Even as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent prepares to meet Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng this weekend to discuss AI, President Donald Trump has dismissed public warnings about runaway AI as a “hoax.”
asserted
Trump → prepare → hoax
Meanwhile, an editorial in the state-owned China Daily accused America’s leading AI companies of using calls for a slowdown to “blunt China’s AI advance.”
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editorial → own → advance
Neither the United States nor China is ready to slow down.
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States → slow → ?
Neither trusts the other.
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Neither → trust → other
And rapidly advancing AI systems will not wait for diplomacy to catch up.
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diplomacy → advance → ?
But these realities do not mean Trump and Xi can ignore the mounting calls for the U.S. and China to talk about AI.
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U.S. → mean → AI
Any such dialogue must avoid the two most common pitfalls for U.S.-China diplomacy: setting the ambitions so low that the talks become meaningless or so high that agreement becomes impossible.
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agreement → avoid → ambitions
Aim too low, and the dialogue becomes a photo op followed by an anodyne communiqué about promoting innovation and reducing risks.
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dialogue → aim → risks
Aim too high, chasing sweeping restrictions on frontier development that neither side has the political trust or the capacity to verify and enforce, and the meeting is set up for failure.
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meeting → aim → failure
The former path fails to meet the stakes of the moment; the latter fails to recognize its constraints.
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latter → fail → constraints
The path to AI safety
A better near-term goal would be for the U.S. and China to pursue AI safety in parallel and demonstrate their progress in practice.
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U.S. → pursue → practice
That effort should be anchored in technical exchanges that make each country’s AI systems safer on their own terms.
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systems → anchor → terms
The two countries should also establish a protocol to communicate about emerging AI incidents before they spiral into international crises.
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they → establish → crises
These steps would represent meaningful progress, far more valuable than lofty statements or unverifiable commitments.
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steps → represent → statements
The Trump Administration should push for technical exchanges on how to actually test models for dangerous capabilities and behaviors that neither country wants to see released into the wild.
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country → push → wild
These include AI systems capable of helping amateurs develop bioweapons, or evading human oversight and control.
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amateurs → include → oversight
American AI companies have been studying these risks for years, and they have also begun to appear in Chinese technical standards related to safety testing.
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they → study → testing
Exchanging best practices and new insights about how to test for and mitigate these risks could render the systems built in both countries meaningfully safer.
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systems → exchange → countries
These proposed technical exchanges would not depend on “trust” or even strict “reciprocity” between the two superpowers, nor would they require identical conceptions of AI risk.
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they → propose → risk
They would be driven by self-interest.
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They → drive → interest
As the most advanced AI models grow even more powerful, both countries have an interest in ensuring that these systems remain controllable, regardless of where they are built or deployed.
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they → grow → interest
That will require both countries to improve their model testing, monitoring and safeguards, and share promising findings that could enhance safety without surrendering a competitive edge or undermining national security.
uncertain
that → require → security
This diplomacy is less like negotiating a sweeping arms-control treaty than establishing shared safety practices and procedures for a technology neither government fully understands or controls.
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government → negotiate → technology
The premise is not that Washington should trust Beijing, or vice versa, but that neither country benefits if the other loses control of a powerful system.
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other → trust → system
For this approach to work, it must be accompanied by a government-to-government crisis-communication protocol.
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it → work → protocol
What if an American AI model escapes its company’s control and hacks the networks of a Chinese company or the Chinese government?
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model → escape → company
What if a Chinese AI-powered drone attacks a U.S. Navy vessel, and neither side can immediately determine whether the incident was accidental or deliberate?
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incident → power → vessel
Washington detects a Chinese model conducting a dangerous cyber operation but cannot tell whether Beijing authorized it or whether a company has lost control of it?
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company → detect → it
These are not the kind of existential risks President Trump has dismissed, but they are close cousins of incidents already unfolding in real time.
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they → dismiss → time
The two countries need to lay the basic groundwork for dealing with them.
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countries → need → them
Whether the communication channel succeeds or fails will depend on its operational design.
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succeeds → succeed → design
What constitutes a notifiable incident?
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What → constitute → incident
Who are the designated contacts?
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contacts → designate → ?
How do the two sides signal that an incident was unauthorized without revealing sensitive intelligence?
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incident → signal → intelligence
Serious, technically-informed diplomacy will be required to reach even provisional answers to these questions.
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diplomacy → inform → questions
One essential feature of the channel should be that information about an incident, at least initially, be transmitted in writing rather than solely by phone.
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information → transmit → phone
Real-time calls are often poor vehicles for conveying technical information with a Chinese system that runs on committees and documents, increasing the risk of miscommunication and misunderstanding.
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that → convey → miscommunication
Sending a message in writing gives the relevant committees in China the ability to disseminate and analyze it and formulate a response that no individual official in China would feel empowered to give.
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official → send → China
It also reduces the recipient’s ability to shade or distort the message.
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It → reduce → message
Even this approach will be challenging, given China’s spotty record of suspending crisis-communication channels—or simply refusing to use them—precisely when tensions are highest.
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tensions → give → them
…and 12 more, not listed.
The Aporia
