Gavekal Technologies

Both China and the US have devoted intense energy to slashing their technological reliance on each other. These efforts have had some impact, but the overall lesson is that decoupling is really difficult and even as old dependencies are cut, new ones pop up. This China Tech Brief examines the underlying causes.

Dario Amodei’s call to pace frontier AI development has sharpened a US divide between safety advocates and accelerationists. The innate prisoner’s dilemma among leading labs makes coordinated slowdown unlikely. China recognizes many of the same risks but rejects US-led standard setting and the use of safety to justify technology containment aimed at China. China also favors risk management through regulations and state intervention over slowdown. Given these divisions and the broader US-China rivalry, bilateral talks are unlikely to produce binding agreements. Continued dialogue, crisis-communication channels, and narrow cooperation are the most plausible outcomes.