In a stark warning to U.S. lawmakers, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei compared exporting AI chips to China to “selling nuclear weapons to North Korea,” urging Congress to enforce a total blockade on the semiconductor supply chain to authoritarian regimes.
‘We Really Can Cut Off The Supply Chain’
Speaking to Axios co-founders Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen, Amodei argued that the U.S. currently holds a decisive but fleeting advantage in chip manufacturing. He dismissed half-measures, pleading with policymakers to fully leverage this dominance before it evaporates.
“We need to cut off the supply chain,” Amodei told Axios. “We’re years ahead of them in chips. We really can cut off the supply chain. And that gives us the time and the buffer to deal with these dangers properly.”
Amodei's comments build on his recently published essay, where he warned that a “country of geniuses in a datacenter”—an AI cluster with 100 times the speed of human thought—could act as a tool for total geopolitical dominance.
He wrote that selling the hardware to build such a system to the Chinese Communist Party makes as much strategic sense as “selling nuclear weapons to North Korea and bragging that the missile casings are made by Boeing.”
‘You’re Going To Get A Mob’
Amodei's warning extended beyond geopolitics to domestic stability. He predicted that AI could displace 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs within one to five years, creating a “white-collar bloodbath” and an era of extreme wealth concentration.
He specifically called for “robust tax policies” designed for a world where AI founders become “trillionaires,” warning Congress that failure to address this inequality would lead to civil unrest.
“If your answer is just ‘screw you, there’s nothing we can or should do about this’… that’s going to create a lot of discontent,” Amodei warned. “You’re going to get a mob coming for you if you don’t do this in the right way.”
Three Years Is An Eternity
The CEO stressed the urgency of the moment, noting that the window for meaningful regulation is closing rapidly.
With models already capable of autonomous coding and reasoning, he told Axios that “three years is an eternity in this field,” predicting that human-level intelligence could arrive before regulators even draft the rules.
Major Benchmarks Advance Over 2026 So Far
The S&P 500, Dow Jones, and Nasdaq 100 indices have risen by 1.75%, 1.28%, and 2.91%, respectively, on a year-to-date basis.
On Tuesday, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSE:SPY) and Invesco QQQ Trust ETF(NASDAQ:QQQ), which track the S&P 500 index and the Nasdaq 100 index, respectively, closed higher. The SPY was up 0.40% at $695.49, while the QQQ advanced 0.91% to $631.13.
On Wednesday, the futures of the S&P 500, Dow Jones, and Nasdaq 100 indices were mixed.
Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.
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