Artificial Intelligence, Geopolitics, and the US-China Relationship

The quest thus far has failed, but its failures have come in the form of machines that surpass human capabilities in sensing and measuring the material world; in capturing, storing, and processing observations of the material world; and in computational power and speed in analysing the material world. [...] INTEREST IN MILITARY APPLICATIONS OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE While many of the professionals working within the disciplines of AI do so in service of the quest for manufactured intellect, or in service of bettering the human condition, the direction and tenor of political interest in AI has never been benign. [...] In the modern era, China’s military posture has been determined primarily by its percep- tion of the requirements for direct defense of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the homeland, and for the prosecution of a militarised invasion of Taiwan in the event the island were to declare independ- ence.5 The possibility of US involvement in a Taiwan contingency has therefore been a driving factor i. [...] Sisson directed the Department of Defense to prepare to fight and to win a war against the PRC, and to do so through the acquisition and adop- tion of the advanced and emerging military technologies of which AI is an essential component. [...] Although these behaviors were accompanied by regular accountings of national investments in AI and by assessments of the relative performance of the states’ respective technology sectors, this was indicative of bilateral ambition and anxiety, not of a concerted effort by one state to achieve at the expense of the other.16 This changed in October 2022, when the United States summarily imposed a set.