China-US AI talks Tuesday have absurdly low expectations

Brian Levine, a managing partner with Ernst & Young who was one of the US Department of Justice’s representatives in the US law enforcement Joint Liaison Group (JLG) with China, was one of those who said that he didn’t expect anything to come from the talks. He served on the Intellectual Property Crime Committee.

“Although I’d like to be optimistic, when either country smiles and proclaims that ‘this’ aspect of AI is certainly an area where both countries can work together in harmony, the other country may smile, nod, and then cross it off the list of acceptable areas for collaboration.”

Another technology consultant who has strong ties to China is Michael Hasse, whose clients trade with China and who also owns a company with a branch office in Taipei. 

Implicit threat

Hasse argued that one of the reasons both countries might be able to find small slivers of potential cooperation is the implicit mutual cyberattack threat.

“All of the major nation-states — and some minor — have sleeper personnel and unleveraged cybersecurity penetrations in their rivals’ key corporations and government agencies,” Hasse said. “In a scenario where China, or a rogue element within a Chinese corporation, decides to activate one or more of their options in that realm, then affected CIOs could have data leaks and/or security breaches that are far deeper and harder to detect than they may have realized was even possible.”

This is potentially a possibility because the relationship between China’s government and Chinese companies are exponentially more susceptible to government influence than in the US.