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For immediate release: October 30, 2025

Contact: [email protected] (mailto:[email protected])

Rounds Details Urgent AI Competition with China


** “We cannot lose this race.”
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WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Senator Mike Rounds (SD) appeared yesterday afternoon before a luncheon meeting of The Ripon Society, delivering remarks about the plans he is leading to ensure the United States is at the leading edge of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

“What do we have to do in order to be the winner in artificial intelligence?” the Senator asked rhetorically in his opening remarks. “It means that the technologies that make it work – the actual way of making a machine – make decisions at a rate that human people can't make, requires a technology that is constantly being developed.

“You've got to have the power to make that happen. That means that the United States not only has to continue to develop the brain power here to create the systems that make computers move faster and faster, but then we've got to have the energy to make those systems work.

“We're not producing enough new power. China has really close to over 3000 gigawatts of power, and they're producing over 300 gigawatts more per year. Right now, they've moved into nuclear and they're going to surpass us in nuclear power.”

The junior Senator continued to discuss the promising future of AI, namely, enhanced national defense.

“AI is really all about the effects of our country. It means having systems that detect attacks on us faster than they can release them and being able to respond to them the way that we did in the Red Sea when our destroyers were being attacked by the Houthis in which we had less than 12 seconds to respond to an attack.”

“Using artificial intelligence and being able to look through databases and identify every single object out there is not something that's five years in the future. It's happening now. When that happens, we can now start to defend our country using Golden Dome, but it will require an artificial intelligence capability that we're working on today.”

In addition to these major leaps in national defense, the Senator also discussed the threat of the Chinese Communist Party and the “AI Arms race” to protect state secrets from the problems posed by AI quantum computing.

“We have security secrets, just like the Chinese and everybody else does. It takes a computer a huge amount of time to break through. Quantum computing can do it in a revolutionary amount of time. We know that. And we know that the Chinese are working on it right now. We know that we're working on it right now.

“We cannot lose this race. So, my message to you today with regard to artificial intelligence: it's here, it is not going away. We do not have a choice in terms of the investments that we have to make, but what we do have a choice on is whether or not we stick to this thing. We pursue it and we win it - or else we're going to be speaking Chinese.”

Later on, the Senator fielded a number of questions, including one regarding international AI collaboration.

“We see China as an adversary today. We'd like to see them as a competitor in the future, not an adversary, but it takes two people to agree on that, not just one. …That also means that we have lots of other allies around the world. China does not. The other allies that we have around the world, we want to hold them close and we want to participate with them.

“We need our allies. America has always said that we don't want to fight a battle on our land, and that means then that we have to have bases elsewhere. But with that also comes a commitment from us, that we protect those bases and help defend other free countries around the world. That has to be non-debatable. That has to be something that other countries say, this is fair. It also means that we have to have good and fair trade agreements that stand the test of time. And that is something that will help to continue to produce even a better and stronger relationship into the future.”

To view the remarks of Senator Rounds before The Ripon Society yesterday afternoon, please click the link below:
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The Ripon Society is a public policy organization that was founded in 1962 and takes its name from the town where the Republican Party was born in 1854 –Ripon, Wisconsin. One of the main goals of The Ripon Society is to promote the ideas and principles that have made America great and contributed to the GOP’s success. These ideas include keeping our nation secure, keeping taxes low and having a federal government that is smaller, smarter and more accountable to the people.

For more information on The Ripon Society, please visit www.riponsociety.org ([link removed]) .

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The Ripon Society is a non-profit corporation organized under the laws of the District of Columbia. It is exempt from federal income taxation pursuant to section 501 (c) (4) of the Internal Revenue Code. The Ripon Society does not make contributions or expenditures to influence elections. In addition, The Ripon Society does not engage in other election activities, including voter registration, voter identification, get-out-the-vote activity, or generic campaign activity, collectively referred to as "federal election activity" in the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. Donations from corporations, organizations or individuals are accepted.

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