During a panel discussion on Friday’s Real Time, Maher brought up China’s advancements in AI, noting the China startup DeepSeek has emerged as a major rival to US companies recently. The comedian compared the race between the United States and China on the technology front to the space race between the US and Russia.

Maher declared China is “the new Islam” in that people are too hesitant to criticize out of fear for how they’ll be perceived.

“China’s like the new Islam. We can’t be honest about them because they’re not white,” he said. “And China, okay, I’m sorry, kids, they do some bad things, China. And we should just recognize that.”