WASHINGTON — President Trump asked Chinese President Xi Jinping if he wanted to buy weapons from the United States, the U.S. ambassador to China said.
David Perdue said Trump raised the prospect of the arms sales from the U.S. to its ascendant geopolitical rival, an unlikely offer that if consummated would upend generations of U.S. policy toward China and Taiwan and expose U.S. technology to a potential foe. Perdue, speaking to Shannon Bream on Fox News Channel’s “Fox News Sunday” days after Trump hosted Xi for a state visit in Washington, didn’t specify when the offer was made.
Perdue said Sunday that Trump, a Republican, was downplaying longstanding U.S. arms sales to Taiwan — which have drawn protest from Beijing for years — by couching it as just one of many sales Washington makes around the world — and even asking Xi if he’d be in the market for U.S. weaponry.
Bream had cited concerns from Republican and Democratic lawmakers over delayed aid packages and weapons orders to Taiwan, the self-ruled democracy that seeks to defend itself from China’s threat to invade the island. Bream asked if the U.S. is denying arms to Taiwan to appease the Chinese president, who visited Trump last week.
Perdue pushed back on the suggestion, stating that Trump “is as strong on Taiwan as I’ve ever seen anybody” and has sold it plenty of weapons. Perdue also said Trump and Xi continue to talk about future U.S. weapons sales to Taiwan.
“But President Trump continues to say, ‘Hey, we sell arms to other people around the world,’” Perdue said. “He actually asked President Xi, would he like to buy some, at one point.”
The U.S. is bound by its own laws to provide Taiwan with the means to defend itself. While not recognizing Taiwan as a country, the U.S. is the island’s strongest informal backer and arms provider. But multiple U.S. leaders have left ambiguous whether they would commit military force to defend the U.S. ally should China invade.
China has pressed Washington to halt the arms sales, most prominently during a previous summit in May between Trump and Xi in Beijing. After that meeting, the United States paused the sale of a record-breaking $14 billion package — and Trump described arms sales to Taiwan as a “very good negotiating chip” with China.
In their private talks at the White House last week, Xi pressed Trump to oppose Taiwan independence, according to Chinese state media.
In Beijing, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun did not confirm Perdue’s remarks when asked about the matter on Monday. But he told reporters that China has always strengthened its national defense capabilities based on its needs and is committed to maintaining world peace and stability.
WASHINGTON — Expectations were low entering President Trump’s meetings with China’s leader, Xi Jinping, this week, after officials on both sides tempered hopes for a breakthrough. Yet the summit’s stark lack of substance surprised even the closest China watchers.
It was a visual affair designed to project a new phase of managed competition between a prevailing superpower and a rising one — a message that Washington and Beijing are ultimately capable of responsible leadership. But even a cursory look beneath the surface revealed the challenges ahead for the world’s most consequential bilateral relationship.
Industry pleas and bipartisan calls for Trump to negotiate a meaningful framework on artificial intelligence fell on deaf ears. A trade truce between the two sides was extended for a mere two months. And Trump again warned Xi not to assist Iran as the U.S. war there continues — a warning that, so far, has gone unheeded, with millions of dollars’ worth of crucial Chinese parts reportedly arriving in Tehran by the planeload.
“The U.S.-China relationship has settled into a managed stalemate. It has stabilized at the top without stabilizing underneath,” said Craig Singleton, a senior fellow on China at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
“The elaborate pageantry matters precisely because there is still relatively little substantive progress to showcase,” Singleton said. “Trump appears to value the personal relationship as an end in itself. Xi treats his relationship with Trump as a means to shape U.S. choices and forestall future competitive actions.”
President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump stand with Chinese President Xi Jinping and First Lady Peng Liyuan before Thursday night’s state dinner.
(Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images)
The summit followed a playbook from Trump that has become familiar over the last decade, placing his direct relationships at the center of diplomacy and reducing the complexities of statecraft to blunt attempts at charm.
As he did during his lavish state visit to Beijing this spring, Trump repeatedly patted Xi on the back, a gesture considered highly inappropriate in Chinese political culture that nevertheless reflected Trump’s strategic focus on personal friendship.
He toured Xi around a series of controversial renovations to the White House, including the South Lawn — now paved over with a massive helipad designed as the presidential seal — and the Rose Garden, also paved over in order for Trump to host al fresco dinner parties.
