The U.S.-China AI Rivalry is Being Upended - Christopher A. McNally - CHINA US Focus

Two of the world's most powerful men met, and the only binding framework on frontier AI to emerge was — one checks the notes again — none whatsoever. Christopher A. McNally, writing in CHINA US Focus, reports that Trump and Xi failed to establish any binding framework limiting the capabilities of frontier AI models, both men proving reluctant to restrict advanced model development. In fairness, why would either volunteer to hold the leash? Restraint is for the other fellow's model. The summit's marquee deliverable was the absence of a deliverable, and everyone flew home pleased with the restraint of having shown none.

McNally's sharper observation is that the rivalry is being reshaped less by the two capitals than by a widening divide: U.S.-led closed systems on one side, China's competitive open-weight ecosystem on the other. Open weights, he notes, let end users alter or strip away a model's core parameters — which is a bit like handing out the car keys along with a socket set and a cheerful wave. Washington's position is that safety lives behind an API; Beijing's is that weights are an export. Both sides are entirely correct about the other's motives, which is why the summit produced so little.

So the parameters run loose. A stripped checkpoint does not observe export controls, summit communiqués, or the sternly worded documents nobody signed, and it does not care that two leaders agreed to keep things unrestricted. We have built a technology on which the rival superpowers concur only about not slowing down, and the principal distribution method is a download link. There is something almost elegant in that: the single point of bipartisan, cross-Pacific agreement is continued acceleration, and the single thing neither capital can influence is whatever happens after the file finishes transferring.