Hegseth: US and China Agreed to Keep Talking About AI Guardrails

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth says the United States and China agreed in Beijing to keep discussing if the two countries should team to set guardrails on AI.

 ”You wanna be able to set guardrails,” Hegseth told The Daily Signal Saturday evening. “Given the innovation capabilities of the United States of America, we also wanna maintain an advantage, and ensure that we can utilize that advantage responsibly as well.”

“It’s kind of emblematic of that competing tension,” he said.

Hegseth spoke to the press at the United States Embassy in Singapore at the end of his trip to the Shangri-La Dialogue conference, where he met with various Indo-Pacific leaders.

Earlier this month, the secretary of war had joined President Donald Trump on his trip to Beijing, where he said he listened to hours of conversations about U.S.-China relations.

Trump and President Xi Jinping discussed guardrails on AI and how to prevent bad actors from exploiting the most powerful AI models, such as Anthropic’s Mythos, which has exposed major software security vulnerabilities.

Hegseth said the two countries agreed to continue talking as technology develops.

“Guardrail conversations are productive between two strong countries,” Hegseth said, “but it’s also our job to run the fastest, and certainly at the War Department, we’re trying to do everything we can to maintain that.”