A consensus is forming in Silicon Valley and now in Washington that Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) – AI systems capable of performing nearly any cognitive task humans can do and more – could arrive within just 2-3 years. As former Biden AI adviser Ben Buchanan told The New York Times, “AI is going to be [THE] big thing inside Donald Trump’s second term.”
This urgency has prompted notable policy proposals. Anthropic, led by CEO Dario Amodei, submitted recommendations to the White House emphasising national security testing, stronger export controls on chips, enhanced lab security protocols, and expanded energy infrastructure to maintain US technological leadership.
Similarly, a paper by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, AI safety expert Dan Hendrycks, and Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang introduces “Mutual Assured AI Malfunction” (MAIM). This deterrence framework suggests nations will naturally avoid pursuing unilateral AI dominance because rivals can easily sabotage advanced AI projects. Since AI datacentres are difficult to defend and training runs are vulnerable to subtle interference, any country racing toward superintelligence would likely trigger preventive cyber espionage or attack from competitors. Much like nuclear deterrence, this “balance of terror” creates a standoff where no state dares seek dominance.
Both proposals highlight compute security and AI chip supply chains as central to national security, though they differ on governance approaches. Anthropic ultimately favours structured action while the Schmidt paper emphasises deterrence dynamics.
Takeaways: As we’ve highlighted many times in this newsletter, the gap between expert warnings and policy readiness is growing at the rate at which AI advances. While many now predict AGI in 2-3 years, coherent national security frameworks are non-existent. The Trump administration faces a critical choice: pursue a unilateral AI advantage through a Manhattan Project-style initiative, or adopt the multipolar approach suggested by Schmidt’s MAIM concept. Their early moves in a chaotic first few weeks suggest a preference for dominance, despite technical realities favouring the latter. China is unlikely to accept US technological supremacy given the existential stakes, making mutual deterrence almost inevitable. The greatest near-term danger might be miscalculation during this unstable transition period rather than the technology itself.