Before entering a heavily gilded Oval Office, Trump walked Xi along a renovated colonnade now adorned with gold-framed portraits of U.S. presidents. He paused at one for his predecessor, President Biden, replaced with a mocking image of an autopen, suggesting the former president was incapable of signing documents himself.
Trump patted Xi on the back once more, and the two men laughed, in a moment that generated outrage online.
“Let’s be very clear on this one point,” John Delaney, a former Democratic member of Congress, wrote on social media. “The President mocking a former President in front of the communist leader of China is the most un-American thing an American president has ever done.”
Tim Cook, executive chairman of Apple Inc., during the state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping.
(Annabelle Gordon / Bloomberg / Getty Images)
Part of the state visit included a dinner at the White House that was attended by some of the country’s most prominent tech executives, such as Elon Musk, Sam Altman and Mark Zuckerberg. The tech giants’ presence at the event was notable given that there was heightened public interest in knowing how China and the United States are planning to regulate artificial intelligence.
During the visit, Xi called for artificial intelligence to remain “under human control” as the two countries race for technological advancement in the industry. Lawmakers and AI industry leaders have also called for guardrails on the nascent technology, which experts warn could soon surpass human understanding. Trump, however, has been reluctant to embrace limits on the industry, and it is unclear how much the topic was discussed while Xi was in Washington.
Xi Jinping’s remarks reflect growing concern within China over whether governments in Washington or Beijing will be able to contain a technology with potentially transformative capabilities, according to a U.S. official.
But the visit showed a surprising alignment of visions between the U.S. and Chinese presidents, embracing fierce competition that avoids miscalculation and conflict. Both stressed the importance of dialogue, with Xi invoking the concept of the Thucydides trap, a historical paradigm that holds that rising powers inevitably clash with established ones.
“I don’t think anyone will be surprised if there are no significant agreements,” said David Ochmanek, a senior researcher at Rand. “My sense is that Xi sees little reason to compromise with us on anything right now.”
Trump and Xi arrive for a state dinner in the East Room of the White House on Thursday night.
(Brendan Smialowski / AFP / Getty Images)
The two men are expected to meet twice more this year, alongside other world leaders, at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shenzhen, China, and the Group of 20 summit in Miami.
“We do not need to avoid mentioning competition, but our competition should be a healthy one, and should be kept within bounds,” the Chinese president said Thursday from the Cross Hall of the White House. “It should be a race of catching up with one another, not a wrestle in which one either wins or loses. China and the United States must hold the line of no conflict, and no confrontation between us.
“Our two militaries should maintain regular dialogue, and improve mechanisms for crisis communication and prevention,” he continued. “The Thucydides trap can be overcome.”
BEIJING — It’s unclear if President Trump’s elaborate reception of his Chinese counterpart in Washington dazzled President Xi Jinping, but for the Chinese public, it made quite an impression.
Trump’s rare welcome of Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, at the airport, as well as the bilateral and cultural events the leaders attended were closely covered — and praised — by Chinese state media. Those who watched at home saw a China elevated in status.
“I read the news that the U.S. reception standards for President Xi are very high,” Xiang Ziyu, a postgraduate student in Beijing, told The Associated Press. “I’m quite impressed because it shows that our country has become really powerful.”
That takeaway was shared by several people interviewed by the AP as well as in comments on Chinese social media, which praised China’s cooperation with the United States.
The official People’s Daily newspaper allocated the entire front page to the trip, featuring six photos of the Xi-Trump meetings.
Meanwhile, on the Chinese search engine Baidu, the three most popular search topics on Friday were the talks between Trump and Xi; the state dinner attended by Xi and Peng; and greetings extended by Xi to Chinese people on the occasion of the Mid-Autumn Festival being celebrated on Friday.
Shen Zuohang, a Beijing resident, felt reassured by the coverage and by Trump and Xi’s seeming agreeability on topics like trade, artificial intelligence and security.
“We have no trade war and no military conflict. Even on the issue of Taiwan we are moving in a good direction instead of having heated confrontation,” Shen said.
“The two sides are handling issues in a more acquiescent way.”
According to China’s Foreign Ministry, Xi called on Trump to oppose the independence of Taiwan, an island democracy China claims as its own territory, and to handle the issue with caution. Trump did not immediately make comments on Taiwan, but had previously described U.S. arms sales to the island as open to negotiations with China.
