A new "cold war" between America and China is "pushing leaders to sideline concerns about the dangers of powerful AI models," reports the Wall Street Journal, "including the spread of disinformation and other harmful content, and the development of superintelligent AI systems misaligned with human values..." "Both countries are driven as much by fear as by hope of progress. "In Washington and Silicon Valley, warnings abound that China's"authoritarian AI," left unchecked, will erode American techsupremacy. Beijing is gripped by the conviction that a failure tokeeppace in AI will make it easier for the U.S. to cut short China'sresurgence as a global power. Both countries believe market sharefor their companies across the world is up for grabs — and with it,the potential to influence large swaths of the global population. The U.S. still has a clear lead, producing the most powerful AImodels. China can't match it in advancedchips and has no answer for the financial firepower of privateAmerican investors, who funded AI startups to the tune of $104billion in the first half of 2025, and are gearingup for more. But it has a massive population of capableengineers, lower costs and a state-led development model that oftenmoves faster than the U.S., all of which Beijing is working toharness to tip the contest in its direction. A new "whole ofsociety" campaign looks to accelerate the construction of computingclusters in areas like Inner Mongolia, where vast solar and windfarms provide plentiful cheap energy, and connect hundreds of datacenters to create a shared compute pool — some describe it as a"national cloud" — by 2028. China is also funneling hundreds ofbillions of dollars into its power grid to support AI training andadoption... "Our lead is probably in the 'months but not years' realm,"said Chris McGuire, who helped design U.S. export controls on AIchips while serving on the National Security Council under the Bidenadministration. Chinese AI models currently rank at or near the topin every task from coding to video generation, with the exception ofsearch, according to Chatbot Arena, a popular crowdsourced rankingplatform. China's manufacturing sector, meanwhile, is rocketingpast the U.S. in bringingAI into the physical world through robotaxis, autonomous dronesand humanoidrobots. Given China's progress, McGuire said, the U.S. is"very lucky" to have its advantage in chips... If AI surpasses human intelligence and acquires the ability toimprove itself, it could confer unshakable scientific, economic andmilitary superiority on the country that controls it. Short of that,AI's ability to automate tedious tasks and process vast amounts ofdata quickly promises to supercharge everything from cancer diagnosesto missile defense. With so much at stake, hacking and cyberespionage are likely to get worse, as AI gives hackers more powerfultools, while increasing incentives for state-backed groups to try tosteal AI-related intellectual property. As distrust grows, Washingtonand Beijing will also find it hard, if not impossible, to cooperatein areas like preventing extremist groups from using AI indestructive ways, such as building bioweapons. "The costs of theAI Cold War are already high and will go much higher," said PaulTriolo, a former U.S. government analyst and current technologypolicy lead at business consulting firm DGA-Albright StonebridgeGroup. "A U.S.-China AI arms race becomes a self-fulfillingprophecy, with neither side able to trust that the other wouldobserve any restrictions on advanced AI capability development...." The article includes an interesting observation from Helen Toner, director of strategy for Georgetown's Center for Security and Emerging Technology and a former OpenAI board member. Toner points out "We don't actually know" if boosting computing power with better chips will continue producing more-powerful AI models. So "If performance plateaus," the Journal writes, "despite all the spending by OpenAI and others — a growing concern in Silicon Valley — China has a chance to compete."Read more of this story at Slashdot.