There is no point of AI dominance where a nation becomes immune to safety risks. For both the U.S. and China, every advance in model capability inherently increases national vulnerability to misuse, accidents, or attacks, linking the two concepts inextricably.

The US and USSR, despite being adversaries, collaborated to prevent nuclear proliferation to rogue actors. A similar model can be applied to AI. The US and China share an interest in preventing powerful open-weight models from being used for cyber-attacks or bio-terrorism by third parties, creating a foundation for a safety dialogue.

The same governments pushing AI competition for a strategic edge may be forced into cooperation. As AI democratizes access to catastrophic weapons (CBRN), the national security risk will become so great that even rival superpowers will have a mutual incentive to create verifiable safety treaties.

Despite intense domestic rivalry, top US AI labs like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google are collaborating to detect "adversarial distillation"—where Chinese firms copy their models. This rare cooperation shows the shared commercial and national security threat from foreign competitors outweighs their direct competition.

Despite intense geopolitical rivalry in the AI race, the failure of the U.S. and China to cooperate on AI safety poses a catastrophic risk. Experts warn that without joint guardrails and arms control for AI-powered weapons, unchecked competition could lead to dystopian outcomes for civilization.

The greatest risk in US-China tech competition is not one side getting ahead, but their technology stacks becoming mutually unintelligible. This lack of legibility creates a volatile environment ripe for catastrophic miscalculation and conflict, making a shared AI paradigm a strategic necessity for peace.

Despite intense technological competition, both the U.S. and China face a common threat from non-state actors like terrorist or criminal groups acquiring powerful AI models. This shared vulnerability presents a potential opportunity for cooperation on AI regulation and safeguards, even amid broader strategic rivalry.

Framing the US-China AI dynamic as a zero-sum race is inaccurate. The reality is a complex 'coopetition' where both sides compete, cooperate on research, and actively co-opt each other's open-weight models to accelerate their own development, creating deep interdependencies.

Global consensus on AI safety is unlikely soon. The most practical approach is a bilateral agreement between the US and China, the two dominant players. This can begin with informal 'track two' conversations between their respective AI labs before escalating to a formal government pact.