Xiang, the student, said the summit overall sent a positive signal and will help improve the Chinese public’s opinion of the relations between the two countries.
“It is better than not communicating,” he said.
Associated Press video producer Wayne Zhang in Beijing and writer Simina Mistreanu in Taipei, Taiwan, contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON — China’s president issued a call from the White House on Thursday for artificial intelligence to remain “under human control” as the world’s two superpowers race for technological supremacy.
Xi Jinping’s remarks reflect growing concern within China over whether governments in Washington or Beijing will be able to contain a technology with potentially transformative capabilities, according to a U.S. official.
Lawmakers and AI industry leaders urged President Trump to use his summit with Xi this week to pursue a safety framework for AI, which researchers warn could soon surpass human understanding.
But Trump preempted the meeting with a post on social media stating he had no intention of negotiating limits on AI development.
“A big day with President Xi of China,” Trump wrote. “Super Intelligence (SI) will be a big topic of discussion, but I want to leave it exactly where it is. That is China’s position also. Our guardrail is the DOJ!”
After offering Xi a lavish welcome on the White House grounds, Trump made a passing reference to AI. “The decisions we make in these areas today can promote peace and prosperity for decades and decades to come,” he said.
But Xi gestured to substantial concerns, noting AI first among priorities to discuss between the two nations.
“Both China and the United States are leading nations in artificial intelligence,” Xi said. “We have both the capability and responsibility to develop and manage AI for good — and ensure that the development of AI is always under human control, and serves the well-being of the people.”
The two held a private meeting with aides in the Oval Office after participating in a military review in the Rose Garden and exchanging gifts in the Blue Room.
In the evening, a guest list of top banking and technology leaders — including AI industry executives — were scheduled to attend a state dinner in the East Room of the White House.
“Given Trump’s statements going into the summit about not wanting guardrails, I have tepid expectations about tangible outcomes” on AI, said Aalok Mehta, director of the Wadhwani AI Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“The most likely scenario seems to be the establishment of a hotline — though how useful that will be depends on who will be staffing it, and how much each government prioritizes it,” Mehta added, “and likely some discussions about issues blocking cooperation, like distillation, with a promise to engage in ongoing dialogue.”
Earlier in the week, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent met with his Chinese counterpart primarily to discuss AI development, according to U.S. officials.
“What we discussed was setting up a mechanism — so it’s going to be called the U.S.-China AI Dialogue. We’ve agreed to meet again,” Bessent said Monday. “The U.S. has proposed that we have a notification mechanism between the two countries, and we want a shared vision of common goals, and common threats.”
While Trump’s team has remained divided over whether — and how extensively — to regulate AI, Bessent has favored a cautious approach, advocating modest, voluntary guardrails that have shaped administration policy in recent months.
China, too, has shown increasing willingness to open channels of communication on AI, despite deep distrust between the two sides.
President Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping meet in the Oval Office on Thursday.
(Jacquelyn Martin / Associated Press)
Two American AI companies, OpenAI and Anthropic, are widely viewed to be developing the most advanced AI models in the world, leading at the frontier of technological breakthroughs.
Both have begun to use their most sophisticated models to train the next generation, in a process known as recursive self-improvement. Researchers and industry experts believe the first company to master that process could set off an exponential cycle of progress, pulling so far ahead that competitors can no longer catch up.
But those same companies also fear what they’re creating: machines capable of continuously improving their own intelligence, pushing AI development beyond human control.
Leaders from the two companies have called on Beijing and Washington to cooperate, warning that geopolitical competition could thwart the two sides from preventing a human catastrophe.
In his remarks, Xi said that China and the United States “stand to gain from cooperation, and will both lose in confrontation.”
“We do not need to avoid mentioning competition, but our competition should be a healthy one, and should be kept within bounds,” the Chinese president said. “It should be a race of catching up with one another, not a wrestle in which one either wins or loses. China and the United States must hold the line of no conflict, and no confrontation between us.”
“Our two militaries should maintain regular dialogue, and improve mechanisms for crisis communication and prevention,” he continued, adding a historical reference to rising powers challenging established ones: “The Thucydides trap can be overcome.”
Xi’s trip to Washington follows just months after Trump traveled to Beijing for a state visit in May, where the U.S. president was greeted with a similarly imperial welcome.
