American A.I. and robotics companies are reportedly asking Congress to impose curbs on Chinese robotics manufacturers, due to their unfair business practices and the security risks they pose, Chinese media complained this week.
Interestingly, these concerns are particularly acute for humanoid robots, not the bulky industrial machines traditionally associated with the robotics industry.
Humanoid robots, the stuff of countless science fiction stories, are finally happening, and witnesses told the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection Subcommittee of the House Homeland Security Committee on Tuesday that China has developed a troubling lead in the new consumer technology.
Max Fenkell of the San Francisco-based company Scale AI highlighted a viral video from China’s Unitree Robotics that showed humanoid robots performing acrobatics and martial arts at a Lunar New Year celebration.
“The video went viral, not because it was impressive, but because of what happened when people compared it to last year, 12 months ago – the same robots could barely shuffle through a dance routine. This year, they’re doing karate. That is the speed of this competition,” Fenkell noted.
Fenkell said winning the humanoid robot race “requires a whole-of-government approach” to compete with China’s massive deployment of government funding and state power to support its robotics industry. He noted that American companies currently have the edge on quality of components and engineering, but China has taken the lead on implementing small-robot technology in practical ways.
“We’re seeing two different races play out and I fear right now the United States may be winning the wrong one,” he cautioned.
“The People’s Republic of China is moving aggressively to dominate the technologies that are reshaping the global economy and security, including artificial intelligence, robotics, and autonomous systems,” said subcommittee member Rep. Vince Fong (R-CA) in his opening statement.
Fong said the pattern was similar to China’s aggressive moves to establish early dominance in the solar panel, drone, and electric vehicle (EV) industries – and China’s strategy included blatant intellectual property theft from the United States and its partners, as in the case of China’s “revolutionary” DeepSeek A.I., which turned out to be cobbled together from code, data, and models developed by American companies.
Fong saw echoes of DeepSeek in the rise of Unitree Robotics, the company that made the kung fu robots.
“Unitree has become a dominant global supplier of robotic dogs and humanoid robots, supported by Chinese manufacturing scale and state subsidies that allow its products to be sold at a fraction of the price of American systems. As a result, these robots are already appearing in police departments, universities, and even parts of the federal government here in the United States,” he said.
Fong noted that in addition to these competitiveness concerns, Unitree robots have been found to include “vulnerabilities” in their software that “could allow unauthorized access to live camera feeds or even remote control of the devices.”
These vulnerabilities can spread from one robot to another like a virus, and Unitree bots have been caught “transmitting operational data back to servers located in China.” It sounds like every sci-fi nightmare about robots running amok coming true at once.
Boston Dynamics vice president of software Matthew Malchano told the subcommittee that humanoid and dog-like robots – small, highly mobile, and capable of working closely with humans to perform complex tasks – would be a crucial component of the A.I. revolution, and China is already capturing market share in the Western world with sales to police departments and universities.
Malchano said China has “dozens” of companies like Unitree, supported by a national strategy that “envisions transforming virtually every major industry in China by integrating A.I.-powered robots.”
American robotics industry leaders say America needs a comparable strategy, perhaps beginning with a bipartisan congressional commission on robotics proposed by Rep. Jay Olbernolte (R-CA). They also called for a ban on purchases of Chinese robots by U.S. federal agencies, citing their security risks, and recommended the creation of stringent federal standards for the robotics industry.
“The PRC is executing the same centrally planned strategy it used to dominate the drone industry, flooding global markets with subsidized robots at the expense of American manufacturers while embedding Trojan horses across our critical infrastructure,” warned Michael Robbins, CEO and president of the Association for Uncrewed Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI).
“A compromised laptop exposes data. A compromised robot can expose data and move, map, surveil, or physically disrupt operations in the real world,” he explained.
China’s state-run Global Times on Wednesday dismissed all of the concerns expressed at the House hearing as mere sour grapes from American businessmen consumed by “mounting anxiety and envy.”
“Instead of engaging in fair competition, they resort to their old trick of smearing Chinese products,” the Global Times hissed, ignoring the fact that all of those past concerns about Chinese aggression in drones and solar panels proved to be entirely accurate.
The Chinese paper cited “Chinese experts” who accused American companies of exploiting “national security” concerns as a “pretext to target Chinese enterprises,” because they cannot otherwise “cope with the intensifying market competition from China.”
These “Chinese experts” were in especially high dudgeon over the testimony given by Fenkell and Malchano, accusing them of fabricating their concerns about security vulnerabilities and surveillance. They contended that it would be better for American companies to abandon their concerns, accept China’s lead, and work together to “promote economic growth.”
Breitbart News author Wynton Hall’s new book Code Red: The Left, the Right, China, and the Race to Control AI warns against underestimating the security threat posed by Chinese A.I. and robots, because A.I. is a “political power” as well as an economic force.
“People assume that a billion-dollar A.I. ‘robot’ built by Silicon Valley geniuses must be right, even when it’s wrong,” Hall noted — a phenomenon that will become much more pronounced if people become comfortable with human-sized robots powered by A.I. in their daily lives.
Hall told Fox News host Maria Bartiromo on Monday that America must “beat China without becoming China,” which is exactly the message sent by American robotics companies at the House hearing.
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