Trump made clear today that his administration will not come down hard on China after he laid out Beijing’s efforts to interfere in the 2020 presidential election in a primetime speech.
“We’ve talked to them about it. It took place a long time ago,” Trump told reporters, describing China as “maybe a little bit different today than it was then.”
Trump’s posture reflects his desire to keep tensions with China on the lowest setting; Secretary of State Marco Rubio is meeting his Chinese counterpart in Manila as both sides prepare for Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s September Washington visit. And with all the scrutiny of Chinese open source AI models, the administration is taking the middle ground.
On Fox News, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent threatened to sanction Chinese AI companies that steal IP from US models, but stopped short of the wider ban some had feared.
