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The Washington dialogue marks the flip side of the happy talk on AI at BRICS. In Delhi, Xi emphasised openness, access and diffusion. He invited BRICS members to join the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organisation, launched by China in Shanghai this summer, and proposed an open-source AI community for the forum. Xi presented China as the champion of developing countries seeking affordable access to AI models and applications.

In Washington, the conversation will be about the other side of the AI revolution — the dangers generated by increasingly powerful frontier models and the need to prevent accidents, miscalculation and misuse. As the world’s leading AI powers, the US and China are beginning to shape the security and geopolitical architecture of the new technology.

For India, this mixture of competition and collaboration between Washington and Beijing might be discomfiting, but it is also familiar. During the Cold War, the US and the Soviet Union competed and cooperated in the nuclear and space domains. Even as they engaged in a fierce struggle for technological and geopolitical advantage, they negotiated rules to reduce mutual risks. Those rules inevitably affected the rest of the world.

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The emerging US-China engagement builds on a dialogue that began three years ago. The Biden administration opened a tentative channel after Joe Biden and Xi met at Woodside, California, in November 2023. The most concrete outcome came at Lima a year later, when the two leaders affirmed that humans, not artificial intelligence, must control decisions on the use of nuclear weapons. The principle was modest but important.

Under Trump, AI diplomacy has become more transactional — and more competitive. Discussions on safety are now entangled with disputes over advanced chips, export controls, rare earths, tariffs, computing power and the race to develop frontier models.

When Trump met Xi in Beijing in May, the two discussed possible AI “guardrails”, but no formal arrangement followed. After talks in New York last weekend between US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice-Premier He Lifeng, Washington said the two sides had considered a standing AI dialogue and a notification system for incidents with national-security consequences.

Such a mechanism could eventually resemble a crisis-management channel. In a crisis, the first requirement is not agreement on the entire technological order. It is the ability to establish what has happened, whether it was accidental or deliberate, and who is responsible.

Although Washington and Beijing have been discussing AI for three years, their approaches remain divergent. The US wants a framework to manage the risks posed by powerful models and their military applications. China worries that discussions on safety could become another instrument for preserving American technological advantages or legitimising restrictions on Beijing’s access to advanced computing. The two also disagree on open-source models, data governance, state regulation and the legitimacy of export controls. A grand AI bargain between Trump and Xi is not at hand. What they are seeking is a narrower understanding on strategic stability in the AI age.

Delhi should welcome any US-China agreement that reduces the dangers of AI. But it also faces three difficult questions. The first is how to navigate the technological contest between Washington and Beijing. India is part of the US-led Pax Silica initiative on technology and supply chains. This follows naturally from its deep integration with the American digital and AI ecosystem. Unsurprisingly, Delhi has stayed out of China’s WAICO amid enduring security problems and mutual distrust. Yet, as a BRICS member, India cannot avoid the rhetoric on AI shaped by China, the forum’s dominant power.

Second, India’s emphasis on making AI work for developing societies found considerable resonance at the Delhi AI summit earlier this year. But China’s deeper capabilities in computing, infrastructure, hardware and advanced models allow it to offer the so-called Global South a wider package of technological cooperation.

Third, Delhi will worry that a US-China dialogue initially focused on strategic stability could eventually become an effort to set rules for everyone else. Beyond the fear of an AI condominium is the concern that strategic stability between the two leading powers might produce discriminatory technology controls against others. The history of the nuclear order gives India ample reason for caution. Yet, US-China geopolitical rivalry and the competition for markets could not only limit such collusion but also create some leverage for emerging technological powers such as India.

India’s successful engagement with AI will ultimately depend less on sweeping declarations about technological sovereignty than on its capabilities — in computing power, semiconductors, models, research, capital and human talent. Given the current gap between India’s capabilities and those of America and China, Delhi’s immediate imperative is clear: Deepen cooperation with trusted partners while building indigenous technological strength at home.

The writer is contributing editor on international affairs for . He is a professor at the Motwani Jadeja Institute of American Studies, Jindal Global University