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US-China Relations
in The Age of Artificial Intelligence
Authors | Ryan Hass & Zach Balin
Under President Donald Trump, great power competition has become the organizing principle of American foreign policy. This has led to near-daily invocations of the Cold War to describe the intensifying rivalry between the United States and China, and to frequent analogies to an “arms race” to describe bilateral competition in advanced technologies, including quantum computing and artificial intelligence (AI). Public statements and national plans from both governments have reinforced this zero-sum dynamic. Such framing has done more to conceal than clarify and, if taken to its logical end-point, will do more harm than good for the United States.
HOW DID WE GET HERE?
In March 2016, a Google system powered by an AI algorithm squared off against Lee Sedol, an 18-time world champion in the famously complex game of Go. In front of an audience of more than 280 million mostly Chinese viewers, the Google system triumphed, plunging China into what renowned technologist Kai-Fu Lee described as an “artificial intelligence fever” that “lit a fire under the Chinese technology community that has been burning ever since.”
A little over one year later, in July 2017, China unveiled its national plan for seizing the spoils of AI. The “New Generation AI Development Plan” set targets and pledged national resources, calling for China to catch up on AI technology and applications by 2020, achieve major breakthroughs by 2025, and become a global leader in AI by 2030. President Xi Jinping reinforced these themes in his 19th Party Congress speech in October 2017 and in a major Politburo study session in late October.
Further stoking unease has been some of China’s official rhetoric, which promotes military-civil fusion of technological development to degrade America’s competitive edge. Such unease has been amplified by China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative, a massive global initiative that some in the United States fear will enable Beijing to set global technological standards. Cumulatively, China’s efforts have fed what Dean Garfield, president and CEO of the Information Technology Industry Council, has characterized as a newfound “hysteria” in Washington that America is losing its innovation edge to China.
Americans are unaccustomed to other countries publicly projecting plans to displace them. As former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently said, “When we see [China]…say, ‘We’re going to do whatever it takes to surpass the United States’… you’re going to get a response from the United States.”Thus far, a large part of that response has been attempting to slow China’s progress, including by tightening screening of foreign investments in core technologies, scrutinizing Chinese academic exchanges, applying targeted tariffs to reduce China’s competitiveness in key sectors, increasing prosecutions of Chinese actors involved in economic espionage, and investing greater resources in counter-intelligence operations.
To be clear, it is fair and appropriate for countries to defend their economic crown jewels from foreign exploitation or infringement. Like any other country, the United States has the right to defend itself, and should continue to do so vigorously. But in protecting itself, the United States needs to avoid inflicting self-harm. Arguments for “decoupling” the economic relationship between the United States and China—including by collapsing ICT supply chains—would do just that. America’s leading sources of innovation increasingly are found in its technology sector, which is deeply intertwined with China’s. There are high levels of collaboration between researchers and engineers in both countries, manifesting in growing numbers of jointly authored peer-reviewed academic papers and deep levels of joint investments by U.S. and Chinese venture capital firms into AI-related enterprises in both countries.
As Lorand Laskai and Samm Sacks recently argued, fencing off the U.S. technology sector from China would cede ground to Chinese competitors, slow down new breakthroughs, reduce the competitiveness of American firms, and increase costs for American consumers.Determining what key U.S. technologies to protect for national security purposes will require policy precision in order to avoid a brickbat approach that undermines American innovation. Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates once dubbed this the “small yard, high fence” strategy – selectively protecting key technologies, and doing so aggressively.
FOCUSING ON THE BIG PICTURE: U.S. AND CHINA SEPARATING FROM THE PACK
In the process of protecting itself, the United States must endeavor not to lose sight of the bigger picture. While competition between the United States and China is intensifying, these two powers are increasing the distance between themselves and every other country in the world in terms of economic size, pace of innovation, and overall national power. This separation of the United States and China from the rest of the pack is being fueled largely by both countries’ technology sectors. According to a widely cited study by PricewaterhouseCoopers, the United States and China are set to capture 70 percent of the $15.7 trillion windfall that AI is expected to add to the global economy by 2030.
Both countries are being propelled forward in AI by unique attributes that no other country soon will replicate. These include world-class research expertise, deep capital pools, data abundance, largely supportive policy environments, and highly competitive innovation ecosystems. Of the roughly 4,500 AI-involved companies in the world, about half operate in the United States and one-third operate in China. So, while it is fair to say the United States and China are competing against each other, the larger truth is that both countries also are navigating the frontier of innovation simultaneously.
This is where a purely competitive zero-sum framing does a disservice to both. When every step forward by one is viewed as a setback for the other, there is disincentive to coordinate on shared challenges or be open to learning from the other’s experiences.
IDENTIFYING AREAS OF COMPETITION AND COOPERATION
One way of overcoming the trend toward all-encompassing competition would be for the United States and China to develop a better shared understanding of where cooperation would be mutually beneficial and where inherent conflicts of interests will need to be managed. This would enable both sides to build cooperation where interests align, which in turn would give both sides greater confidence to deal with issues where they diverge. Below is an illustrative – not exhaustive – set of examples, broken down into four categories: military and security; trade; politics; and society.
