The use of AI is never a purely technical matter: when it enters processes that affect people’s lives, it touches on rights, opportunities, status and freedom"
—Pope Leo XIV
China has hit back at Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s call to slow frontier AI development, with state-backed Global Times accusing him of following a “Cold War playbook” aimed at curbing China’s AI ambitions.
US security agencies accuse China-based AI companies – DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, Alibaba, MiniMax, StepFun and Z.AI – of systematically extracting capabilities from US frontier AI models through industrial-scale distillation, with malicious activities dating back to at least late 2024.
US and China are expected to hold their first dedicated bilateral AI talks under Donald Trump, with frontier AI, cybersecurity risks and open-source models likely on the agenda.
Xi Jinping showed up at WAIC in person for the first time since the conference began in 2018 and used the stage to pitch China as the AI partner the Global South has been waiting for.
