China is gaining the lead now – US needs to maintain tech lead.

This month, the White House disclosed that China has rejected American proposals to limit the use of artificial intelligence for controlling the launch of nuclear weapons.

Beijing’s quick rejection, occurring in talks in Geneva in May between U.S. and Chinese officials, is a setback for Washington’s efforts to find areas of agreement with China. President Biden raised this issue with Xi Jinping in California last November and announced that AI was one of the areas where the two countries would hold further discussions.

Tarun Chhabra, director of technology at the National Security Council, revealed China’s rejection and said the White House will soon issue a memorandum on the use of AI by, among other federal agencies, the Department of Defense.

“Our position has been publicly clear for a very long time: We don’t think that autonomous systems should be getting near any decision to launch a nuclear weapon,” Chhabra declared. “That’s long-stated U.S. policy.”

“We think all countries around the world should sign up to that,” he added. “We think that makes a lot of sense to do.”

“Nobody wants to see AI-controlled nuclear weapons, right?” asked, Joe Wang, a National Security Council staffer at the Arlington-based Special Competitive Studies Project, which specializes in AI and emerging technologies. “Like, even the craziest dictator can probably agree.”

Whether Xi is the craziest dictator or not, it’s no surprise he is spurning any agreement on AI with America.

“The Chinese Communist Party has advocated nuclear arms control only for other nuclear powers,” Richard Fisher, Jr. of the International Assessment and Strategy Center told me this month. “For China, the [party] seeks nuclear arms superiority.”

“China is taking its nuclear arsenal to the next level by, among other things, marrying nuclear-tipped missiles to powerful artificial intelligence capabilities,” Brandon Weichert, author of “Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower,” wrote to me this week.

“AI-controlled nukes would be far more devastating than your ordinary ones. The Chinese are behaving foolishly, though, because the chance for unintended consequences is high. Frankly, AI could easily lead to a nightmare scenario where China loses control of its nuclear weapons arsenal to a rabid artificial intelligence system.”

Will reality mirror fiction? Everyone remembers “WarGames,” the 1983 movie in which an American military computer, on its own, simulated an all-out Soviet attack and almost launched a U.S. counterstrike. In the “Terminator” franchise, a super AI network known as Skynet detonates nuclear weapons to eliminate humankind.