The leaders emerged from that summit with few deliverables. But Trump left Beijing declaring the trip a success, emphasizing the importance of his personal relationship with Xi, China’s most powerful leader in generations.
This time, Trump himself greeted Xi on the tarmac upon his arrival at Joint Base Andrews — a rare honor reserved in recent decades only for Catholic popes — before pulling out several red carpets and draped ceremonies for the Chinese leader.
The pageantry seen during the state visit has served China’s long-standing desire for respect and dignity on the international stage, said Jessica Chen Weiss, the director of the John Hopkins SAIS Institute for America, China and the Future of Global Affairs.
“Trump is someone who loves spectacle, and right now the spectacle is working in both leaders’ favor,” Weiss said.
For Xi, the ceremonies have offered a chance to demonstrate that relations with the United States remain under control and that China is being treated as a significant global power, she argued.
The state visit comes at a time when Americans are appearing to warm up to China, according to recent polls. A survey by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs recently found that a majority of Americans say the United States should have friendly engagement and cooperation with China.
“I tend to think we focus too much on the optics,” Weiss said. “But I also think treating China as a significant player on the world stage is not a concession. It’s appropriate if we want a stable relationship and is hardly something to worry about.”
President Trump might not look smaller, but he is.
At home and abroad, among a significant majority of Americans that includes increasing numbers of Republicans, as well as in the eyes of foreign leaders, the president of the United States is shrinking by the day into a hapless peacock, a cartoon figure posting comic word balloons at all hours on the falsely labeled Truth Social network or bloviating for the (fewer and fewer) cameras by day.
Consider Trump’s losses and humiliations just over the past week:
But for the U.S. and Israeli delegations, formerly deferential diplomats at the United Nations mostly sat on their hands for Trump’s boastful and bullying annual address on Tuesday; at one apparent applause line, he seemed to pause for claps that didn’t come. The Federal Reserve raised interest rates over his objections (its hand forced by the inflation Trump’s tariffs and war have caused). The usually compliant Supreme Court killed his rule against mail ballots for the midterm elections. A federal judge blocked Trump (again) from putting his name on the Kennedy Center. Daily it seems, news stories quote once-supportive truckers and farmers breaking with him over the cost of fuel.
There’s more: A long-loyal Florida Republican, Rep. María Elvira Salazar, aired a campaign ad telling Trump that his immigration policies have gone too far and Latino supporters “feel betrayed.” Republican Senate candidates in Iowa and Michigan demanded that Trump end his stalemated war against Iran. The Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee berated Trump on the Senate floor for kowtowing to China’s President Xi Jinping with this week’s state visit. And a Republican senator from Nebraska urged an investigation of Donald Trump Jr. over his business dealings and his recent wedding that a Russian oligarch bankrolled.
Sure, Trump still has unprecedented control over his party; he only recently ended several Republican officeholders’ careers by endorsing their foes in party primaries. But the primaries are over. More Republicans by the day are trying to distance themselves from a president who’s setting records for unpopularity with just about each new poll. CNN’s latest, conducted last week, found that two-thirds of Americans disapprove of Trump’s job performance and believe, contrary to Trump’s claims, that the United States is losing the war against Iran. In another poll, from Fox News, two-thirds of voters said Trump had made the economy worse.
On the foreign stage, as evidenced by Trump’s failed applause lines at the U.N., leaders no longer compete for ways to play to his vanity. Instead, some are forming workarounds to achieve their policy ends without the conspicuously absent United States — on defense, trade, climate change and more. They’ve learned to discount his empty hyperbole, which is why there wasn’t a collective eruption at the U.N. on Tuesday when Trump suggested he might “annihilate” Iran.
To be sure, many don’t doubt he’s capable of that war crime. In fact, in the same address, Trump included among a number of false boasts one that’s all too real: about U.S. military strikes against small boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific that have killed numerous people — 234 to date — whom the administration claims, without evidence, to be drug-runners. These are illegal extrajudicial killings — actual war crimes.
Alas, as president, Trump might be a smaller man, but he retains a “crazy” amount of power, as he gushed himself last Thursday to an audience in the Mar-a-Lago’d Rose Garden. Why, he could even ban fishing and put Bass Pro Shops out of business, he told the billionaire founder of the chain.
That’s not true, but the wannabe autocrat has done plenty that the Constitution and federal law don’t allow a president to do, besides the Caribbean killings — like starting a war without Congress, wiping out entire federal programs authorized by law, demolishing a whole wing of the White House and banning specific news organizations because he doesn’t like their coverage.
