Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the United States put forward the idea during Sunday talks in New York with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng: a direct mechanism for notifying each government of major AI-related national-security incidents.¹

The proposal arrives ahead of President Donald Trump’s planned Thursday summit in Washington with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, and against a backdrop of intensifying competition over frontier AI models and the chips that power them. Bessent framed the channel as part of a new US-China AI dialogue, saying Washington wanted “a shared vision of common goals and common threats.”¹

His argument was less about ending the technological contest than managing its dangers. “Moving from opaque to more transparency between the number one and the number two AI powers in the world is very important,” Bessent said.¹ The push also follows renewed warnings from AI researchers, industry executives and lawmakers that increasingly capable systems could be catastrophically misused without international safeguards.¹

China’s public response was notably narrower. State news agency Xinhua called the discussions “candid, in-depth and constructive” and confirmed that AI was on the agenda, but did not mention the proposed notification channel.¹

US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said export controls on advanced AI chips and semiconductor-making equipment were not part of the AI discussion. Instead, negotiators also worked on a separate approach for identifying “non-sensitive” goods that might receive different treatment in future trade disputes.¹

That distinction underscores the limits of the overture: Washington is seeking a safety line even as it maintains curbs on the technologies Beijing most wants. The two governments remain at odds over chips and AI development, with the US accusing Chinese firms of using leading American models to train rivals—an allegation Beijing denies.¹