President Donald Trump has approached the AI race as a long-term strategic imperative for America. His administration’s AI Action Plan is built around accelerating innovation, expanding infrastructure, and strengthening America’s position in a contest that will shape commerce, defense, and political power for years to come.
That’s the kind of framework America needs. It’s why Republicans should be cautious when the loudest companies in artificial intelligence show up in Washington asking for protection.
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Over the last several weeks, OpenAI and Anthropic executives have sounded the alarm about the rise of cheaper Chinese models, warning that Beijing’s progress poses both a market threat and a national security threat. The China challenge is real. But Republicans should not confuse that concern with pressure from companies that have spent years trying to shape the market through politics as well as products.
During the Biden years, the biggest AI firms were welcomed into government-backed conversations about “responsible” development, including voluntary safeguard commitments that featured Anthropic and OpenAI. On paper, that was about safety and trust. In practice, it elevated the largest companies, strengthened their standing with regulators, and helped normalize a system where a small club of incumbents helps define the rules of the road.
Anthropic is extending that strategy, encouraging states to impose tougher AI guardrails rather than align around a single national framework, a move critics say could leave smaller firms and new entrants navigating costly compliance burdens that deep-pocketed incumbents are uniquely able to shoulder.
The administration’s AI strategy is built on the idea that America wins by building more, producing more energy, and clearing the regulatory underbrush so innovation can move faster. That is the right answer to China. It is also the right answer to domestic incumbents who want Republicans to treat their business worries as a national emergency.
Anthropic has launched Claude Corps, an initiative to place early-career fellows in nonprofit organizations across the country. A detailed breakdown of the fellowship’s funding and placement targets and a separate account of the program’s launch and scope confirm the scale of the effort: $150 million, 1,000 fellows, and hundreds of host nonprofits.
That investment will shape which nonprofit organizations get the best tools and which causes benefit from subsidized technical talent, all but guaranteeing that much of this new capacity will reinforce the Left’s priorities, since it will flow into institutions that already tilt that way. Republicans should be alert to that kind of influence-building, especially when it comes wrapped in language about public benefit.
Republicans don’t have to oppose every AI-related philanthropic effort to see the long game. Firms that both seek regulatory favors and seed their favorite nonprofits with subsidized technology and staff aren’t just competing in the marketplace; they’re trying to build cultural and political leverage that endures long after any one product.
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None of this means America should ignore China’s AI progress. Beijing will push hard for AI dominance; that’s already baked into the rivalry. Washington must respond with policies that increase American capacity without granting new privileges for the firms already on top. That means backing open competition and making sure the United States remains the best place to build, train, deploy, and scale advanced AI systems.
OpenAI and Anthropic are not guardians of the national good. They are firms pursuing their own advantage as Chinese competition makes the market more difficult to navigate. Republicans should back American innovation and stay tough on China, but they should not let incumbent AI companies turn patriotic language into a protection racket. To win the AI race, build more, compete harder, and trust American builders over ideological gatekeepers.
Joe Grogan served as a domestic policy adviser to President Donald Trump from 2019 to 2020 and is the president and co-founder of Public Policy Solutions.
