To be fair, an AI system capable of independently discovering and exploiting serious software vulnerabilities would be a legitimate national-security concern. The US would have a strong interest in possessing and defending against that capability.

But a technology is not itself an arms race. An arms race is a pattern of behavior between adversaries involving that technology. That requires observable political, military and economic facts.

I would point these out as red flags:

• Developing identifiable autonomous cyberweapons.
• Each side expands its program substantially because it believes the other is expanding.
• Established military units, budgets, infrastructure and deployment plans around those systems.

I would point these out as not counting:

• AI can be weaponized.
• China is developing AI.
• AI could confer military advantages.
• American companies are spending heavily on general-purpose models.
• The United States wants to lead commercially.

In table format, the comparison between AI and those other technologies would ideally look something like this:

An AI arms race would look very different than what we see right now.

With the AI bubble, the communities being disrupted by the environmental impacts of data centers (including infranoise), the constant fear of “use AI or be replaced by AI,” the risky financials on all of this, … all the people that lost retirement value to the SpaceX IPO, … this stuff is a serious public nuisance.

We don’t need tech CEOs scaring us with talk of an “arms race.” It’s fucked up.