What Really Happens If China Wins the AI Race?

For years, the tech industry has portrayed Chinese AI development as an existential threat. The truth is not so straightforward. As China releases ever more capable AI models--ones that compete with Silicon Valley's top offerings--many American AI and national-security researchers have been arguing, loudly and forcefully, that the world should fear Chinese AI supremacy. The outcomes they envision are catastrophic. I spoke with a number of such experts recently, and they warned of bots that could devise an impenetrable missile-defense system that makes obsolete America's nuclear arsenal, or manufacture an endless drone army that overwhelms American defenses. They could develop bioweapons that "target specific ethnic groups, e.g.