Military and security
The military domain presents the greatest risk for miscalculation. It also is where the need is greatest for ongoing, direct, authoritative bilateral communication to develop a better shared understanding of ethical boundaries around AI, particularly given the potential implications for warfighting.
The bilateral relationship already faces an acute security dilemma, where actions on one side make the other feel less secure and push it to develop countermeasures. As AI technologies become more integrated into weapons systems and those systems gain autonomous capabilities, this security dilemma could grow more pronounced, causing each side to nationalize innovation streams and limit transparency in order to seek an edge over the other. In other words, an existing security dilemma could quickly morph into an AI nightmare.
The stakes are high. As others have pointed out, the United States and China stand on the cusp of rapid change in the conduct of war, not unlike the employment of cavalry, the advent of the rifled musket, or the merging of fast armor with air support to achieve a blitzkreig. Both countries are investing heavily to merge AI-enhanced capabilities and enable machine-based decision processes with minimal human interaction.
In the event of a confrontation between U.S. and Chinese forces (e.g., in the South China Sea), robotics and AI could play a critical role. Rapid escalation is an acute risk, particularly if the pace of technological advancements in capabilities exceeds the development of protocols for maintaining human agency in decision-making loops.
The real possibility of unintended and rapid escalation should provide incentive for both sides to begin developing boundaries around uses of AI in warfighting. The normative development process around previous arms control treaties, including the Chemical Weapons Convention, could offer applicable lessons that the United States and China could draw from.
Trade
Intensifying technological competition between the United States and China also risks leading to separate technological spheres, with Europe, North America, South America, and Australia largely adopting American technology and standards, and Asia, Africa, and the Middle East adopting Chinese ones. The ongoing global competition between the United States and China over 5G standards may be an early indication of the battles to come over these boundaries.
Through the introduction of 5G networks, the United States and China will shape the development of next-generation mobile standards, spectrum allocation, and deployments in key markets and regions. Particularly as U.S.-China trade tensions persist, and as both Washington and Beijing seek to lock in overseas 5G markets, there is growing risk of a bifurcated, non-interoperable 5G ecosystem emerging. In such a scenario, one system likely would be led by the United States and supported by technology developed in Silicon Valley, and the other would be led by China and supported by its highly capable digital platform companies.
When a less politically charged moment in the U.S.-China relationship arrives, leaders in both countries should examine – both individually and collectively – whether or not their interests are best served by hastening the bifurcation of the global technology sector into U.S. and Chinese spheres. In such a scenario, both sides would limit their expansion potential: China’s markets primarily would be in developing countries with limited resources for technology build-out, and U.S. companies would operate mostly in developed markets where competition would be fierce.
Politics
AI technologies have the potential to be highly disruptive of political relations between the United States and China. AI technologies could become a vehicle for intensifying ideological rivalry, particularly if one or both sides harness such technologies to interfere in the other’s domestic political affairs.
Russia’s interference into America’s 2016 presidential election raised awareness of U.S. vulnerabilities on this front. As Elaine Kamarck documents, Russia used misinformation and disinformation to suppress voter turnout in targeted geographic districts and among certain demographic groups. Russia also spread derogatory information to denigrate certain candidates, foremost Hillary Clinton. What if those actions were the election interference equivalent of Lindbergh’s test flight – proof of concept, but far from realization of potential?
Going forward, artificial intelligence technologies may enable even more intrusive interference into democratic elections, including by improving an adversary’s ability to target and persuade particular voting groups. In her piece “Malevolent Soft Power, AI, and the Threat to Democracy,” Kamarck envisions a future where polling or search algorithms are linked with artificial intelligence and a human voice to call swing voters and persuade them, in real-time, that a certain candidate will harm them on the issues they identify as important and that the alternative (i.e., preferred) candidate is committed to addressing their individual concerns. She described this as “high-frequency trading in political persuasion.”Alina Polyakova classifies tactics like this as examples of “AI-driven asymmetric warfare.” In her piece “Weapons of the Weak: Russia and AI-driven Asymmetric Warfare,” she warns of the perils that ever-improving, low-cost commercial tools present. “Whereas most Russian disinformation content has been static,” she writes, “advances in learning AI will turn disinformation dynamic” through the creation and dissemination of manipulated video and audio.
If external interference becomes more prevalent and the legitimacy of election results around the world increasingly are called into question, democracy’s appeal could dim and alternative models (e.g., China’s economically statist and politically Leninist system) could become more attractive. This could open the door for Beijing to argue in other capitals that its model delivers higher rates of economic growth and that democratic systems are brittle against manipulation and ineffective at equitably distributing benefits within society.
To be clear, no public evidence exists to indicate that China has meddled in U.S. domestic political affairs in a manner reflecting the hypothetical scenario described above. Even absent such meddling, though, there are still significant concerns in Washington about how Beijing is harnessing AI technologies to surveil its citizens and suppress domestic dissent. These concerns reside on two levels. The first is the manner in which Beijing is perfecting its ability to track its citizens’ movements, communications, spending habits, news consumption, and so on. The second concern is that China may seek to export these practices to foreign leaders who desire tighter control over their citizens. In effect, China’s AI-driven model of intrusive surveillance could challenge America’s long-running efforts to spread democratic principles around the world. Even if this occurs more by default than design, China’s exportation of its policies and technologies to other countries could intensify ideological competition between the United States and China.
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