Pressure Systems edition
Global South Embraces Chinese AI as Washington Rejects Slowdowns
September 23, 2026
What this edition shows
As the White House dismisses calls for an AI development pause and floats a militarized 'AI Force,' Beijing is capturing markets across Latin America and Southeast Asia with adaptable open-weight tools. Developing economies are actively hedging between American frontier models and cheaper Chinese infrastructure, blunting Western export controls. This dynamic leaves Washington pursuing technical exclusivity while open ecosystems entrench Chinese digital influence across the global periphery.
Reporting and analysis behind this edition 33 sources
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Playing both sides of the U.S.-China AI “Cold War”
From Latin America to Southeast Asia, countries are dividing their AI investments between the two superpowers rather than choosing one over the other.
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The Real Reason Chinese AI Is Winning the Global South
Beijing is happy to let others build using its tools.
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China Isn’t Buying Silicon Valley’s Call for an AI Slowdown
The US and China agree that advanced AI poses serious risks. But Beijing is deeply skeptical of a deal that prioritizes keeping US companies ahead.
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US speaker rejects AI pause, warns of losing edge to China
Trump has dismissed AI fears as 'hoax', insisting US safeguards suffice and warning slowdown benefits China.
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Is this how the world ends? Extinction scenarios are taking over the AI debate.
Policymakers have a track record of being deferential when dealing with the tech sector, says AI Now's Aya Ibrahim. “When it comes to tech issues, there’s just this culture of learned helplessness from the same policymakers that sit on energy and commerce [committees] and oversee the FDA and prescri…
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America is in the wrong AI race with China
The U.S. is framing its rivalry with China as one of technical superiority, failing to recognize that public trust and robust consumer protections are necessary for long-term dominance.
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‘Silent Cold War’: Why calls to slow AI have sparked new US–China frontier
Calls by technology leaders to slow AI’s development raise questions about their ability and willingness to control the technology, according to Aya Ibrahim, Senior Economic and National Security Fellow at the AI Now Institute. The post ‘Silent Cold War’: Why calls to slow AI have sparked new US–Chi…
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AI Governance Reaches Crisis Point Ahead of Trump-Xi Summit
Amba Kak joins a panel at the Institute for America, China, and the Future of Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies to discuss the state and need for AI governance right now. The post AI Governance Reaches Crisis Point Ahead of Trump-Xi Summit appeared first on…
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Xi Comes to Washington Armed With a Rare-Earth Card
Trump still doesn’t have an answer to China’s leverage.
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Exclusive: Paying for frontier AI models buys 4-month head start at 5x the cost
Ars previewed Mozilla’s report on how cheap open models caught up on capability.
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Does AI need an antitrust exemption so it doesn’t kill everyone????
Today on Decoder, we’ve got the first of a two-part series on the future of business, and I’m talking with Jonathan Kanter, the former antitrust chief for the US Department of Justice in the Biden administration. These days, he’s both a professor of law at WashU and professor of technology policy at…
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UN says AI safeguards can’t wait for certainty
The United Nations logo at the UN headquarters in New York. | Getty Images Governments need to rein in increasingly capable AI agents before their risks are fully understood, a United Nations scientific panel warned in the global organization's first major assessment of OpenAI's hack of Hugging Face…
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Trump now says he wants to form an ‘AI Force’
The president posted on Truth Social that he wanted to appoint an "AI czar" to lead a new "AI force." He made the announcement amid growing calls from across the political spectrum and even within the industry to pump the brakes on AI development. He posted that his administration "will not in any w…
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Forget the AI Slowdown—the Vulnerability Explosion Is Already Happening
AI labs are toying with an industry-wide pact to slow development. Meanwhile, widely available AI chatbots are already helping uncover a tidal wave of security flaws.
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Russia-Ukraine war is accelerating the dangerous race toward fully autonomous drones
A battlefield dominated by fully autonomous drones capable of selecting and engaging targets without human intervention sounds like a dystopian sci-fi plot. And while that scenario has not yet arrived, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine has moved modern warfare a notch down that road. In recent…
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US and China Discuss Alerting Each Other to AI National Security Threats
Officials discussed setting up a mechanism for the two countries to notify each other of AI incidents which could threaten national security.
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20 countries propose global oversight body to manage AI dangers
Countries including Germany, South Africa and Canada suggest international institution to set and enforce standards.
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Can the US win the AI cold war with China?
US attempts to slow down Chinese progress on AI through economic restrictions could backfire.
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Trump says he will create ‘AI Force’ with new ‘AI czar’
The announcements come as AI faces mounting concerns from populations across the United States.
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What’s really motivating these AI apocalypse stories?
"Nobody is helped if we have an unregulated sector that's engaged in the race to the bottom. That's what we're seeing right here and now," says AI Now's Sarah Myers West on The Listening Post show. The post What’s really motivating these AI apocalypse stories? appeared first on AI Now Institute.
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What AI Anxiety Looks Like in China
Anxiety about AI in the United States appears to be getting worse. Prosaic concerns about machines disrupting industries, stealing jobs, and compromising schoolwork are giving way to more harrowing fears about the end of humanity. Even after top AI executives in the U.S. called for slowing down the…
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Destroying Humanity Is Against the Law
This weekend, the AI executives Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and Dario Amodei agreed with the need to slow the pace of AI development. In light of the potentially apocalyptic capabilities of the products they have created, the AI titans would like a little more time to figure out how to safeguard the syst…
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Trump says the US is officially renaming AI to ‘super intelligence’
In a speech Tuesday morning at the UN General Assembly, Donald Trump railed against Iran, "globalists," climate change, and transgender people while also claiming that the US is now "officially" renaming artificial intelligence to "super intelligence." Oddly, this wasn't one of the entries in the po…
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Trump rejects AI slowdown calls, launches "AI Force" instead
The president offered few details on what his proposed new AI Force would do.
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Calls for global regulation of AI are growing. What exactly could it look like?
Olga Tsyvinska/Getty Images Australian Prime minister Anthony Albanese appears to be listening to artificial intelligence (AI) firms’ warnings to the world about the dangers of the technology they are developing. Over the weekend, he said global rules were needed to regulate the development of AI “t…
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Here’s How an AI Slowdown Could Actually Be Enforced
Even if big AI companies agree to a pause, ensuring that nobody tries to sneak ahead could prove tricky.
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Here’s What the AI Apocalypse Could Look Like
This week on “Uncanny Valley,” we discuss three possible AI doomsday scenarios, AI safety, and the unexpected bipartisan alliance forming against AI.
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The AI ‘Slowdown’ Is an Antitrust Mess
By framing their efforts as a “slowdown” rather than an industry-wide push for better security standards, AI labs may have set themselves up for years of regulatory headaches.
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UN Chief Guterres calls for ban on ‘killer robots’
In this episode of On the Record, UN Secretary-General António Guterres calls for ban on autonomous ‘killer robots’.
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Can AI regulation keep America ahead of China?
As Washington debates how to regulate AI, industry experts say that governance doesn’t have to mean hitting the brakes.
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Is AI really getting dangerously out of control?
Grim warnings of the existential risk posed by AI are all over the news, but there is very little evidence to back them up
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Doomsday AI: panic, regulation and the China fear
When tech CEOs warn AI could end humanity, does the media get the story right?
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A brief history of AI executives calling for regulation
Over the past few days, a lot of people who stand to make a lot of money from AI all publicly agreed that it's time to make everyone slow down before we lose control - including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Google DeepMind cofounder Demis Hassabis, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella,…