U.S. Sen. Katie Britt (R-Montgomery) says America cannot afford to lose the artificial intelligence (AI) race to China — but she is also pushing for safeguards as concerns mount over the technology’s risks.
In July, OpenAI unleashed an experimental artificial intelligence model that, without reasonable controls or oversight, gained unauthorized access to several computer networks, which culminated in a days-long hack on another AI company. This has caused some leaders in the industry and Congress to call for new regulations to be implemented for the technology.
It also resulted in Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall to issue a subpoena demanding that OpenAI, led by Sam Altman, respond to an investigation into the company’s complete lack of oversight and adequate safeguards in the hacking of Hugging Face, another artificial intelligence (AI) company.
President Donald Trump believes most of the warnings are overblown and said he doesn’t want to slow down development of new AI models and lose the race to China.
Britt discussed the issue recently on Newsmax.
“We need to maintain our competitive edge against China,” she said. “There is no doubt that we must win the AI race. We’ve been talking about this for years now, both AI and space. We know that that’s the next domain. So we’ve got to maintain that edge. So you’ve got to make sure that we have the tools we need to do that.”
America must win the AI race and maintain our competitive edge against China. However, we have an obligation to ensure innovation continues to flourish on our shores while keeping the American people safe. I look forward to working with my colleagues on this. pic.twitter.com/lNzZVYLOV7
— Senator Katie Boyd Britt (@SenKatieBritt) September 15, 2026
The senator said that members of Congress should be able to find a middle ground on this issue.
“But obviously, we want to make sure that these are safe,” she argued. “So I think that you will see, you know, dialog, conversation around that about whether that could be an industry-led thing or whether there needs to be safeguards put up by Congress. But regardless, we are diving into that. We want to make sure that Americans are safe and that we continue to put us on the forefront, both when it comes to national security and innovation.”
She is also staking out a compromise on the issue of data centers in Alabama, arguing that communities should have the final say while rejecting both widespread development and blanket moratoriums.
Britt agrees with the president that the U.S. needs to win the AI race against China.
“We want those things to happen on our shores,” she said. “We don’t want to push those to China. We know that China is our greatest adversary, and we know that they want to make sure that that we are weaker at every at every turn. So, we’ll continue to have robust conversation about this, but we want to make sure that we’re pushing ahead and doing it in a safe way.”
Yaffee is a contributing writer to Yellowhammer News and hosts “The Yaffee Program” weekdays 9-11 a.m. on WVNN. You can follow him on X @Yaffee
