Opinion | Who will save the world from a US-China AI arms race?

Unrestrained military AI could doom us all. The window for a global middle-power alliance to rein in the superpowers is closing fast

Unrestrained military AI could doom us all. The window for a global middle-power alliance to rein in the superpowers is closing fast

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2026 has begun with a worsening trust deficit, as geopolitical rivalry between the United States and China ruptures the international system. Much of this mistrust stems from an escalating technology race.

At centre stage is artificial intelligence – the foundational technology for virtually all industries, from hyper-scaled computer networks and data centres to self-learning “cognitive” machines and advanced semiconductor production.

The US and China now face a prisoner’s dilemma in military AI: both would be safer with restraint, yet each accelerates development to avoid falling victim to the other. Much of the fuel for this race flows directly from Silicon Valley, where OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind and other tech behemoths compete with each other at breakneck pace, flooding the market with powerful new AI systems that are largely unrestrained and unregulated.

All of this AI is “dual-use” – commercial technology that can be repurposed for military applications – making it subject to the geopolitical machinations of both AI superpowers.

We must now confront a series of AI-related developments with direct bearing on global stability and peace. Four inconvenient truths demand our attention.

First, responsible nations and non-state actors are failing to address the scale of the threat posed by unrestrained AI competition, in both commercial and geopolitical contexts.

Second, the world’s AI superpowers have elected to pursue........

© South China Morning Post