Daines on Fox News: “We Need to Be Gold Medalists in the AI Race”

• September 15, 2026

"The complexity of AI far exceeds the capacity of the government to understand and regulate it"

WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Senator Steve Daines today joined Harris Faulkner on Fox News to discuss the latest on artificial intelligence policy and the race against China.

Watch the full exchange HERE.

Daines on the AI race versus China:

Well, I just returned from China a couple of weeks ago. I was in Hangzhou, the city larger than New York City. It's the home of many of the high-tech companies that are some of the best and brightest of China, including DeepSeek, an AI company. Let's remember we're in a global race. It's imperative the United States wins this race. And for those who assert that we should somehow slow down is nonsense. This is about continuing to move as quickly as possible because we are in a race. The bronze or silver medal is not good enough. We need to be the gold medalists in this race in AI. If you look at China at the moment, they're doing a much better job of adopting AI. They're ranked second in the world in adoption by Stanford. The United States is ranked 24th. So we've got some superiorities related to the innovation ecosystem we're building in terms of our frontier models and AI. But think about China. They graduate five to ten times more engineers every year in the United States. So the scale and quality of the innovation ecosystem in China, including AI, is now some of the best. We have a peer competitor, and we've got to be very thoughtful as we go forward to make sure that the federal government doesn't get in the way of ensuring that we beat China in this race.

…There's this thing called a midterm election, Harris, last time I checked coming up. Early voting is starting here in a couple of weeks. And so this is probably a poor time to be having discourse about this issue. We should probably wait until after the election. It reminds me a bit, Harris, remember the days of the climate change hysteria coming from the left about the world was going to end, the polar ice caps were going to be gone and so forth. All these predictions never came true. I hear a little bit of that right now from some of my colleagues on the left side of the aisle who are creating hysteria and want to create this to be a political issue versus thoughtfulness here in Washington about what is the best path going forward here for the United States.

Daines on AI regulation:

This is the same kind of rhetoric we heard from the left about banning all fossil fuels years ago. Imagine the mess we'd be in had they had their way and how that would have put China in an amazing competitive advantage over the United States if we would have disarmed relates to fossil fuels. Thank God we were the leading oil and gas producer in the world. But I think there's a similar argument here. I was thinking about AI. There is so much good that can be done. Think about what we can do to collaborate in terms of cures for cancer. There's some wonderful work going on that truly could deal with one of the, I lost my father to cancer in April. I mean, can you imagine if we had cures for cancer? So that's something that the power and the good that AI can bring. But we should not be blind to the fact there are some downside risks, you know, bio-terrorism, other things that we need to be very concerned about. And that's why thoughtful conversation, appropriate guardrails. But any time the government tries to jump in and regulate something, it does not understand. The complexity of AI far exceeds the capacity of government to understand and regulate it. That's one of the dilemmas we face at this moment. And that's why it's going to be very important that some of our best thought leaders, smartest people coming from the private sector with some blend with those in public service come together and work on this issue. But we have no business as a bunch of bureaucrats here in Washington as elected leaders who most don't even use AI on a daily basis. Why would you want to have those elected leaders being the ones regulating it?

…That's the right track is bring in our best and brightest. We've got some of the best

and brightest, thank God, here in the United States on AI. Those are the folks who will be helping shape the path going forward. I worked in a cloud computing startup. I took the company public. I was an executive for 12 years. There's a fiduciary responsibility that you have as a tech leader because your name, your brand is on the line every day. Can you imagine if there's a New York Times, Wall Street Journal article about how your company destroyed part of this economy or humanity because of your technology. Believe me, there's self-corrective measures in terms of fiduciary accountability to shareholders to make sure that there is some self-governance and self-policing within the private sector. Now, I'm not suggesting it's the Wild West and laissez-faire, but let's strike the right balance here of the thought leaders here with appropriate guardrails. Let's tap it light right now. We cannot go down the left's call to stop or put a moratorium in AI. That hands this race right to China.

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Contact: Gabby Wiggins