Sources: the US and China will discuss AI safety risks during talks planned for mid-September, with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent leading the US side
ReutersLaurie Chen
Context & Ripple Effects
The reported mid-September dialogue follows a 2024 plan for the first high-level US-China AI talks and a May report that the two governments were exploring a recurring AI-security channel. July reporting then cast a September meeting as an outcome of the Trump-Xi summit, giving the proposed talks a clearer place in the bilateral agenda.
The dialogue would run alongside China’s July outreach to Alibaba, ByteDance and Z.ai over potential limits on foreign access to advanced models. That overlap matters because safety cooperation and model-access controls can pull AI firms toward different national compliance requirements.
First-order effects
If the reported meeting proceeds, US and Chinese officials gain a dedicated forum to address AI safety and security risks rather than leaving them solely to broader diplomatic negotiations.
Scott Bessent’s reported leadership role makes Treasury the focal US institution for the dialogue, linking AI-risk diplomacy to an agency already central to cross-border economic policy.
Second-order effects
A bilateral safety forum would require both governments to turn broad risk concerns into expectations for domestic AI labs; public debate over a reported self-policing proposal highlights the implementation dispute.
Any shared safety protocol would have to coexist with China’s reported consideration of foreign-model access limits, making cross-border model availability and security practices connected policy questions for AI providers.
Third-order effects
Repeated efforts to establish a bilateral channel point toward AI safety becoming a standing area of US-China statecraft, even as each side retains separate controls over domestic firms and model access.
The trend: AI governance is moving toward parallel tracks of limited bilateral risk coordination and nationally controlled AI industrial policy.
This is the right direction to go in: “The U.S. wants to discuss cooperation on monitoring AI-directed cyberattacks, and has floated a proposal to ask U.S. and Chinese AI labs to “police themselves” and share information to prevent AI-linked cyberattacks” https://www.reuters.com/…
Really encouraging that there's this much discussion already happening, but the US “floated a proposal to ask U.S. and Chinese AI labs to ‘police themselves’” cmon man! that's what US industry has been doing forever and it's not fucking working.
The notion that we should cooperate with China to monitor AI-enabled attacks and asking Chinese companies to “police themselves” to prevent AI-enabled cyberattacks—when China is itself the greatest perpetrator of cyberattacks against the United States—is laughable.
I trust that POTUS isn't going to take the bait. China wants us to unilaterally stop building, similar to the infamous Obama era Paris Climate Deal. Don't give Beijing an inch.
It's heartening to see both sides circling the three deliverables I outlined in May: 1️⃣ Shared KYC requirements for DNA synthesis screening; 2️⃣ Coordinated best practices for each side's pre-release vetting regime (especially cyber evals); 3️⃣ A sustained dialogue mechanism.
I still dont really expect much to come from this because china and the us have fairly incompatible goals BUT sending Ding Xuexiang would be a fairly significant sign that china is taking it seriously and some level of commitment to do ~something~ i think is totally possible
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