A US-China agreement to jointly slow down the AI frontier is no longer feasible because China's effort to break the ASML lithography bottleneck destroyed the game theory that would have made mutual slowdown a credible strategy.
Davidad argues the window for a US-China slowdown pact has closed because China's credible push to break the ASML chip bottleneck makes racing, not restraint, the dominant strategy for both sides. ✦ AI generated
Davidad (David Dalrymple) · The Cognitive Revolution · 2026-07-12 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 17:00
“When you say it's not feasible and you emphasize the game theory, do you think it's technically feasible?”
As Reuters reported at the end of 2025, China has this Manhattan project for breaking the ASML bottleneck which, whether or not that is going to work or how soon it will work, completely ruins game theory. It's a credible enough proposition and there's reason enough for the Chinese leadership to believe that it will work that it's not game theoretically viable anymore.
verbatim transcript · starts at 17:00
17:00method, you know, or an equivalent method for using AI safely. And I don't think that's feasible anymore because both because as Reuters reported at the end of 2025, China has this Manhattan project for breaking the the the ASML bottleneck which whether or not that is going to work or how soon it will work completely ruins game theory like it's a credible enough proposition and there's reason enough for the Chinese leadership
17:26to believe that it will work that it's not game theoretically viable anymore. the kind of, you know, the approach of saying, "Let's all slow down." And so my target is now more like this is going to go fast and there's going to be rogue AI and it's going to be weird and probably bad for a lot of people. How do we ride the wave in a way that produces
17:48dividends in the form of resilience to catastrophic risks? >> Let's come back to China. I'm actually going to China tomorrow. >> Oh wow. uh for the first time and I'm very excited to go and I'm going to be on an AI tour and I suspect I might be a little more optimistic about our prospects for you know with across civilizations than it sounds like you are. Uh but let's spend a little more
18:11time on kind of the technical difficulties first the philosophy and we maybe come back to that end. >> Sure. >> When you say it's not feasible and you emphasize the game theory do you think it's technically feasible? I have a similar thing when I squint. >> I do. Yeah. By feasible I mean politically and like game theoretically feasible. Yeah. >> Yeah. But in terms of do good safety
18:29cases >> well you know and I'll give extremist answer here. It's the the good safety cases just don't build it right. And if if everyone actually believed that this was a you know 50% or greater catastrophic risk then it would be very easy to coordinate. So yeah we're just none of us are going to do this. We're going to like do verification technology. It is feasible, but unless
18:50the risks are are common knowledge known to be very very high, which they're not, and it's getting lower, not higher, you know, since 2024 or so, then it it's actually kind of not in the interests or at least not in the perceived interests of the companies or the governments to kind of cooperate actually. In some cases, they would be happier racing than if everyone were magically to slow down.