Trump Declines US-China Collaboration on Artificial Intelligence

The takes

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  Adam Smith

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

  Blocking a Technological Entente Is Protectionism in a New Disguise

  Calling cooperation with a rival “giving away secrets” may flatter patriotic fears, but it risks carving the future’s great industry into hostile camps and taxing the labouring poor for the comfort of their own producers.

  The president of a great commercial republic has lately proclaimed that there shall be no joint venture in the new science of mechanical reasoning with its principal economic rival, for such a partnership would be, he says, to give away secrets. Here is a useful spectacle. A statesman launches a new algorithmic portal to ease the citizen’s dealings with his own government, and in the same breath vows never to share in the wider development of that very art with others. The same innovation is thus treated as harmless when it cuts red tape at home, but as mortal danger when it might enlarge the market abroad. It is always instructive to observe when prudence becomes a little too convenient.

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  John Locke

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

  National Security Is Not a Blank Check on New Computing Power

  A president may refuse dangerous alliances, but when he closes the door on joint technological ventures by mere say‑so, he walks to the edge of arbitrary rule.

  The scene is quickly told: at the launch of a new data‑driven portal for government business, the president of the United States declared there would be no joint venture with China in advanced computational systems, for such cooperation would, he said, be like “giving away secrets” to a principal economic rival. Here is power exercised not over one man’s estate, but over a whole field of invention and commerce upon which many men and women, by their labour and wit, now depend. The question that presents itself to me is plain: by what right, and under what conditions, may a single magistrate so peremptorily shut this door?

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  Niccolò Machiavelli

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

  Keeping the Code at Home: Why a Wise Prince Refuses to Share His Engines

  When a leader calls joint high‑tech ventures with a rival “giving away secrets,” he is not being rude; he is treating advanced code as arms, and arms belong in one’s own hands.

  A president stands on a stage to unveil a new portal, America.gov, driven by learning engines that promise to smooth his citizens’ dealings with their own government. In the same breath he rules out any joint venture on this technology with the state he calls his main economic rival, saying it would mean handing over secrets. He adds that his country is “leading by a lot” in this field and should not “mix it up” with competitors. I note first what he does not do. He does not dress this in sermons about universal brotherhood. He speaks the language of rivalry, advantage, and secrecy. In politics, that is already a step toward sanity.

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