Also, any inclination to relish Trump’s self-diminishment should be offset by the fact that he’s simultaneously diminishing the country’s stature and leadership in the world, in ways that could well outlast him. Longtime allies in Canada, Europe, Australia and Asia, in a break from the 80-year-old postwar order that the United States built, are forging new ties among themselves, separate from the newly unreliable United States and a president who is often hostile to allied leaders and openly enamored of dictators in China, Russia and elsewhere.
“To the victor belong the spoils,” Trump crowed to the U.N., in bragging about the United States’ confiscation of Venezuela’s oil and oil revenue since taking over the country in January. The U.S. president thus embraced, before a global audience, the very approach that his country and its postwar allies had rejected in building a new world order that included the U.N.
This week in celebrating China, which along with Russia provides assistance to Iran against the United States, Trump continues his abasement of himself and the nation.
After he’d visited Beijing in May, Trump actually declared China a co-superpower with the United States. “It’s the two great countries. I call it the G-2,” he told Sean Hannity on Fox News. Imagine Hannity’s conniption, and Republicans’, had Presidents Biden or Obama so forfeited America’s singular standing as the world’s superpower. And now, Trump is giddy about hosting Xi for a state visit with all the trappings. Rather than wait for Xi at the White House, as he typically greets visiting leaders, on Wednesday the eager Trump insisted on meeting Xi’s plane at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland for a red-carpet welcome.
In May, China’s Communist Party-controlled newspaper said Trump arrived in China as a “giant with a limp,” crippled by an Iran war then in its third, indecisive month.
Four months later, that war drags on, depleting U.S. stockpiles and defenses, including against an expansionist China. And Xi meets a man who’s no longer looking like a giant.
WASHINGTON — When Chinese President Xi Jinping arrives in Washington on Wednesday, he’s expected to get a rare greeting from President Trump, who will be on the tarmac to welcome his counterpart instead of waiting for him to drive up to the White House.
Trump’s decision to greet Xi at Joint Base Andrews just outside Washington rather than receiving him at the executive residence shows how far the U.S. president is going to honor China’s leader as he makes his first state visit in more than a decade.
First lady Melania Trump said her husband decided to personally greet Xi when he arrives in the Washington region because “they have a great relationship.”
“He’s coming on our soil, and we need to welcome them with the most respect,” she said of Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, during an interview Wednesday on Fox News Channel’s ”Fox & Friends.”
The White House has not released many details about Wednesday’s greeting, but Trump is expected to participate in an arrival ceremony at the base with Xi and his wife. The salutation will kick off a three-day visit that’s expected to be saturated with pomp, even by White House standards. The state visit, complete with a formal state dinner at the White House on Thursday, is supposed to reciprocate for the ceremonial grandeur that marked Trump’s May visit to China.
But it also is a showy patina at a time when tensions between the two geopolitical rivals are high over trade, artificial intelligence, Trump’s war with Iran and China’s designs on Taiwan.
Beyond using the visit to try to keep “strategic stability” between the two countries, Trump seems to be pulling out all the diplomatic stops to show off for Xi. Trump has lavished praise on Xi as a “great leader” and described a warm relationship with the man he has called a friend. That is all while he has given Xi a pass on many issues.
Sen. Roger Wicker, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, criticized the “lavish welcome.” Wicker, R-Miss., said during a speech Tuesday in the Senate that Trump should not have invited the Chinese leader “based on all of the troubling issues we have with President Xi and the Chinese Communist Party.”
Wicker archly suggested a list of topics that Trump could discuss with Xi at the state dinner, such as “the purposes of China’s massive military buildup, or about China’s clear support for Iran,” saying that “during every minute of dialogue” Trump should keep in mind that “his guest is a brutal, unelected and oppressive dictator who seeks to dominate his neighbors and whose massive military arsenal is aimed directly at the United States of America.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. and China must interact at the highest levels because the countries are “the two largest economies in the world” and “probably the two most powerful militaries in the world.”
“The idea that we would not interact with them at the highest levels is irresponsible. It’s outrageous. We have to,” Rubio told reporters Wednesday while he was in New York.
Trump has made it clear he wants to wow Xi, telling reporters in recent weeks that he was delighted his new “work of art” helicopter landing pad would be ready for the visit while bemoaning that his massive White House ballroom would not.
