US urged to consider military strikes to stop China achieving AGI first

A former White House official has urged the United States to consider extreme measures, including military strikes and espionage, to prevent China from achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI) first. Jacob Stokes, deputy director of the Indo-Pacific Security Program at the Centre for a New American Security (CNAS), made the call during an online event on Thursday.

He suggested that various US agencies, such as the Department of Defense and the National Security Agency, should begin assessing the intelligence needed to justify such actions. The report, titled "Superpowers and AGI," explores the potential US-China geopolitical competition if China achieves AGI first. Although the US currently leads China in frontier AI models, China's advancements in areas like robotics and embodied AI could lead to a surprise technological breakthrough.

If this happens, the US government should consider actions like military strikes on Chinese data centers, which have become a military target due to their importance to the AI industry. However, experts like William Hartung, an arms analyst, warn that such strikes could lead to a general war between the two nuclear-armed powers, causing tragic consequences.

Another option could be to reverse engineer or steal China's AGI technology, which the US government could justify as a response to China's alleged history of stealing US intellectual property. However, these attempts would require reorganizing the US government and intelligence apparatus for espionage, as they have not been organized for gathering technological secrets for decades.

The potential talks between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping on AI governance are set to take place in Washington later in the month. According to Stokes, the best-case scenario would be a constructive dialogue rather than any breakthroughs on key governance issues.