maintain safety and what role, if any, the government has to play in that.”
The planned meeting comes at an unusually consequential moment for the industry.
Amodei has argued that companies should give independent evaluators substantial access to frontier systems so outsiders can verify safety claims rather than requiring the public to rely exclusively on companies assessing themselves.
Other AI leaders have similarly endorsed forms of external evaluation, while debate continues over whether those standards should remain voluntary or become federal requirements.
Critics of voluntary self-regulation argue that companies racing for market share, investment and technological leadership have financial incentives to move faster than competitors. Supporters of a lighter regulatory approach counter that detailed federal rules could become obsolete rapidly, discourage innovation or unintentionally protect the largest companies from emerging competitors.
Johnson’s proposal for independent auditing and transparency reflects an attempt to address some of those concerns without endorsing a development freeze.
He also rejected the idea of creating a multinational regulatory authority with power over American AI companies.
Instead, Johnson suggested that governments should communicate directly about risks and expectations.
He said AI is likely to be discussed when Trump meets Chinese President Xi Jinping in Washington next week.
“I’m sure they need to, you know, keep tabs and make commitments to one another,” Johnson said.
Reuters reported that U.S. and Chinese officials had also been planning lower-level talks concerning AI risks, although deep strategic distrust between the two countries complicates any effort to coordinate limits on frontier development.
China has become central to nearly every major argument in Washington over regulating AI.
Supporters of stronger safeguards contend that uncontrolled development could create cybersecurity, biological, military or autonomous-system risks severe enough that competition cannot justify ignoring them.
Opponents of a broad slowdown argue that restrictions imposed only on U.S. companies would be strategically ineffective if Chinese laboratories continued advancing their own models.
That dilemma has become particularly visible since Amodei’s call to slow the rate at which frontier capabilities improve.
Some AI leaders argue that meaningful pacing would ultimately require international coordination so that one company or country does not gain an overwhelming advantage simply by refusing to participate.
Johnson appears open to discussions between governments but not to an international regulator with authority over U.S. development.
The speaker’s position also differs from emerging proposals elsewhere in Congress.
Some Democratic lawmakers and a smaller number of Republicans have pushed for stronger federal intervention following warnings from AI researchers about systems becoming more autonomous.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has proposed legislation with Rep. Greg Casar, D-Texas, that would prohibit artificial superintelligence and temporarily pause certain advanced development while a federal regulatory framework is created.
Other lawmakers are considering narrower measures focused on safety testing, transparency and companies’ responsibility to take reasonable precautions against catastrophic harm.
Johnson made clear Tuesday that he does not support a general pause.
His approach instead centers on continuing development while demanding more information about what companies are building and potentially relying on independent experts to examine whether safeguards work.
The White House meeting could become the next major test of whether that approach can satisfy AI companies now requesting clearer safety rules without producing the kind of slowdown Trump and Johnson argue would threaten U.S. competitiveness.
For Johnson, the boundary is already clear: safeguards may be necessary, but an American moratorium is not.
Any AI policy, he argues, must confront two risks simultaneously — the possibility of increasingly powerful systems causing serious harm and the national-security consequences of allowing China to surpass the United States while Washington tries to prevent it.
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