Why Trump Put America’s Business Titans In The Room With Xi

As I sat in standstill traffic Thursday night along with everyone else stupid enough to drive through Washington just before an affair of state, I had plenty of time to think about the protesters dotting the corners of the capital.

There were Tibetan and Taiwanese flags, posters and chants mocking and slamming Xi Jinping, and calls for freedom in China. But on every street corner there also appeared a different group: China supporters, waving flags and banners that said, in both Mandarin and English, “A warm welcome to Chairman Xi on his visit to the U.S.” and “Hello, Uncle Xi.”

That’s not something you see every day. Terrorist sympathizers, Russian fanatics, even Iranian apologists pop up at protests, in the news, and certain Senate races. But people don’t turn out to cheer Xi or the Politburo in Beijing. Which is why I can’t help but think that those supporters were at best paid actors, at worst, Chinese nationals coerced into showing support for Xi for fear of retribution.

We know that Chinese students studying in American universities are terrified to even mildly criticize their home country in classroom discussion, worried that their fellow expatriate students might report home on their dissent. Those who dare engage in pro-democracy activities, or otherwise criticize the regime, receive frantic calls from relatives back home who have been threatened by state police.

It’s a good reminder of who exactly we’re dealing with: China is still China, no matter how nicely Xi and President Trump smile for the cameras.

But it’s also a good reminder of who we are, or at least, who we ought to be. While Xi arrived at Thursday’s State Dinner with a group of apparatchiks, Trump packed the room with American CEOs and executives. Among the star-studded invitees were Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Michael Dell, Sundar Pichai, and Sam Altman.

A few things stand out about the titans of industry who assembled in the East Room of the White House. The first, of course, is that Elon Musk is back in the fold after a protracted rift with the president. The Tesla CEO and former DOGE head battled ruthlessly and publicly with the president for months. But now it seems the hatchet has been buried — Elon was seated with Trump and Xi, all smiles all night.

That alone is enough to remind us of the important ways we’re different from China. It’s hard to imagine a Chinese tech executive who criticized Xi keeping his life, let alone his job — to say nothing of being warmly welcomed back into the inner circle.

The same goes for Altman, whose calls for an industry-wide AI pause the president slammed as part of a “globalist scheme.” This wasn’t some long-forgotten squabble — Trump said it the day before the dinner. And there was Altman, yukking it up with the president and Elon and Mark Zuckerberg.

AI, of course, was the specter haunting the evening. When we talk about our competition with China, we’re no longer talking about manufacturing or Belt and Road or arming Tibet — although all of those things still matter. But increasingly all that matters is AI. Who’s going to win the Cold War for this new technology? Who’s going to control the chips, the data centers, the future?

As The Daily Wire’s Brecca Stoll reported just this week, the authors of a paper frequently cited by data center critics are bound up in a web of CCP ties. It seems to suggest Trump was right when he said there was “a sick conspiracy going on against AI and data centers,” and that “the only one that is happy about it is China.”

What a show of force, then, for Trump to invite Altman and for Altman to attend. His presence reminds Xi not just that we have the capacity to win the AI race, but that we can do so without nationalizing companies or imprisoning our critics.

Also seated among the tech executives was JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who has encouraged the government to take “a light touch” to AI regulation, so as to not stifle innovation. Dimon has long warned that it’s impossible to separate America’s economic strength from America’s national security — AI is just a piece of that puzzle.

“There is nothing more important for our country — and in fact, I don’t think it’s exaggeration to say for the whole free and democratic world — that America maintains the preeminent military, supported directly by the preeminent economy of the world,” Dimon said over the summer.

The banker has the president’s ear — Trump recently called Dimon “maybe the greatest banker in this country in many, many decades” — and much like his company’s namesake appears well positioned to finance what Trump is calling America’s new Golden Age. Dimon praised the president for “reignit[ing] that arsenal of democracy that we have in this country,” and thereby reigniting “the American dream.”

You can’t win the war for the future if you can’t pay for the battles. Dimon and Trump understand that, and it’s good for us that they do.

When Xi left the state dinner, he may have felt well and truly feted by the White House. He may have driven past some of his prepaid supporters on the streets. But he almost certainly left thinking about the show of American might he’d just witnessed: a president focused on beating him at his own game, surrounded by the innovators who will help him get there. That’s what we’re about.

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