US urged to prepare military strikes to stop China reaching AGI first

The United States should begin preparing for the possibility that stopping China from reaching artificial general intelligence first could require extreme measures, according to former White House official Jacob Stokes.

Those measures could include state-backed espionage and military strikes against Chinese data centers. Stokes, deputy director of the Indo-Pacific Security Program at the Centre for a New American Security, said US agencies such as the Department of Defense and the National Security Agency should start determining what intelligence would be needed to justify such actions.

“Trying to think through the particulars of that will be especially important, in part because it will help policymakers … start to work backwards based on the unique nature of the technology, in the same way that in a past era, policymakers would learn about nuclear weapons and … work backwards from the science to the policy implications,” he said at an online event on Thursday.

In a CNAS report published last week, Stokes called on Washington to consider diplomatic, espionage, cyber and kinetic measures to prevent China from achieving AGI first. The report, titled “Superpowers and AGI,” explores how the possible arrival of AGI could affect geopolitical competition between the two countries.

AGI refers to a hypothetical AI system capable of performing at human levels across a wide range of tasks. According to Epoch AI, the United States currently holds a lead of several months in frontier AI models. Stokes warned, however, that China could make a “surprise technological breakthrough” and approach or achieve AGI first, citing its progress in robotics and other forms of embodied AI.

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Trying to think through the particulars of that will be especially important, in part because it will help policymakers … start to work backwards based on the unique nature of the technology, in the same way that in a past era, policymakers would learn about nuclear weapons and … work backwards from the science to the policy implications.