acob Stokes, a former Obama administration national security staffer, said this week that the United States should begin preparing for scenarios in which it might need to take extreme measures, including military strikes on Chinese data centers, to prevent China from achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI) first, according to the South China Morning Post and multiple other outlets.
Stokes, now deputy director of the Indo-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), made the remarks during an online event on September 3, according to Military Watch Magazine. His comments followed a CNAS report titled "Superpowers and AGI," published the previous week, which called on the U.S. government to assess the feasibility of diplomatic, espionage, cyber and kinetic measures to keep China from reaching AGI first, according to the South China Morning Post.
AGI refers to a hypothetical AI system capable of matching or exceeding human performance across a wide range of tasks, according to the report.
Stokes said agencies including the Department of Defense and the National Security Agency should begin determining what intelligence would be needed to justify such measures, according to Military Watch Magazine and the South China Morning Post. He compared the effort to how policymakers during the nuclear age studied the technology itself to understand its strategic and policy implications, Military Watch Magazine reported.
The report states the U.S. currently holds a months-long lead over China in frontier AI models, citing an assessment from Epoch AI. However, Stokes wrote that China could make a "surprise technological breakthrough," citing Chinese advances in robotics and other forms of "embodied AI," according to the South China Morning Post.
Should China near or reach AGI first, Stokes wrote that Washington should consider options including sabotage through cyberattack or physical infiltration, and, as what he called the most dangerous and escalatory option, kinetic strikes with conventional munitions on the data centers used to train and run a Chinese AGI system — including potential preventive strikes before China develops AGI, according to Futurism and the South China Morning Post.
Stokes's proposal drew a pointed response from Hu Xijin, former editor-in-chief of China's state-backed Global Times, who threatened retaliation, according to Yahoo Finance Canada. Stokes's report also noted that such strikes would carry a risk of triggering a wider war between the two countries, according to the South China Morning Post.
