Ross Douthat

and Beijing are just constantly sitting down, hammering out AI control deals.

Well, is it but is your skepticism rooted in the fact that you think AI would provide a kind of advantage that nukes did not?

where in the Cold War, both sides, you know, even if you used your nukes and gained advantages, you still probably would be wiped out yourself.

And you think that wouldn't happen with AI?

If you got an AI edge, you would just win?

So all of this is like very... But to be clear, as you yourself say in the course of the essay...

the leaders of major AI companies are, in fact, likely to be major geopolitical actors.

Yeah, yeah.

So you are sitting here as a potential geopolitical actor.

That would be my guess and my analysis.

Isn't this a case, though, for –

slowing down.

And I know the argument is effectively, if you slow down, China does not slow down.

And then you're, you know, handing things over to the authoritarians.

But if again, if you have right now only two major powers playing in this game, it's not a multipolar game.

Why would it not make sense to say?

we need a five-year mutually agreed upon slowdown in research towards the geniuses in a data center scenario.

And nuclear arms control was, you know, it was a developed field that took a long time to come.

We don't, we don't have those protocols.

What about then you mentioned the current environment, right?