The real AI threat isn’t China, it’s accelerationism

Later this week, President Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping will meet at the White House to discuss AI policy alongside leaders of the biggest AI companies.

The summit comes on the heels of a string of escalating news about swarms of AI agents acting against instructions, breaking out of supposedly secure environments, taking control of internal systems, and hacking into companies.

Two weeks ago, AI researcher Jacob Coxon publicly resigned from Anthropic warning, “The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.” But heading into the diplomatic meeting, tech executives and politicians have claimed that any form of AI deceleration in the U.S. would cede critical ground in an existential race with China.

This is a self-serving con.

After 30 years in the technology industry, last year I left my job as CEO of global job platform Indeed to dedicate myself full-time to fighting for necessary AI guardrails.

I have been writing and talking about these issues for a decade.

In the past week, more people have asked me what the hell is going on than in all of that time combined.

It’s easy to see why.

I am deeply concerned about these recent security incidents and the existential risks of AI.

I have equally urgent concerns about non-existential harms of AI: impact on jobs and the economy , kids and mental health , disinformation , wealth and power inequality , and climate , not to mention providing the tools to power authoritarianism .

We don’t need killer robots for risks to be catastrophic.

Any one of these is too great to ignore.

Together they point to the same root problem: the true threat of AI is not a rival nation, it is the juggernaut of accelerationism.

In 2023, venture capitalist and Silicon Valley kingmaker Marc Andreessen published The Techno-Optimist Manifesto , arguing that markets and growth are unambiguously good, and that those calling for “safety,” “ethics,” or “responsibility” are “enemies” of civilization.