Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is walking a fine line on the growing push to heavily regulate artificial intelligence by focusing on accelerating U.S. innovation against China, while pushing for guardrails to prevent catastrophic risks.
As chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Cruz is in a prime position to shape how Congress handles AI moving forward. It also offers the Texas senator another issue to stake out in contrast to President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance ahead of a possible 2028 presidential primary showdown.
“Cruz’s positioning gives him an opportunity to distinguish himself from Trump-Vance,” said Dennis Lennox, a GOP strategist. “If Republicans are wiped out in November, the party will have a much broader debate about its direction, and Vance will no longer be able to treat the nomination as his inheritance. Cruz is already positioning himself for that possibility.”
The fight over AI’s future ratcheted up after Jacob Coxon, an Anthropic researcher, resigned last week due to concerns about AI’s threat to humanity. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk followed up by pushing for more guardrails on AI.
Democratic congressional leaders and former President Barack Obama have pushed for immediate action to limit AI, while some Republicans, such as House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), are concerned that regulation could give China the upper hand.
Cruz recently told Politico that it’s nearly impossible to regulate or slow down the spread of AI despite major warnings from congressional lawmakers and tech leaders.
“That is an impossible endeavor because you know who’s not pausing, China,” Cruz said. “They are not going to stop.
“This is somewhat tongue in cheek, but it’s not entirely,” he said. “If they’re going to be killer robots, rather they be American killer robots and not Chinese killer robots. And what I mean by that is the Chinese are putting no guardrails. They’re going full speed ahead.”
The stance differs from that staked out by Trump, who took to social media on Monday to downplay growing concerns over AI.
“The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday.
Attorney General Todd Blanche also dismissed Democratic warnings as part of an effort to influence the election.
“Every Democrat senator suddenly races to a microphone to talk about AI after being eerily silent for months and months and months,” Blanche said during a Tuesday press briefing. “So to talk about the timing of this as being nothing but an effort to influence the midterms, I shouldn’t have to say that out loud.”
Vance notably did not discuss AI during his meeting with the House Republican conference on Tuesday morning. Instead, he focused his comments on preparing the GOP for the November midterm elections. But Vance did tell reporters on Monday that he felt “a little bit weird about the fact that you have so many frontier AI tech companies kind of coming to the government and begging the government to regulate them.”
“It feels a little bit to me like a bit of a Trojan horse,” Vance added. “So I think we just have to be careful about this.”
The vice president also told the All-In Podcast on Tuesday that tech companies needed to take a leadership role in enacting AI guardrails.
“Why is it that the people who are at the frontier of the AI economy are throwing up their hands and saying, ‘Well, we’ve built Frankenstein,’ and the solution to Frankenstein apparently is to create a one-world governance structure for artificial intelligence?” said Vance. “What I would say to those people: If you’re building Frankenstein, stop … If the cat is out of the bag, then build the defensive mechanism against Frankenstein.”
Cruz said the Senate Commerce Committee will likely consider legislation from him, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) to address AI threats. The legislation could be introduced as soon as next week.
The Texas senator has already sought to balance innovation with oversight. Last year, he unveiled an AI framework that includes the SANDBOX Act. The bill would allow developers to test new technologies under temporary exemptions from some federal regulations while maintaining safeguards against health, public safety, and fraud risks.
That balancing act could take on greater political significance if Cruz runs for president in 2028.
“He wants to be sufficiently aligned with Trump’s agenda to have a good chance to win over a solid portion of his base, if possible, but also create enough distance from Vance that gives him, you know, a pathway to being the nominee,” said Matt Mackowiak, a Texas-based Republican strategist.
Mackowiak cautioned, however, that he wasn’t “sure that Cruz and Vance are that different on AI.”
Vance has also opposed sweeping restrictions on AI, but he has argued that tech companies should not be left to regulate the industry entirely on their own.
VANCE STEERS CLEAR OF AI REGULATION DURING ‘RAH-RAH POLITICAL SPEECH’ FOR HOUSE GOP
That overlap could complicate Cruz’s effort to use AI as a point of contrast in a potential 2028 primary.
“Cruz cannot differentiate himself by being Diet Trump-Vance,” Lennox said.