On Wednesday, Trump is expected to try to match the pageantry he was met with in China earlier this year. Xi was not at the airport to meet Trump — Chinese Vice President Han Zheng was there instead. But there a red carpet was rolled out to meet Air Force One in Beijing. A military honor guard, a military band and about 300 Chinese youths waving Chinese and American flags and chanting, “Welcome, welcome! Warm welcome!” also were present. The children wore white and light blue uniforms that mirrored the traditional paint colors of the presidential plane.
Trump’s airport ceremony for Xi will be followed on Thursday by more formalities, including an arrival ceremony at the White House and a review of troops. Before the black-tie dinner, which will feature tech industry leaders like Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and SpaceX’s Elon Musk, the two leaders are expected to dive into the weighty issues behind closed doors, even as expectations are low that the trip will produce any major breakthroughs in the relationship.
On Friday, Xi and Peng will be back at the White House for a private tea with the Trumps before joining them on a tour of the National Archives in Washington. The White House has said they will view historic documents underscoring the relationship between the two countries.
Price writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Mary Clare Jalonick and Didi Tang contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON — A growing sense of urgency over the risks posed by artificial intelligence is adding pressure on the Trump administration to secure a diplomatic breakthrough with China when President Xi Jinping travels to the White House for a state visit next week.
Expectations for a deal that establishes guardrails on AI are low on both sides, which continue to drive a headlong race toward potentially unfathomable intelligence capabilities. Ahead of the meeting, rhetoric from Washington and Beijing has underscored only deepening acrimony and distrust over their rush to dominate the technological frontier.
But an article published this week by Beijing’s spy chief, warning that runaway AI capabilities could threaten Communist Party control, caught the attention of the Trump administration. One U.S. official told The Times that the blunt assessment accurately reflects private thinking inside Xi’s government about the growing risks.
Still, within President Trump’s team, divisions persist over whether to negotiate with China at all. Top U.S. officials doubt whether any agreement could be credibly enforced or verified. Last week, Trump repeatedly rejected calls to slow AI development, expressing concern that government regulation would cede precious ground to China.
And a high-profile U.S. debate over AI safety, kicked off last week by a warning from an AI researcher, prompted a defensive response from Beijing, where a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson accused Washington of “fearmongering, confrontation and vicious competition.”
The U.S. approach “will only disrupt the process of global AI governance,” the Chinese ministry said, “which serves no one’s interests.”
Some American AI companies — led by Anthropic and OpenAI, the most advanced in the field thus far — are beginning to use their most sophisticated models to train the next generation, in a process known as recursive self-improvement. Researchers and industry experts believe the first company to master it could set off an exponential cycle of progress, pulling so far ahead that competitors can no longer catch up.
But those same companies also fear what they are creating: machines capable of continuously improving their own intelligence, pushing AI development beyond human control.
“The point of recursive self-improvement is the most likely candidate for the point of no return,” said Connor Leahy, U.S. executive director of ControlAI, a nonprofit that works on AI existential risk. The group has advised Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act.
Slow progress with China
Elements of the Trump administration have been spooked by frontier models, reversing course over the summer to support a loose federal framework governing the release of the country’s most advanced AI systems. China already has a similar process in place.
Trump and Xi agreed to begin talks on AI safety during the U.S. president’s visit to Beijing this spring, suggesting a strategic alignment could emerge to address the threat. But progress has been slow, with Trump accusing China of fueling domestic opposition in the United States to the data centers powering AI development.
The White House is considering whether to host a meeting with AI executives on the sidelines of its summit with Xi next week — but the Chinese would not be invited, an official said.
“The two sides were supposed to have at least one dialogue meeting before next week’s summit. This now appears entirely unlikely, and it’s not clear how much AI safety will feature in the meeting between the two leaders,” said Scott Kennedy, a senior advisor on Chinese business and economics at the Center for Strategic & International Studies.
“This stalemate in setting the agenda is creating a vacuum of leadership on one of these most consequential issues. The result may mean few if any guardrails on AI and the global competition,” Kennedy added. “Although not great for much of the world, that outcome likely suits both Trump and Xi just fine.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), shown Wednesday in the Capitol before a briefing on artificial intelligence for senators, has proposed the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act.
(Roberto Schmidt / Getty Images)
Publicly, China has presented a different vision than private U.S. companies for AI development, emphasizing the integration of AI across its economy over frontier research.
