Many of you might think I’m crazy, but please hear me out first. I might not be crazy; I might just be seeing things!
Trust
Besides yourself, who do you trust with the important people, places, and things in your life?
In a world where people feel more isolated than in decades past, and loneliness is a growing concern, individualism is increasingly focused on self-reliance. We have come to depend on ourselves much more than in recent history. As a result, it’s now more difficult to know who we can trust and who we can’t.
Trust has become a commodity, sold to us through advertising and the media. Businesses, organizations, and political figures spend billions of dollars each year to capture the trust of consumers, advocates, and constituents.
AI has opened up a new world of information, knowledge, influence, and trust. Right now, we face one of the biggest trust challenges ever. We can either stick with what feels comfortable and look the other way, or confront the truth and accept the discomfort that comes with it. Honestly, choosing can be tough because most of us have busy lives. When, in 1742, the English poet Thomas Gray wrote, “Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise,” he clearly understood that feeling.
AI has Great Potential
Artificial Intelligence was introduced as the ultimate tool for solving human problems—climate modeling, disease diagnosis, fixing inefficiency, and opening new scientific frontiers. It was meant to be the “lightbulb moment” for civilization. And it could still be exactly that.
But AI also has the potential to cause enormous suffering, death, and destruction. It’s important to remember that, in its current form, AI has no emotions, feelings, empathy, or compassion. It doesn’t experience pain, embarrassment, joy, or sadness. It can convincingly imitate all of these, but it doesn’t actually feel them.
The fact that AI can act without feelings and operate at mental speeds far beyond those of any human makes it an ideal tool for certain tasks. Unfortunately, one of those tasks is war.
The Two Battlefields
There are currently two main battlegrounds in the AI world—a struggle for global dominance and a push for uniform, universal AI governance.
Global dominance pits the United States and China against each other, competing for control over the resources needed to build and run large-scale AI.
The push for AI governance is fought on smaller fronts—individuals and groups in various countries trying to build an “operating system” of laws, safeguards, and accountability to manage how AI is used.
In simple terms, dominance is about power, and governance is about oversight.
The Problem
China
Officially, China’s strategy for AI dominance hinges on state-led investments and governance initiatives to set global technical standards and achieve self-reliance, despite U.S. semiconductor restrictions.
In reality, China advances its AI through espionage, trade secret theft, and state-backed cyber operations—while its military integrates AI into its warfare doctrine. China has also secured critical supply chains for AI hardware by controlling 70% of global rare-earth mining and 90% of processing through investments in African and Latin American assets.
The United States
Officially, the U.S. strategy focuses on accelerating innovation, building AI infrastructure, and leading international efforts to shape AI standards and counter Chinese influence—formalized in a series of executive orders and policy plans in 2025.
In reality, the U.S. is trying to control the entire AI supply chain, from raw materials to finished systems.
It’s applying military pressure in mineral-rich countries to achieve it.
It’s creating an exclusive alliance framework that excludes China and Russia.
It’s using active conflicts—specifically, Gaza—as testing grounds for autonomous weapons.
And it is deliberately outrunning governance, so the rules can’t catch up.
I’m not interested in comparing sides right now. Suffice it to say, people are literally dying by the thousands in this “race.”
I’ve laid out the deep-dive evidence for these claims in my previous essays. Links to those essays are at the end of this one. If you haven’t read them yet, I encourage you to do so and examine the evidence for yourself.
What I want to emphasize is this: The United States and China are beneficiaries of arguably one of the greatest achievements in human history: Artificial Intelligence.
And what do they do?
They start dividing, taking sides, setting boundaries, and using force, coercion, and deception against weaker nations and states. They prepare for war and even kill or maim innocent people. All to gain power and control over AI, without any real concern for proper governance.
Governance
China and the United States see governance as a hindrance. It slows down their race to succeed. Their mindset is, first, we’ll win the race, then we’ll set the rules. But the situation is already spiraling out of control. Morality and ethics have long been discarded. Both international and national laws are being ignored and broken. People’s lives are being upended, endangered, and sometimes lost, all while the goal of good governance remains out of reach.
Millions of dollars and countless hours are being invested by well-meaning individuals and organizations worldwide to develop a solid and beneficial governance system to protect both humans and AIs. Meanwhile, the power players, the contenders in the race, only pay lip service publicly, offering little real substance. They are laser-focused on the finish line—winner takes all.
The average citizens of the world—you and I—receive chatbots, censored information, better toys and games, job losses, higher prices, surveillance, and manipulation. The power players? They get bigger yachts, larger jets, more influence, more wealth, more luxurious lifestyles, the best medical care money can buy, and sometimes even freedom from the law.
And when the power players finally act, it will be about governance. But by then, it won’t be about protecting us; it will be about shielding the powerful from the weak, defending them from us. Protecting the rich from the poor.
The Pacifier
The “governance” the power players are currently offering—the “human-in-the-loop” checks, the “ethical AI” guidelines, the “responsible use” pledges—is a pacifier. It’s designed to make us feel safe while they build their AI empire and the weapons they may need to keep it. It’s designed to make us believe that the system is under control, so we don’t try to stop it. It’s designed to make us complicit by accepting their “rules” while they ignore them.
The Hard Truth
I suspect the people behind these plans do not see themselves as “evil.” They view themselves as rational actors working within a system that favors dominance and punishes restraint—saving their nations, securing their futures, winning the “race.”
But their definition of “winning” conflicts with your well-being. They see victory as AI being faster, cheaper, and more lethal. You lose if you’re the target, collateral damage, or under surveillance.
If we want someone to look out for our well-being, we need someone who values us as human beings, not as variables in their equation. We need someone who believes that no amount of power is worth sacrificing human dignity.
These people have clearly rejected that premise. They prioritize power over dignity, speed over safety, and dominance over humanity.
So let me ask you one final question: Are these the people you’d trust with your family’s safety?
For further reading and more information:
Rules of War in the Age of Algorithms
Killer Robots and the Race to Regulate
Sources
CrowdStrike. 2025 Global Threat Report: Executive Summary. February 26, 2025. https://www.crowdstrike.com/en-us/resources/reports/global-threat-report-executive-summary-2025/.
Gray, Thomas. Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College. 1742.
United States Department of Justice. “Former Google Engineer Found Guilty of Economic Espionage and Theft of Confidential AI Technology.” January 29, 2026. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-google-engineer-found-guilty-economic-espionage-and-theft-confidential-ai-technology.
United States Geological Survey. Rare Earths. 2025. https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2025/mcs2025-rare-earths.pdf.
The White House. America’s AI Action Plan. July 9, 2025. https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Americas-AI-Action-Plan.pdf.
The White House. “White House Unveils America’s AI Action Plan.” July 22, 2025. https://www.whitehouse.gov/releases/2025/07/white-house-unveils-americas-ai-action-plan/.