If AI really could kill us all, why give any ground to China?

China isn’t messing around. The government recently unveiled a comprehensive strategy to make China the world’s AI leader by the end of this decade — a roadmap that includes massive, coordinated funding and resources on a scale that one-party rule makes significantly easier. Sure, the Chinese Communist Party is prone to hyperbole, but the country’s leaders view AI as an existential threat to their power, and they’re throwing the kitchen sink at the problem. They’re already catching up to the United States. Meanwhile, the American AI industry says it wants to tap the brakes on its own development. Their fear is a different one: Silicon Valley is building a technology that could outstrip its makers’ control and eventually destroy humanity. The likelihood and capability of AI’s destructive power is hotly debated and inconclusive.