Robert Wright argues the most immediate existential danger isn't a superintelligent AI takeover, but the geopolitical competition. A breakneck race for AI supremacy could provoke one nation to launch a preemptive war to prevent the other from achieving a perceived decisive advantage.

The justification for accelerating AI development to beat China is logically flawed. It assumes the victor wields a controllable tool. In reality, both nations are racing to build the same uncontrollable AI, making the race itself, not the competitor, the primary existential threat.

AI firms may be overly focused on alignment and technical risks while underestimating the geopolitical fragility of their supply chain. Their massive, growing dependence on energy and compute creates significant vulnerabilities to global political instability that are currently under-discussed.

Having AIs that provide perfect advice doesn't guarantee good outcomes. Humanity is susceptible to coordination problems, where everyone can see a bad outcome approaching but is collectively unable to prevent it. Aligned AIs can warn us, but they cannot force cooperation on a global scale.

While technical alignment research is valuable, it operates in a vacuum. In the real world, the traits of deployed AIs will be shaped by powerful selection pressures from market competition and arms races. The critical question isn't just what traits are possible, but which traits get selected for.

The technical success of AI alignment, which aims to make AI systems perfectly follow human intentions, inadvertently creates the ultimate tool for authoritarianism. An army of 'extremely obedient employees that will never question their orders' is exactly what a regime would want for mass surveillance or suppressing dissent, raising the crucial question of *who* the AI should be aligned with.

The AI safety debate presents a false choice. The immediate, practical threat is not a theoretical superintelligence but a world where China leverages AI for military and economic dominance. The race is about ensuring that if controls are needed, they are aligned with Western values, not authoritarian ones.

While AI alignment gets attention, the risk of AI concentrating immense power in the hands of a few actors (corporations or states) is arguably more neglected. This could enable unprecedented surveillance or create a single company with the economic power of a nation, posing a distinct and severe threat.

Paradoxically, progress in AI alignment has made a global slowdown agreement impossible. Each side now trusts its own 'aligned' AI more than it trusts the other nation to uphold a deal. The perceived risk of being surpassed by a defector now outweighs the perceived risk of one's own AI going rogue, making a competitive race the rational choice.