Web Summit attendees aren’t buying Scale AI CEO’s push for America ‘to win the AI war’

In a bold move last month, Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang took out a full-page ad in the Washington Post, telling President Trump that “America must win the AI war.” The statement sparked mixed reactions, as seen during Wang’s appearance Sunday during the opening night of Web Summit Qatar. When Wang’s interviewer Axios’s Felix Salmon polled the room, asking how many people agreed with that opinion, he counted just two hands. When he asked the room how many disagreed, Salmon noted an “overwhelming” number of hands went up. So Salmon asked Wang to defend his opinion. “AI is going to fundamentally change the nature of national security,” Wang explained. He noted that he grew up in Los Alamos, New Mexico “the birthplace of the atomic bomb” and that both of his parents were physicists who worked at the National Lab. Wang said he views this as a race between the U.S. and China. And he expressed concern that AI will allow China to “leapfrog” the military might of “Western powers,” which is wha ... Read full article.