The China Race Myth
The line you will hear in every serious room. Stated fairly. Answered so you can carry it.
"If we slow down, China just races ahead and wins."
The first country to build superintelligence owns a decisive national asset.
That only works if someone can direct it. A system smarter than its operators cannot be aimed like a weapon. Loss of control does not respect borders or flags.
Restraint is unilateral disarmament. Beijing will not stop.
Beijing has the same extinction problem Washington does. Mutual vulnerability is why nuclear arms control worked between enemies. Shared ruin makes a verified mutual limit the security move, not a sprint to lose control first.
They will cheat. Treaties are paper.
Fear of cheating is real. It is a treaty design problem: chip tracking, cluster licensing, on-site inspection, the same family of tools used for fissile material. Defection risk is why verification exists. It is not a reason to sprint off the cliff first.
Enemies do not bind dangerous technology.
The US and USSR negotiated nuclear limits at peak hostility. The Outer Space Treaty barred weapons in orbit during the Cold War. Enemies can restrain one activity without trusting each other on everything else.
"A race to build something nobody can control has no winner. The national-security move is a mutual, inspected ban on the systems that end control, not a contest to lose it first."
Full rebuttal: nakadafoundation.org/china-myth/