Rep. Sara Jacobs Pens Newsweek Op-ed on How to Win the AI Race

October 16, 2026 Rep. Sara Jacobs Pens Newsweek Op-ed on How to Win the AI Race Rep. Sara Jacobs (CA-51) penned an op-ed for Newsweek , arguing that her colleagues have largely misdiagnosed the AI race with China. She lays out how Congress needs to address AI on the societal, model, deployer, and impact levels in order to create AI systems that people trust more and would rather use. That is America’s competitive advantage and how to ensure systems around the world are built on American models. Read Rep. Sara Jacobs’ Op-Ed Here In part, Rep. Sara Jacobs said: “While the U.S. is leading in frontier model capabilities and advanced computing infrastructure, China is outperforming us in model adoption. Chinese models’ share of usage on Open Router climbed from about 1 percent in 2024 to over 60 percent in May 2026. Chinese models are also cheaper and use less compute than leading American models. We may not ever build cheaper systems than China, but we can create systems that people trust more and would rather use. That is our competitive advantage and how we ensure systems around the world are built on American models. “Still, many of my colleagues in Congress beat the drum for speed over safety in the name of competition. Speaker Mike Johnson recently said, “We’re not going to rush in and pass a piece of legislation that would do harm to the country and put China at an edge.” But what the speaker and many of my colleagues fail to understand is that we don’t have to choose between innovation or guardrails. The real question is: How do we build AI systems that people actually want to use and can safely rely on? That’s what winning looks like. Not necessarily being first—but being the most trusted, avoiding costly fixes and backlashes, and having real, lasting staying power. And it’s Congress’ job to get us there by addressing AI on four levels: societal, model, deployer, and impact.” Background: Rep. Sara Jacobs has been a leader in AI safety throughout her tenure in Congress, sitting on the House Bipartisan Task Force on Artificial Intelligence last term and currently on the House Democratic Commission on AI and the Innovation Economy. She’s introduced several bills to address the everyday harms and catastrophic risks posed by AI, including the Sectoral AI Governance Act, the bipartisan AI Foundation Model Transparency Act, the bipartisan Economy of the Future Commission Act, the bipartisan ATOMIC Act, the AI Tax and Work Protection Act , and more. She’s also passed legislation into law to prevent AI from autonomously launching nuclear weapons and strengthening oversight and accountability of the Pentagon’s use of AI. ### Print Email Share Tweet