U.S. will defend American AI, block ‘weaponization’ of tech

Vice President JD Vance on Tuesday said that the U.S. will safeguard American artificial intelligence and chips and block efforts to “weaponize” the critical technologies.

“Some authoritarian regimes have stolen and used AI to strengthen their military intelligence and surveillance capabilities, capture foreign data and create propaganda to undermine other nations’ national security,” Vance said in an address at France’s AI Action Summit in Paris.

“I want to be clear, this administration will block such efforts, full stop,” Vance added. “We will safeguard American AI and chip technologies from theft and misuse, work with our allies and partners to strengthen and extend these protections and close pathways to adversaries attaining AI capabilities that threaten all of our people.”

Much of the focus from the the AI Action Summit this week has been centered on China’s AI model DeepSeek, which claimed to achieve performance on par with OpenAI’s o1 reasoning model at a far lower cost. Vance didn’t mention DeepSeek by name — however, Trump’s second in command took aim at cheap, heavily subsidized technologies.

“We’re all familiar with cheap tech in the marketplace that’s been heavily subsidized and exported by authoritarian regimes,” he said.

In a suggestive swipe toward U.S. allies present in the room, Vance added that it “never pays off” to work with firms operating under such authoritarian regimes.

Collaborating with such parties means “chaining your nation to an authoritarian master that seeks to infiltrate, dig in and seize your information infrastructure,” the U.S. VP added.

This is a breaking news story. Please refresh for updates.