The U.S. and China Have a Common Foe. Hint: It’s Not the U.S.S.R.

The New York Times  |  Thomas L. Friedman

The article highlights an impending summit between President Trump and President Xi Jinping, drawing parallels to the historic 1972 Nixon-Mao meeting. It argues that both the U.S. and China now confront a common, non-state adversary: a "metastatic disorder" arising from two major global shifts. First, the proliferation of asymmetric artificial intelligence tools, possessing "staggeringly powerful cyberattack capabilities," enables small, malign actors—including terrorists, criminals, or minor nation-states—to severely disrupt critical infrastructure worldwide. Second, the hyper-connectedness facilitated by globalization, while fostering economic growth, has simultaneously amplified global vulnerabilities. The author emphasizes that Washington and Beijing must devise a dual strategy of competition and collaboration, particularly to establish robust "guardrails against the malign uses of A.I.," to collectively mitigate these shared, destabilizing global challenges threatening the international system and both nations' interests.