Advanced Chinese-made robots with eerily lifelike capabilities are poised to enter the global market — and some US lawmakers are already demanding that they be banned in the US, The Post has learned.
While not yet widely publicized, various Chinese companies have begun producing humanoid robots that are capable of carrying boxes, moving at high speeds and even replicating human facial expressions.
One leading Chinese firm, Unitree Robotics, has developed a $90,000 robot capable of running at speeds of up to 11 mph. A cheaper $16,000 version can absorb punches and kicks and twirl a baton. Many other firms have similar products under development.
Jacob Helberg — a top Washington lobbyist who played a key role convincing Congress to pass a law this spring to force a sale or ban of TikTok — is one of the loudest voices warning Congress that it risks disaster if it allows the sale of robots made by firms beholden to Beijing.
Helberg said advancements in humanoid technology have occurred “mind-bogglingly fast.”
“I think we’re 12 months away from a ChatGPT moment where the world goes from being asleep to awake on this issue,” he added.
As they become more advanced, the Chinese Communist Party or state-sponsored bad actors could use the robots — currently marketed as harmless home assistance and super-efficient assembly line workers — to wreak havoc by spying, sabotaging critical infrastructure, or in the most nightmarish scenarios, even physically harming Americans, according to Helberg.
“They can strangle someone in their sleep,” Helberg told The Post. “They can punch a data center and inflict physical harm and destruction of property.
“Ultimately, if TikTok was a Chinese spy balloon in your pocket, Chinese drones on US soil are poised to be a Chinese PLA stealth army on our land,” added Helberg. “And we can’t allow that to happen.”
In June, Helberg, a member of the influential US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, appeared at an event alongside House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) — who said the threat posed by Chinese-made humanoid robots entering the US market was “real and very concerning.”
Some experts see the warning as far-fetched or even silly. Paul Rosenzweig, a former Homeland Security deputy assistant secretary, said scary humanoid robots “are a long way away.”
“There are lots of things in China to worry about, like our competition in AI and their access to American tech and data…But this kind of stuff is just a distraction from much more significant problems,” Rosenzweig said.
Helberg and some lawmakers, however, – including Scalise, House Select Committee on China Chairman Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.) and Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) – believe the US is already running out of time to tackle the problem.
The Chinese government has called for mass production of humanoid robots by 2025 and world-class performance by 2027, according to a widely circulated document released last fall. They have cast their ambitions as a race against US firms like Boston Dynamics and Elon Musk’s Tesla.
China’s state-run Global Times recently claimed Chinese robotics firms were “fast catching up with global rivals” and noted a recent event in which Tesla’s “Optimus” appeared alongside “a cohort of 18 humanoid robots designed by Chinese manufacturers.”
The risk posed by Chinese-made robots is “not science fiction,” according to Moolenaar.
“In fact, they are part of the same playbook the Chinese government has run time and again: subsidize a strategic industry, flood foreign markets with predatory pricing in order to eliminate the competition, and then leverage this new dominance to advance the interests of the Chinese Communist Party,” Moolenaar said in a statement.
“From heavy manufacturing to the military, advanced robotics will play a critical role in the future of our economy and our national security. We need to act on this problem now before it is too late,” he added.
In the past, concerns that the Chinese Communist Party exploit seemingly innocuous technology for its advantage have led Congress to blacklist Chinese telecom giant Huawei and to pass a bill requiring Beijing-based ByteDance to sell TikTok or face a total ban.
Britt told The Post she is “working on a legislative fix before any nightmare scenario of today becomes reality tomorrow.”
“Given the FBI already opens a new counterintelligence case against China twice a day, that number will certainly increase drastically if the CCP is allowed to send humanoid robots into our nation’s interior,” Britt added.
As The Post has reported, lawmakers worry that China or other foreign actors could exploit weaknesses in internet-connected “smart” devices that are now commonplace in US households.
Drones and other forms of automated warfare are playing larger roles on modern battlefields and have seen extensive use in the Russia-Ukraine war and the Israel-Hamas war.
During his June 25 appearance alongside Helberg at the Reindustrialize Conference in Detroit, Scalise likened security risks posed by Chinese-made robots to those that led Congress to take action against Huawei and TikTok.
“Without policy action from Washington, China is poised to quickly put American competitors out of business and make Americans reliant on CCP-controlled humanoid robots…We’d have to be delusional or suicidal to allow this to happen,” Scalise said.
Elsewhere, humanoids manufactured by Figure, a startup backed by ChatGPT creator OpenAI, have been put to work on automaker BMW’s assembly line.
Musk, who is known for making bold proclamations about his businesses, claimed earlier this year that Optimus could drive Tesla’s market cap to a whopping $25 trillion over time.
The billionaire recently said Tesla will have “genuinely useful” humanoids ready for internal use by next year and on sale for other companies by 2026.
Musk also has predicted that there will be eventually be 20 billion humanoid robots – though he warned we “need to be careful that they don’t go all Terminator on us.”
