Surely a man of his age should realise you cant cheat the grimreaper, and even the reaper doesnt accept bribes.
The thing is, if someone figures out something against aging, you can bet it will be made incredibly expensive. After all, the planet will have a massive problem if everyone starts using it. Basically every problem we have on this world will increase, from global warming to housing, energy, pollution, traffic.
So it will be limited to the few and in our society that means the most wealthy (not that I agree with that but it is what it is).
So they would probably keep it secret and expensive, but they'd also be very motivated to invest in it because it would be insanely profitable. And they would benefit personally by living longer obviously. I'm sure those people with hundreds of billions in the bank think about these things.
I'm pretty sure someone like Elon Musk would eventually invest in that. Right now he's probably a bit too young to worry about ageing. But he's someone who believes in technology shaping the future of humanity. And he's got the money to try.
I guess that would explain Donald, recent success in international affairs.
Heres another secret, look around you, more competition doesnt bring prices down.
Having said that, these are not normal times of course. Normally a government would have its own subject matter experts. However with Trump as a self-proclaimed expert on everything this isn't really working.
In this particular case his point 'China would use the time to catch up' isn't really a bad one because that is exactly what would happen. I'm just not really sure that that would be such a bad thing. Right now China is making a lot of open models that are good for everyone, while American models are mostly closed for rent-seeking purposes. Also, I don't see science as a race. But more as a collaboration.
Note: I'm not a Trump fan at all, just to make that clear. But I wouldn't dismiss a point just because he made it. And I'm not a fan of the Big-AI leaders either to be honest.