AI 'doomers' risk kneecapping US vs China, but ex-Pentagon vet says both extremes miss the mark
"Doomer"-driven AI regulation could kneecap the U.S. against China while helping tech giants lock in their lead over smaller startups, a former Pentagon AI official who also worked for AI company Palantir Technologies told Fox News Digital.
The warning follows the resignation of an Anthropic researcher who said increasingly powerful AI could threaten humanity, while President Donald Trump called fears of rogue AI a "hoax" and compared those advancing such warnings to climate-change alarmists whose predictions, he argued, haven't come true.
"The notion that I think the president and I share is that we should let the race play out, that the risk of global extinction is not real, it is in fact a hoax," Will Thibeau, a former Palantir deployment strategist who later worked in the Pentagon’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office, told Fox News Digital.
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"The stakes of losing to China, of losing the opportunity to transform our economy, are so high that we shouldn't let 'doomerism' define public policy," the retired Army Ranger added.
Thibeau’s position is not that Washington should take a hands-off approach to AI, but that the U.S. should race aggressively at the frontier while narrowly addressing concrete risks — threading the needle between denying China an advantage and preventing regulations backed by today’s leading AI firms from entrenching a "duopoly" at the expense of new American innovators.
"We must maintain an edge at the frontier, so our economy has the license on the first benefits of artificial intelligence. Enhanced manufacturing capabilities, enhanced processing power, decision-making in financial markets," he said, disputing the idea that Beijing will not race full bore because the technology could countervail the CCP’s grip by incidentally empowering civilians.
"Artificial intelligence has the potential to redefine our economy and transform the country for the good," Thibeau said, while rejecting both predictions that it will make life "unrecognizable" and that it poses an uncontrollable "extinction" risk.
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Those "hyperventilating" over either extreme, he argued, miss the "clearly defined middle path" for AI development.
Thibeau said some of AI’s most important applications are military, where it can process battlefield data quickly enough to give U.S. forces an advantage while helping preserve civilian life.
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"I’m very bullish, if you will, on how artificial intelligence can be applied for the military," he said.
While Thibeau said fears of "drone swarms run amok" are not realistic, he acknowledged AI carries real risks that policymakers should address without allowing those concerns to justify sweeping rules that slow U.S. development or undermine its military edge.
The larger danger, he argued, is that leading AI firms can absorb regulations that smaller newcomers cannot.
"There is a duopoly, perhaps a triopoly if you include Google," Thibeau said, naming Anthropic and OpenAI as the two companies clearly in the lead.
"They want to slow the game so they can use their built-in advantages and their current lead to solidify this market dominance… to make it harder for new entrants to rise the market chain [and capture] the regulatory incentives of the government."
Fox News Digital reached out to all three firms for comment.
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Anthropic policy documents outline concerns about biological risks, cyber risks, loss of control, and the automation of research and development while also underlining that regulations must "protect innovation."
In terms of government oversight, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., told reporters Tuesday that AI should be the rare time for bipartisan collaboration on regulation.
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"If there's ever a time for Republicans to break from their blinded allegiance to Trump, it is now. The world is in danger and Republicans are on the sidelines sucking their thumbs," he claimed.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris added in a statement that AI is "advancing at an alarming speed," and signaled she sides with the Big Tech firms calling for pacing the "frontier" — which Thibeau warned about.
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"A slowdown is critical in order to ensure AI serves the public interest," she said in part of a lengthy statement.
Meanwhile, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said guardrails are necessary for the AI sphere but that Congress should not respond with a heavy hand.
"We have to put up some guardrails, some safety measures in place to ensure that AI doesn’t run away… But at the same time, we’ve got to make sure that we don’t lose our edge in the global competition on this with China," he told NBC News.
"It’s got to be done right, safely [and] wisely," he said.