The United States is engaged in an unspoken arms race with the Chinese Communist Party over a technology that will change the world. Artificial intelligence will revolutionize warfare, with some analysts comparing it to the advent of nuclear weapons nearly eight decades ago.
Some have argued that the U.S. and China should reach an “armistice” over AI, but this would be a grave mistake. Beijing is Washington’s sole peer adversary. China is engaged in the largest military buildup in recent history and seeks to supplant the U.S. as the world’s superpower. And China has shown a willingness to employ all the tools at its disposal against the United States: political, diplomatic, and economic.
China has demonstrated that it is willing to use any means to do so, undermining the U.S. at every turn, whether by supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Iranian ambitions in the Middle East, or engaging in intellectual property theft and brazen espionage on American soil. Nor can the CCP be trusted.
China has routinely lied about matters of international import, from its growing arsenal to COVID-19 to its use of spy balloons to its carbon emissions. The CCP has lied about key economic statistics and its barbarous treatment of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities. It is naive to trust China to keep the terms of an armistice about a technology that would give Beijing a significant edge in its global ambitions.
History offers a lesson as well.
During the Cold War, the U.S. and the Soviet Union inked several arms limitation agreements, many of which the Soviets violated. Worse still, American policymakers often became too invested in the process of the agreements, effectively ignoring the often lackluster results. And as a democracy, when elected officials supported such agreements, they were often reluctant to reveal their failures. There’s good reason to think the same would hold true with another communist regime, China, which has already displayed an aptitude for siphoning our technology.
Indeed, arms control agreements rely on verification measures. And here, too, our ability to catch Beijing’s violations would likely fall short. Beginning roughly a decade and a half ago, the CCP successfully rolled up many important U.S. intelligence assets in the country, leaving Washington at a severe disadvantage. China has consistently shown an ability to catch the U.S. off-guard. Given the stakes, the U.S. can’t afford to rely on Beijing’s word alone. It also can’t trust itself to catch China should the CCP violate a “stand down” agreement on artificial intelligence.
AI will change warfare in dramatic ways. Gen. H.R. McMaster, a former national security adviser during the Trump administration, has noted that AI will “revolutionize logistics.” The new technology, McMaster warned, will allow the U.S. to better combine and integrate intelligence and to seize the initiative with procurement and efficiency, giving America a key edge.
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This is no small thing. The U.S. can’t compete with enemies such as China when it comes to scale. Rather, the U.S. has a history of outpacing our opponents in quality and innovation. Our free and open society is our best weapon, and it would be to our eternal regret if we didn’t utilize it against an adversary who threatens the American way of life.
AI will change the world. And it is incumbent upon our leaders not to cede ground to our enemies.
Sean Durns is a Washington, D.C.-based foreign affairs analyst. His views are his own.
