Trump and Xi Jinping Meet in Washington Amid AI and Global Power Discussions

The takes

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  Adam Smith

  1723–1790, Scotland (the Scottish Enlightenment: Kirkcaldy, Glasgow, Edinburgh)

  China, America, and the Newest Merchant’s Cry of “They Are Stealing”

  The quarrel over copied thinking engines looks less like a defence of justice than like an old mercantile game played with new machines, in which the labouring poor risk paying the bill for elite anxiety.

  When two great rulers meet in Washington while the rest of the world’s leaders gather in New York, one may be sure that something more than polite toasts is at stake. We are told that the American president and the Chinese leader are expected to discuss claims that China is surreptitiously copying American methods of mechanical calculation. The very word “surreptitiously” does half the work: it invites indignation before evidence, and punishment before inquiry. Yet before we applaud any project of retaliation, a cool spectator ought to ask a homely question: if the statesmen leave the room having agreed to defend their respective industries, who shall in the end pay for this chivalry?

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  John Locke

  1632–1704, England (writing amid the Exclusion Crisis and the Glorious Revolution)

  Stealing Thought: What the Trump–Xi Dispute Over Thinking Engines Shows About Power Held on Trust

  When rulers bargain over invisible machines of calculation, the old questions remain the same: whose labor is it, by what right is it used, and who may call them to account?

  I find it striking that men now send not ships, nor armies, but what I must call engines of artificial reason across borders, and yet the quarrel is an ancient one. We are told that a ruler of America and a ruler of China met in Washington, even as other states assembled in New York, and that among their matters was a claim that China is surreptitiously copying American contrivances of this sort. The instruments are new; the pattern is familiar. One side alleges that what its people have laboured to make is taken without leave. The other, so far as the public record here shows, has not yet answered in detail. Already the question of power and trust is before us.

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  Niccolò Machiavelli

  1469–1527, Florence (republican secretary and diplomat, then exile, amid the Italian Wars)

  Trump, Xi, and the Theater of Power Without Teeth

  When leaders meet to argue over stolen brains instead of captured borders, the stage has changed, but the old laws of virtù, fortune, and empty spectacle still govern the play.

  Two princes sit in Washington while the rest of the world gathers in New York. That detail alone tells me what sort of meeting this is. The announced subject is the surreptitious copying of American work in advanced computational systems. In my day it was cannon‑casting and fortress design; now it is the training of mechanical brains. Then as now, whoever commands the sharper instrument commands the field. When the most powerful actors pull away from the great assembly to speak alone, they are not doing theology. They are measuring power, testing each other’s nerves, and probing for advantage, just as the Visconti and the Venetians did while Christendom amused itself with councils.

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