Is there any indication that it's gotten better after yesterday's dinner and today's festivities?

festivities?Well, I think it's important to remember that for President Trump, the point of this visit is the pageantry.

It is the optics.

He has not entered this time that he's spending with Xi Jinping with a big, long list of substantive deliverables that he's hoping to secure.

He is really hoping to project this image of his relationship with Xi Jinping being positive, and I think he has succeeded by that metric.

But the reality is that for the United States and China, there is a long list of substantive challenges to work through, from trade to technology to Taiwan, and that there has been very little time, even in their schedule, for them to sit down and do substantive work, uh, on those topics.

And instead, they've been showing off the helipad, touring the White House, touring the National Archives.

Given TSMC's role in the build-out of AI infrastructure, its relationship with Nvidia and many other companies, what does the President need to do? Or I, I guess the better question is what leverage does China have w- with regard to the AI ecosystem?

I mean, do we need to come to an agreement with China about AI at all?

Well, you know, I think most people would say it's common sense for the two AI superpowers to be talking to one another about this new technology that's exploding and developing so quickly and where the public in the United States is quite concerned about it.

The question is really, I think some people have said we need some sort of immediate AI truce with China.

And my own view is that's not realistic and it's not going to happen, partly because neither Beijing or Washington is actually ready to regulate this technology in a systematic way at home.

And from Beijing's perspective, I was very struck that when all the calls for an AI slowdown started cropping up here, a number of Chinese interlocutors said to me, we hear this as calling to slow China down, trying to freeze in place the American lead.

And that's just reflective of the very low degree of trust.

So while it's good to be talking and to have this issue on the agenda, I think our expectations should be very, very modest.

But what should we be trying to achieve with this issue? I actually don't even understand the goals.

Do you think that that is the right basic frame or do you think we need another frame? And do you think an administration after Trump, let's say it's a Democratic president in 2029, is likely to embrace something like that or something different?

Well, my own view is that competition is more a diagnosis of a dynamic than a strategy per se.

And it is undeniable as a dynamic underway.

And I think any coherent strategy has to proceed from reckoning with that.

And, you know, we can speak at the level of the language used to kind of characterize or shorthand a strategy or dynamics.

But like, I start from that place that The United States and China, big, powerful countries, each have significant strengths, you know, and are competing for influence, and they're competing on multiple vectors and levels at any given time.

But I do think it's also important to be kind of precise about the stakes, the limits, and as you said, the importance of making sure that competition does not turn into some sort of no-holds-barred conflict on the path to war, which I don't think any of us think is an inevitable outcome and certainly not a desirable one.

How do you read China's objectives, ambitions, and do you see anything in this recent, fairly unprecedented pace of international engagements that is indicative of a broader strategy or global ambitions?

And maybe you could talk a little bit about that concept that Bondi introduced moments ago about this constructive stability, where you think we might be going on that score at this meeting.

Sure.

So the concept of so-called constructive strategic stability, Pani addressed earlier, and I guess all that I would add is, stepping back, there is this question of, you know, who's in the driver's seat about the U.S.-China relationship right now? I think a lot of people have had an image that, you know, the United States historically is in the driver's seat on this relationship, and Beijing waits and sees what the United States does and then responds in some of the bilateral dealings.

This is a striking moment because when Trump went to China in May, he accepted, by and large, without modification, Beijing's proposed concept, constructive strategic stability, which we're discussing.

And that's quite unusual in the history of U.S.-China relations.

There have been other attempts by Beijing to define the relationship in some terms, but Washington has not traditionally accepted that.

President Trump is not the kind of person, I think, who cares deeply about these sorts of rhetorical labels.

Have we made any progress in terms of U.S.-Chinese cooperation in the field of AI? Is this something where we can see a breakthrough in the conversation between Xi and Trump?

Why don't you do your, your Dario rig?

I don't know if I'd call it my Dario riff, but basically, you know, I was really struck by the way the American conversation around that big essay by Chen Yixin, the Minister of State Security in China, played out.

Because, you know, he writes this essay, which is largely... language that Xi Jinping and other officials have used before.

And it gets huge attention as somehow, you know, this moment where China's talking about the political risks, the regime security risks of AI.

And it's sort of held up almost side by side with the kind of, you know, Dario pacing the frontier moment.

And it's saying, you know, OK, Americans are really freaking out about existential risk and China's really freaking out about regime security.

But the way that I think about it is a little different.

I mean, this is a...

Why don't you do your, your Dario rig?

I don't know if I'd call it my Dario riff, but basically, you know, I was really struck by the way the American conversation around that big essay by Chen Yixin, the Minister of State Security in China, played out.

Because, you know, he writes this essay, which is largely... language that Xi Jinping and other officials have used before.

And it gets huge attention as somehow, you know, this moment where China's talking about the political risks, the regime security risks of AI.

And it's sort of held up almost side by side with the kind of, you know, Dario pacing the frontier moment.

And it's saying, you know, OK, Americans are really freaking out about existential risk and China's really freaking out about regime security.

But the way that I think about it is a little different.

I mean, this is a...

Are these types of announcements e- exactly what the Chinese officials are speaking about?

You know, so from Beijing's perspective, they are feeling overall quite confident about their ability to manage the United States and to manage President Trump.

They have, over the past year, moved the United States from a posture of imposing very high tariffs, pushing back on China in some ways, to an approach where President Trump has made clear that his top priority is his personal so-called friendship with Xi Jinping.

