Fear Drives the AI 'Cold War' Between America and China
A new "cold war" between America and China is "pushing leaders to sideline concerns about the dangers of powerful AI models," reports the Wall Street Journal, "including the spread of disinformation and other harmful content, and the development of superintelligent AI systems misaligned with human values..."
"Both countries are driven as much by fear as by hope of progress. "
In Washington and Silicon Valley, warnings abound that China's
"authoritarian AI," left unchecked, will erode American tech
supremacy. Beijing is gripped by the conviction that a failure to
keep
pace in AI will make it easier for the U.S. to cut short China's
resurgence as a global power. Both countries believe market share
for their companies across the world is up for grabs — and with it,
the potential to influence large swaths of the global population.
The U.S. still has a clear lead, producing the most powerful AI
models. China can't match it in advanced
chips and has no answer for the financial firepower of private
American investors, who funded AI startups to the tune of $104
billion in the first half of 2025, and are gearing
up for more. But it has a massive population of capable
engineers, lower costs and a state-led development model that often
moves faster than the U.S., all of which Beijing is working to
harness to tip the contest in its direction. A new "whole of
society" campaign looks to accelerate the construction of computing
clusters in areas like Inner Mongolia, where vast solar and wind
farms provide plentiful cheap energy, and connect hundreds of data
centers to create a shared compute pool — some describe it as a
"national cloud" — by 2028. China is also funneling hundreds of
billions of dollars into its power grid to support AI training and
adoption...
"Our lead is probably in the 'months but not years' realm,"
said Chris McGuire, who helped design U.S. export controls on AI
chips while serving on the National Security Council under the Biden
administration. Chinese AI models currently rank at or near the top
in every task from coding to video generation, with the exception of
search, according to Chatbot Arena, a popular crowdsourced ranking
platform. China's manufacturing sector, meanwhile, is rocketing
past the U.S. in bringing
AI into the physical world through robotaxis, autonomous drones
and humanoid
robots. Given China's progress, McGuire said, the U.S. is
"very lucky" to have its advantage in chips...
If AI surpasses human intelligence and acquires the ability to
improve itself, it could confer unshakable scientific, economic and
military superiority on the country that controls it. Short of that,
AI's ability to automate tedious tasks and process vast amounts of
data quickly promises to supercharge everything from cancer diagnoses
to missile defense. With so much at stake, hacking and cyber
espionage are likely to get worse, as AI gives hackers more powerful
tools, while increasing incentives for state-backed groups to try to
steal AI-related intellectual property. As distrust grows, Washington
and Beijing will also find it hard, if not impossible, to cooperate
in areas like preventing extremist groups from using AI in
destructive ways, such as building bioweapons. "The costs of the
AI Cold War are already high and will go much higher," said Paul
Triolo, a former U.S. government analyst and current technology
policy lead at business consulting firm DGA-Albright Stonebridge
Group. "A U.S.-China AI arms race becomes a self-fulfilling
prophecy, with neither side able to trust that the other would
observe any restrictions on advanced AI capability development...."
The article includes an interesting observation from Helen Toner, director of strategy for Georgetown's Center for Security and Emerging Technology and a former OpenAI board member. Toner points out "We don't actually know" if boosting computing power with better chips will continue producing more-powerful AI models.
So "If performance plateaus," the Journal writes, "despite all the spending by OpenAI and others — a growing concern in Silicon Valley — China has a chance to compete."
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Fear Drives the AI
A new "cold war" between America and China is "pushing leaders to sideline concerns about the dangers of powerful AI models," repor...
at Slashdot.
Fear Drives the AI
A new "cold war" between America and China is "pushing leaders to sideline concerns about the dangers of powerful AI models," repor...