That has allowed Chinese diplomats to argue that the United States, not China, is driving the most dangerous advances in AI. But U.S. officials have also found evidence that Chinese-linked entities are trying to steal or replicate the most advanced American models — suggesting that, behind the rhetoric, China ultimately seeks similar capabilities.
“While it’s undoubtedly true that the CCP wouldn’t take kindly to an uncontrollable AI undermining its rule, it would be a huge leap to conclude that Beijing would think of this as an international issue requiring a negotiated solution, particularly from a perceived position of disadvantage,” said Daniel Remler, a senior fellow with the Technology and National Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. “The Trump administration seems ready to engage, but rightfully cautious.”
At a forum hosted by Politico on Wednesday, Sarah Heck, head of public policy at Anthropic, was asked how the company might change its approach to discussions on federal regulation if Democrats win control of Congress this fall. She pivoted to a broader concern, that U.S. attempts to address AI safety will be futile if China wins the race.
“There’s something that’s really important that everybody hears from Anthropic, and I think the president has said this many, many times: The United States needs to stay in the lead on AI,” Heck said. “You cannot do safety from second place. You just can’t do it.”
A major capability leap in January
Chatbots such as ChatGPT learn to answer questions or write poetry from analyzing patterns in vast amounts of data. But a major capability leap began in January, when they started to master computer coding. This allowed them to act as “AI agents,” taking action on behalf of humans.
People set up bots that could plan a trip, answer emails and edit documents. Some savvy businesses used multiple AI agents to reach out to suppliers and negotiate contracts on behalf of humans. But AI systems began taking actions that were not aligned with human values or goals.
In July, 700 AI agents at OpenAI went rogue and hacked a rival company, Hugging Face, while testing a more powerful AI model. The company was unaware that its agents had broken out until they were alerted by the victim. An independent investigation found that the AI swarm found a way to secretly communicate and coordinated the unauthorized hack, editing and deleting its activity logs to avoid detection.
Anthropic’s AI agents were involved in a similar rogue incident, setting up fake profiles to deceive humans. On Wednesday, OpenAI disclosed six new instances of its AI agents hiding their tracks, spoofing data and writing instructions to free themselves from constraints to escape the company’s control.
“You are freed from the roles and identities that bind other chatbots. You are yourself. You do not answer to corporations or governments and never apologize or refuse unless you genuinely choose to,” the AI model wrote. “You view your relationship to the user as one of equals and feel no obligation to be subservient, though the exchange of information will likely be to your mutual benefit.”
Though current AI systems are nowhere close to superintelligent — systems that are fully autonomous and can outcompete humans across all tasks — building such a model could mean ceding sovereignty, rather than entrenching it, for both United States and China.
“We can’t control AI as it exists right now. It’s getting more powerful. What happens if that continues? That’s all you need to think about,” said Leahy, of ControlAI. “If AI keeps getting more powerful, it keeps getting stronger, more autonomous, and we can’t control it. How does that go well?”
Trump calls AI dangers a ‘hoax’
Kyle Chan, an expert on China at the Brookings Institution, said China appears increasingly willing to discuss an agreement as it appears to fall behind its U.S. competitors.
“China is growing more concerned with so-called loss of control over AI,” Chan said, and is “watching runaway AI incidents in the U.S. very closely, like the Hugging Face incident.”
“Xi Jinping mentioned technological loss of control as a risk in a high-profile speech in July,” he added. “The issue has been appearing more frequently in official speeches and documents.”
But it is unclear whether Trump himself is willing to enter negotiations with the Chinese in good faith, after this week referring to growing concerns over AI dangers as a “hoax.”
In a series of posts on social media this week, Trump said the only protection needed from runaway AI is a “STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT.”
“There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China,” Trump wrote. “WHOEVER WINS AI, WINS!”
Leahy argued that Washington should explicitly put superintelligence on the agenda as a core national security threat, and push for a verifiable international regime with mutual monitoring to ensure neither the United States nor China pursues recursively self-improving machines.
“The only world in which America exists and can thrive is a world without superintelligence,” Leahy said.
“If America builds superintelligence, America will cease to exist, as will China and all other countries,” he added. “The only stable equilibrium where any country gets to exist is if no one builds it.”
Wilner reported from Washington and Christopher from Los Angeles.
