Doctor Boom!
The Proud Boys won.
The Biden administration made a strategic choice to prioritize the slowing of China rather than addressing other worries. The alternative would have been to say to China: You are a tech superpower. We are a tech superpower. Let’s work together to make sure A.I. doesn’t fall into the hands of rogue states and terrorists. The goal would have been an A.I. equivalent of the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, a regime that would require all countries using A.I. to sign up for safeguards on it.
The Biden team did not think China would collaborate on something like that. But over a dozen conversations with A.I. leaders in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Hangzhou made it clear to me that China’s elite does care about A.I. safety…
For now, China’s instinct to race for powerful A.I. overwhelms any caution. This is a rational response to a U.S. administration that is equally determined to put speed ahead of safety. But if a U.S. leader went to China and offered to scrap chip controls in exchange for collaboration on A.I. nonproliferation, there would be at least some chance of the proposal succeeding.
This presumes that U.S.-Chinese dialogue is even possible. But the West should not succumb to self-fulfilling fatalism. At times during the Cold War, the United States pursued its interests by switching from confrontation to détente: the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty came just six years after the Cuban missile crisis. Now is a good time to recall that history. (Sources: nytimes.com, penguinrandomhouse.com. FWIW: What Mr. Mallaby proposes in this piece is, in our view, the only viable path to keeping the AI race from spiraling out of control).
2. A joint report from the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), the SANS Institute and the Open Worldwide Application Security Project (OWASP) concludes that in the near term, organizations are “likely to be overwhelmed” by threat actors using AI to find and exploit vulnerabilities faster than defenders can patch them. “The cost and capability floor to exploit discovery is dropping, the time between disclosure and weaponization is compressing toward zero, and capabilities that previously required nation-state resources are now becoming broadly accessible,” wrote Robert Lee, SANS Institute’s Chief AI Officer, Gadi Evron, CEO of Knostic and Rich Mogull, chief analyst at CSA, who served as the primary authors. (Source: cyberscoop.com. Parmy Olson’s column today on this subject is typically smart and worth reading in full.)
3. US President Donald Trump indicated he may be preparing to wind down the war with Iran, boosting market optimism and restoring some stability to global energy prices. Peace talks with the Islamic Republic might restart “over the next two days,” the New York Post cited the president as saying. In a separate interview with ABC News, he said extending a two-week ceasefire that was clinched last week after nearly six weeks of fighting may not be necessary, hinting at significant near-term progress without elaborating. “I think you’re going to be watching an amazing two days ahead,” Trump told ABC. “I really do.” (Sources: bloomberg.com, nypost.com, abcnews.com)
