Daines Previews Xi Summit on Fox News: “We Want to See Strategic Stability”

• September 23, 2026

WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Senator Steve Daines today joined Harris Faulkner on Fox News to discuss the latest on the race in AI against China and the war in Iran.

Watch the full exchange HERE.

Daines on Xi Jinping's visit to the US:

So let's keep in mind we've got the two largest economies in the world, China, the United States. We've got the two largest militaries in the world and the two leaders in AI in the world. So the stakes could not be higher. The world will be watching every moment, every word coming out of Washington this week. And credit to President Trump, who was just in Beijing in May, engaging with Xi Jinping and now returning that reciprocal visit, returning Xi Jinping now to Washington, D.C. This is unprecedented. Four short months, two heads of states, the two countries in the respective capitals.

…I think the world wants to see this relationship staying on relatively stable terms. I think the key word coming out of our team, the United States, is we want to see strategic stability. You've heard that. That's important because disruptions in this relationship disrupts the global economy. It disrupts what's going on militarily, potentially. So the stakes are very high. And a credit to President Trump for keeping this relationship. The lines of communication open with Xi Jinping. And by the way, we've got a great ambassador over in China, David Perdue. He worked in Asia, worked in China, very close to the President. We couldn't have a better ambassador this moment in Beijing, and he'll be here tonight in Washington.

Daines on AI race against China:

Yeah, it baffles me a bit because what's at stake here is global competition. We have got to go faster than China. This really is all about a race. And if you look at what's happening in terms of public opinion. It shifted and becomes negative sentiments. Now, if I was China looking at wanting to influence public opinion in America, what would I want to see happen? I want to see the public start to move against, from a public opinion point, against AI. And so this concerns me a bit and what's going on right now in shaping public opinion.

…One of the big cities in China is called Hangzhou. It's one of their epicenters of innovation as it relates to AI. That's where DeepSeek is that, of course, made waves here last year in terms of AI frontier models. This is where Xi Jinping was not long ago, talking about one of their AI summits. You realize China's graduating three to five to maybe ten times more engineers every year than we are here in the United States. They're building out a world-class innovation ecosystem, and it continues to grow larger and larger every day. We're falling behind in terms of the innovation ecosystem. We're still ahead in AI. The Chinese do a better job of adopting it, putting it in place. In fact, Stanford ranked China second in the world behind the UAE. It ranked the United States 24th. So we've got our work cut out for us. This is why we need, I would call it adaptive governance, a light, it relates to regulatory regime. We want to be able to move as fast as we can from the innovation viewpoint, but also protect possible downsides of AI. It's going to take thoughtful leadership in Washington. It's going to take strong input from the private sector. That's what, because it's moving so fast, Harris, we can't keep up with it.

…We've never seen a technology move so fast. The recursive nature of AI, what that means is AI is now programming AI. It's becoming less about humans generating the next frontier models as AI generating the next AI models. So it's moving that fast. The question is, how do you put the right kind of guardrails in place that protect the American public, but also do not inhibit innovation.

Daines on the latest Iranian Regime:

It's hard to understand who is in charge and who really speaks for the regime… I think he's one of those voices. I think there's other voices as well. But let's step back and think about what happens with Iran. destabilizing the world. The Houthis, Hamas, Hezbollah, these are all proxies of Iran. And imagine for a moment what a world would be like with this regime gone and the people of Iran who generally are pro-America back in charge again. We saw that prior to 1979. I remember those days when Iran was very different. Imagine what our children and grandchildren could have someday if we had an Iran that was back in terms of complying with the world order and working with us instead of trying to destroy us every day.

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Contact: Gabby Wiggins