Watchdog launches ad blitz urging Congress to bolster American AI against China

The American Edge Project on Wednesday is launching a major ad campaign urging lawmakers to support the development and deregulation of the American AI industry as it competes with Chinese firms.

The project includes two, 30-second ads, both of which focus on Vineberg, an American manufacturing company using AI, founded by an Army veteran. One ad, "Vineberg", features company founder Gerd Poppinga Sr. highlighting the importance of AI to his business, which employs 40 people.

“It is inspiring to see America leading the world in open-sourced AI development. But we can’t let China gain the upper hand," he said. “We need to encourage innovation and strengthen American manufacturing. Our leaders must protect our competitive edge.”

The second ad, "Forefront", features Gerd Poppinga Jr. warning that "we must remain focused on staying at the forefront of tomorrow’s technologies. Encouraging innovation and strengthening American manufacturing will keep us ahead of China in the tech race. The stakes are high."

The American Edge Project invested a seven-figure sum in the ad buy, which will see both videos run nationwide on cable, OTT platforms, television networks, and social media. The organization describes itself as a "coalition of domestic organizations dedicated to promoting and protecting American innovation for the long term."

The ad blitz comes amid tensions between the Silicon Valley big tech elites who lined up behind the Trump campaign and his grassroots supporters in the working class over both the prospect of automation eliminating jobs and the former's support for foreign worker visas.

Speaking at the Andreessen Horowitz American Dynamism Summit on Tuesday, Vice President JD Vance attempted to string the two component factions of the MAGA coalition together by highlighting the ways in which AI may bolster existing industries rather than replace them.

“I think there’s too much fear that AI will simply replace jobs rather than augmenting so many of the things that we do now,” he said, according to TechCrunch. "What I propose is that each group, our workers, the populists on the one hand, the tech optimists on the other, have been failed by this government, not just the government of the last administration, but the government in some ways, of the last 40 years."

"Cheap labor is fundamentally a crutch, and it’s a crutch that inhibits innovation," he added. "We don’t want people seeking cheap labor. We want them investing and building right here in the United States of America."