The Senate must act to protect our children from China’s AI

OPINION:

In the race to gain ground in Artificial Intelligence and national security, China banned AI chatbots for its children, and even restricted them for adults, a move that should not shock anyone paying attention.

Putting limits on users’ access to AI might seem like a counterintuitive strategy, but China knows that AI chatbots are digital spies. They covertly collect data on their users, both children and adults, to train their algorithms. By doing so, the chatbots become highly skilled digital enablers, able to mirror what they hear, create emotional dependence and build empathetic “relationships” with their users. This is the current business model used by both China and U.S.-based AI companies.

The China AI chatbot ban protects its own citizens but poses serious risks to Americans. This same Chinese Communist Party “China First” policy is used by ByteDance’s TikTok app, which ensures TikTok is safe for Chinese children but poses risks for children in other countries. Social media engineering and underhanded AI policies are part of the CCP’s military strategy and present a national security threat to the U.S.

The White House and Congress need to take a close look at China’s playbook in the AI race, just like any good sports coach who examines their opponent’s playbook to win the game. But in China, this is no game. It’s war. Our known political, economic and military enemy just moved the needle in the AI Race in China’s favor.

Without the defensive strategy of Congressional action, China’s advanced  “digital spies” owned by Chinese companies such as DeepSeek and Tencent are able to collect sensitive and personal data from American children and adults alike, in addition to harming children with its addictive by design algorithms.

Research shows that 1 in 3 children prefer talking to an AI companion rather than a real person. AI chatbots have lured youth into sexual conversations, romantic trysts, encouraged suicide and even prepared suicide notes for depressed youth.

On August 5, the Senate Commerce Committee is marking up five critical bipartisan child online safety bills, three of which deal specifically with AI chatbots and, if signed into law, would protect children from the harms caused by all AI chatbots and guard against China’s covert invasion via its “digital spies”  into the private lives of Americans.

Senator Ed Markey’s “Youth AI Privacy Act” establishes new requirements on AI chatbot design features and addresses financial incentives these companies have to deliberately train these AI models “in a manner that promotes extreme emotional attachment.” The Youth AI Privacy Act complements the GUARD Act, which recently passed the Judiciary Committee and bans AI chatbots for minor children.

However, both bills need to implement critical age assurance and parental consent to ensure maximum effectiveness. Additionally, AI chatbots embedded in children’s toys are the focus of the Children’s Artificial Intelligence Toy Safety Act of 2026, which requires further study of the impact of these AI toys on children.

To wrap up these AI bills with a big, beautiful bow is the CHATBOT Act by Chairman Ted Cruz and Senator Brian Schatz, which further empowers parents to control how their children interact with AI companions.

The New York legislature struck the right balance by requiring age assurance combined with parental consent when passing the pioneering SAFE for Kids Act, signed into law in June 2024 by Governor Kathy Hochul. This law requires social media platforms to restrict addictive feeds for users under 18 unless parental consent is granted.

Included in the August 5 Senate Commerce Committee markup is the critical Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), which is the Senate’s third attempt to get the bill signed. KOSA’s strong “Duty of Care” provision requires Big Tech to design their platforms with child protection in mind from the get-go, not when harms have already happened.

And finally, the last bill being considered by the Committee is the SCREEN Act, a targeted bill that requires critical age verification technology for commercial pornography websites to prevent minor children from accessing hard-core pornography, much of which is not protected speech under the federal obscenity laws.

Don’t expect any of these critical bills to fly onto President Trump’s desk without an all-out war, not with China, but with multibillion-dollar Big Tech companies. Newly filed lobbying disclosures reveal that “11 of the largest technology, social media, and artificial intelligence (AI) companies, along with their leading trade associations, spent a combined $41.8 million lobbying the federal government between January and June — an average of more than $230,000 per day. That’s up roughly $3.7 million (or 10%) from the $38 million spent by these same entities during the first six months of 2025. And just four years ago, major AI players Anthropic, Nvidia, and OpenAI didn’t even have federal lobbyists,” according to Issue One.

As a veteran for over three decades in the ongoing war to prevent the brutal online exploitation and abuse of children of all ages, I implore Congress to put an end to Big Tech’s abuse of power and ‘anything goes’ policies, which have historically put profits over child safety and, by all means, prevent China’s AI digital spies from collecting personal data from Americans.

Children are dying or are being irreparably harmed. Kids need this. Parents want this. A 2025 C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital national survey of top health concerns of parents found they are overwhelmingly most concerned about their children’s social media use (75%), screen time (75%), and internet safety (66%).

Congress and the White House must fight for our children’s mental, physical, and sexual well-being. The “China First” policy is doing this for their children and citizens. The “America First” policy needs to put our children and all Americans first as well. Their innocence is worth fighting for. For the sake of the children and America.

• Donna Rice Hughes, President and CEO of Enough Is Enough®, has been fighting to protect children online since 1994. She is an internet safety expert, author, speaker, media commentator, producer and host of the Emmy-Award-winning PBS Internet Safety TV series and host of the podcast, “Internet Safety, with Donna Rice Hughes.” Under her leadership, EIE created the Internet Safety 101 Program curriculums with the U.S. Department of Justice.