PHOENIX (AZFamily) — Artificial intelligence is expected to be on the agenda when President Donald Trump hosts Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Washington next week. But a Phoenix foreign policy expert says Americans shouldn’t expect the two rivals to agree on a sweeping plan to keep the technology from becoming dangerous.
“I expect very limited progress in these talks,” Lily McElwee, president and CEO of the Phoenix Committee on Foreign Relations, said on the latest episode of Generation AI.
The Sept. 24 summit, which will include a state dinner, follows a week of warnings from AI industry leaders that the technology is advancing too fast. It will be Trump and Xi’s second meeting this year, after their May summit in Beijing.
Trade and other issues will also be discussed, McElwee said, but AI “will undoubtedly be part of the agenda.” She noted that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is meeting with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng ahead of the summit to discuss topics including AI.
China sees the risk, on its own terms
Beijing recognizes AI’s dangers, McElwee said, noting Xi said in July that AI must always remain under human control.
But China’s domestic rules focus mainly on political risks, she said, including requirements that training data conform to Chinese values and ideological controls tied to the Communist Party’s concerns about regime security.
“I do think that behind the scenes, Chinese leaders recognize some of these broader existential risks,” McElwee said. “But that doesn’t mean they’re willing to have those conversations with U.S. leaders.”
Chips remain the sticking point
A recent essay by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei highlighted some of the tension undergirding the talks. Amodei argued that slowing AI globally will require China’s cooperation, but he also called for the U.S. to keep restricting China’s access to advanced chips. Beijing dismissed the warnings from U.S. tech leaders as “fearmongering.”
McElwee said Beijing reads the warnings as a sign that China is keeping pace in frontier AI, and that Washington and U.S. executives worry China could pull ahead after releases like the Kimi K3 model earlier this year.
Beijing’s chief concern is chip export controls, which the U.S. has made clear are not up for negotiation, she said.
“So I see limited progress feasible here,” McElwee said.
What a deal could look like
McElwee said two near-term outcomes are “tentatively achievable.” One is a government-to-government channel or hotline to discuss AI risks and early safeguards. Trump and Xi agreed to such a channel in May, she said, but little has been done to implement it.
The other is defining AI behavior that both sides consider dangerous, such as removing human control from weapons systems or bringing AI into the nuclear command chain.
A sweeping, Cold War-style arms control agreement is out of reach, McElwee said, largely because of a trust deficit that has deepened over the past 15 years. U.S. policymakers worry any deal could hand China a win without real gains for the U.S., because enforcement is so hard to track.
The Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank, raised similar doubts in an analysis this week. It pointed to a 2015 agreement between Xi and then-President Barack Obama to curb cyber theft of intellectual property. Three years later, U.S. trade officials concluded China had not fundamentally changed its practices.
The analysis also questioned whether an AI crisis hotline would work. After the U.S. shot down a Chinese surveillance balloon in 2023, Beijing reportedly turned down a U.S. request for a call between defense chiefs.
Trump sets the tone
President Trump has pushed back hard on calls to slow AI, calling fears that it will destroy humanity a “hoax.”
McElwee said the president sets the framework, pointing to the administration’s AI strategy, which emphasizes global dominance and competition with China. Still, she said Bessent’s openness to discussing broader risks with his Chinese counterparts shows “a little bit of nuance” that could lay the groundwork for future talks.
What it means for Arizona
For Arizona’s growing semiconductor industry, including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the biggest risk would be a change to chip export controls, McElwee said. She called that unlikely.
As a result, she expects TSMC and the state’s broader chip manufacturing sector to see limited impact from the summit.
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