I recommend this revealing piece from Seth Center, who co-led the AI dialogue with China that emerged from our negotiations for the 2023 Biden-Xi Woodside Summit. A little background here. In 2023, the President and his National Security Advisor thought we should have an AI dialogue with China. It would be the first ever to be held. They were right to push it. Since this was a presidential deliverable, it fell to the NSC (and to me specifically) to coordinate and negotiate this as a summit deliverable. Therein began a rather torturous process with Beijing to scope it out, wrangle over ministerial participation, set the diplomatic level, and determine the agenda so our two Presidents could announce it. We also worked out an agreement not to hook up AI to nuclear command and control (assented to by the PLA and DOD as well), but that was further refined and ultimately announced in 2024. All this required coordination within the USG, and Seth and his team were critical partners in that effort. Both sides ultimately agreed to hold the dialogue. Neither the US nor China made concessions to get it. We didn’t lift our export controls, as some in the US had encouraged us to do. And that enabled Biden and Xi to announce the dialogue at the Woodside Summit. When the dialogue was held the following year, in my opinion, the PRC did not send the right people and the right ministries at the right levels, which ran against the understandings reached in our earlier negotiations. Seth’s piece tells you what happened in the room. With a different configuration of actors, more iteration, a different level of engagement, and more direction from the Party center, things may have gone better. Or not, since Beijing had its own preferences here. Still, it is a shame we did not get to try it that way. I believe we made some progress and should keep trying. But those encouraging us to make massive unilateral concessions for the privilege of doing so are, I think, looking at this through rose-tinted glasses. The current discussion on AI talks with China would thus benefit from a bit more perspective on what diplomacy with China actually looks like on the ground. Which is why I recommend you read Seth’s piece.