But on the other hand, as you alluded to, the Chinese leadership is always anxious about sending their top official to Washington.

Xi Jinping hasn't visited Chi- hasn't visited Washington since 2015.

In the past decade, US-China relations have transformed.

And so in that sense, they are quite worried because they're sending their leader into the lion's den, where there are many people who are quite critical, and past state visits have not always gone so smoothly, so they have some evidence to point to.

How does President Xi see this evolution?

Tell us in your view what a- how would y- how would you- how should we think about the race toward AI, the development of AI, and where China and the US are right now?

So there are three ways that I think we can sort of slice and dice this problem set.

First, this is the future of national power, and Xi Jinping believes that and has been arguing that for a long time.

And candidly, the United States has been slower to realize that.

You know, it was not that long ago that AI labs were seen as sort of odd, esoteric tinkerers in Silicon Valley, and the real energy was, you know, in people who were making s- apps that- for your phone.

So that is relatively fresh here.

Second, there are three ways that, you know, you can kind of think about what builds AI power.

In a week, I will be heading to Phoenix to take a look at the TSMC facility, and I think there is a really vibrant question whether these 4,000, uh, Taiwanese engineers living in Phoenix are going to be able to produce a lot of the chips that the US needs.

How did that prediction hold up?

Thanks so much.

And for me, as a historian and a policymaker, we sometimes think about the Chinese leadership, you know, you hear phrases like a black box or it's, you know, impossible, inscrutable.

But candidly, I think they are far more open about their framing and their ambitions than that gives them credit for.

And the challenge for analysts around the world, including in the United States, is to figure out how to interpret and parse the signals that they're sending.

And so that was really my effort with this essay and the use of Mao's on protracted war, which of course he wrote in the context of the war against Japan.

That's the front in the global war we call World War II, which China calls the War of Resistance.

What does that tell you?

What does Xi Jinping want? What's his best outcome?

Look, Xi Jinping's best outcome is that he gets everything he wants vis-a-vis Taiwan, that he pushes the United States out of Asia, and that he has the capability for China's economy to continue booming and rising, as he sees it, without the United States being able to sanction banks or choke off semiconductors going to China.

So he wants that kind of autonomy and centrality for China, and I do believe that he sees a path to getting it, in part because he believes, I think against, uh, a lot of evidence, that the United States is in some kind of terminal decline, and he is telling himself that.

Other officials in the Chinese system are telling him that.

Uh, and I think they increasingly think that the, that time is on their side.

You said they think we're in the second phase, the stalemate now, and that the stalemate, I guess in their minds, will ultimately move to a counteroffensive, and I'd like to hear more about that.

Yeah, so I, I wanna be clear here that what we're talking about is how Xi Jinping thinks about the world.

And when we talk about a stalemate or a counteroffensive, this is not necessarily a military counteroffensive.

It's titled Xi Is Planning for China's Final Victory Over the US, writing, quote, "For the first time, Xi may now see a path toward achieving key goals, such as disrupting US alliances in Asia and weakening American support for Taiwan, as well as Washington's ability to impede China's rise through technology export restrictions and economic sanctions." So why do you think these paths for China are now open?

It's great to be with you, Jake, and I, I'd start by saying one very simple thing, which is that when President Trump heads into that room with President Xi in just a few hours, he's going to be confronting a determined, focused opponent who has been working for years to be ready for this moment, to be ready to bring an American president to Beijing as a peer, and to do so in an environment where China has stalemated the United States.

President Trump imposed very high tariffs last year.

China punched back, and President Trump stepped down.

So that's the context for this meeting.

And, you know, as, as you and your colleague were just discussing, the decision by President Trump to bring all of these CEOs with him to China is really striking.

It flies directly in the face of years of US policy under both Trump's first administration and the prior Biden administration, where the goal was to de-risk the US economy from China, to protect ourselves from challenges emanating from China.

What, what's your biggest fear about this summit in terms of how things could go wrong for the US?

Can we do this in the first person?

So I think the way it would go is something like this.

President Xi, uh, China is better prepared than almost any country in the world to endure this conflict.

We, of course, would like it to end.

The disruption is, is negative, brought on, uh, by these, you know, reckless other, other actions.

But, uh, you, President Xi, hypothetical Chinese official, uh, have prepared China to endure what you have called extreme circumstances and bottom line scenarios.

So we are better prepared than any other country to endure this.

So I guess we're gonna talk about AI now?

Is it f- simply from the fact that we are still the world's largest market? I- is that it, or is there something more to it, Julian?

Well, I, I th- I do think that's, that's really what it boils down to.

Um, you know, from Beijing's perspective, uh, while it has been pursuing a really state-led path, uh, in recent years for economic growth with a complex position for the Chinese private sector, critically important for innovation, but, uh, also under tremendous political pressure at home, their view, really, of, of trade with the United States is that they wanna reap as much benefit as they can from it, uh, while also favoring, uh, Chinese businesses and Chinese industries to the maximum extent possible.

And so there is still a tremendous degree of interdependence between the Chinese and American economies, and so a slowdown in, uh, the US economy or, or even a recession, uh, would have negative effects on the Chinese economy as well.

Of course, the reverse is also true, meaning that the slowdown in the Chinese economy, uh, has, has created challenges for certain segments of the United States that sell and do business, uh, with China.

You take those dynamics, you take the tariffs, uh, and a range of other economic policies, and it's a very challenging picture.

(laughs)

... uh, in the face of a stonewalling interlocutor.