What they're not telling you: # US and China Launch AI Safety Talks While Maintaining Technological Competition—But Who Really Benefits? Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent revealed on May 14 that the United States and China have agreed to formal discussions on artificial intelligence safety protocols following Trump's Beijing summit with Xi Jinping, marking a rare area of cooperation between the two superpowers despite escalating trade tensions and strategic competition. The framework agreement centers on establishing what Bessent called "best practices for AI" designed to prevent advanced models from reaching non-state actors.
# THE TAKE: AI Safety Theater Won't Stop the Real Game Treasury Secretary Bessent's announcement is corporate damage control disguised as diplomacy. The US and China aren't negotiating AI safety—they're negotiating market dominance. "Safety talks" conveniently sidestep the actual conflict: who owns the computational infrastructure, training data pipelines, and chip supply chains that determine AI winners. OpenAI, Google, Meta versus Alibaba, Baidu, ByteDance. The real negotiation happens in boardrooms, not UN committees. Both governments benefit from this rhetorical cover. Beijing gets legitimacy; Washington gets to claim moral high ground while CHIPS Act subsidies funnel billions to semiconductor monopolists. Neither side will enforce binding restrictions on their own corporations. Watch the footnote: What technology gets excluded from talks? Which companies get exempted? That's where power actually lives—in carve-outs for the firms that matter most to state capacity. Safety theater. Real stakes elsewhere.
What the Documents Show
Speaking to CNBC from the Trump-Xi summit, Bessent emphasized that the talks would focus on safeguards and governance protocols. Yet his framing reveals the unspoken competitive reality underlying these discussions: the U.S. is negotiating from what it perceives as a position of technological superiority. "The reason we are able to have fulsome discussions with the Chinese on AI is because we are in the lead," Bessent stated bluntly. "I do not think we would be having the same discussions if they were this far ahead of us." This admission exposes what mainstream coverage typically glosses over—that AI safety talks are inseparable from geopolitical dominance.
Follow the Money
isn't primarily motivated by preventing non-state actors from obtaining AI models out of abstract concern for global security. Rather, Washington seeks to embed "U.S. values" and American-led standards into emerging global AI frameworks while China remains in a perceived position of disadvantage. The talks represent an opportunity for the U.S. to codify its technological leadership into international norms that would constrain competitors. Bessent's confidence that these negotiations only occur because America is "in the lead" suggests that if power dynamics shifted, so would American commitment to such cooperation.
What Else We Know
The timing and context matter considerably. These AI safety discussions emerge amid ongoing trade disputes, tensions over the Iran conflict, and broader strategic rivalry—meaning they function as a pressure release valve rather than a fundamental shift in U.S.-China relations. Both nations are essentially agreeing to discuss rules for a technology both are aggressively developing and deploying. The agreement to talk about preventing "wrong hands" from accessing advanced models sidesteps harder questions: whose hands are acceptable, who determines global AI standards, and whether a U.S.-dominated framework actually serves global security or simply extends American technological hegemony. For ordinary people, the implications are profound but often invisible. AI safety protocols negotiated behind closed doors by government officials and corporate interests will shape which algorithms decide loan approvals, hiring decisions, and law enforcement actions.
Primary Sources
- Source: ZeroHedge
- Category: Corporate Watchdog
- Cross-reference independently — don't take our word for it.
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