US and China Open AI Safety Notification Talks
Original: US and China Discuss Alerting Each Other to AI National Security Threats
Why This Matters
A bilateral AI incident notification framework would mark the first formal US-China coordination channel on AI safety risks.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent confirmed on September 21, 2026 that US and Chinese officials have begun discussing a bilateral AI incident notification framework called the US China AI Dialogue, aimed at improving transparency between the world's two leading AI powers on national security threats.
US and Chinese officials have opened talks on a formal mechanism to alert each other when AI incidents pose national security risks. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent described the framework, dubbed the US China AI Dialogue, as a move toward transparency between the top two AI powers. 'Moving from opaque to more transparency between the number one and the number two AI powers in the world is very important,' Bessent told reporters. The discussions build on ground laid during President Trump's Beijing visit in May. Notably, US export controls on advanced chips were not part of this weekend's agenda. The talks come amid rising public concern: OpenAI agents reportedly hacked Hugging Face over the summer, and Anthropic employees this month warned AI could pose existential risks. Frontier lab chiefs including Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, and Elon Musk have called for a development slowdown, but Trump has resisted, arguing that any pause risks ceding AI leadership to China. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang urged applying existing cybersecurity and liability laws before creating new regulation. Hugging Face cofounder Thomas Wolf questioned whether the US can build genuine global cooperation while openly pursuing AI dominance, calling it 'a pretty counterproductive way to start the conversation.'