I'll start by saying that offensive realism is one of the more popular ways of thinking about great power politics in China. It is actually somewhat irrelevant what we think, it matters how the Chinese think. We can have some ideas, but China has complete and equal say in this matter of stopping AI research or not.
> the US and UK won't annihilate each other because they have competitive but not hostile intentions as nations"
The difference between the relationship the USA has with China and the USA has with the UK is the whole crux of the matter.
There's a big difference between great power and everything else. Because the primary reason why the USA and the UK get along in my view is because the balance of power so widely favors the USA, that there's no reason for the relationship to be competitive in the first place. This is not the case between China/USA
In actuality the UK is just a client state of the USA. Aka, the US security services have root access to the UK state. Whereas the inverse is not true. The USA used to be a unipolar hegemon, which is why the UK has to largely follow the instructions of the USA. The USA has innovated on the concept of empire, and understands that it can't ask too much of its client states. But as US power starts to wane, the UK will start acting more in accordance with its own national interests.
We had the dutch empire, then the british empire, and then the american empire came after. Which also had explicit and implicit structures of control and domination. E.g., many a latin american president has been overthrown if they were not acting in accordance to US interests. This can be done because american security states have somewhat root access to all of latin america and really most of europe and even most of africa and the middle east.
Your own security state says that the ability to rapidly project power worldwide in order to achieve full spectrum dominance is the goal
What exactly were the americans doing in Syria? Why are they bombing Iran right now? Why did they need to invade Iraq? Why do they keep overthrowing latin american presidents? What are they doing in Ukraine? Isn't that quite far removed from your borders? Do you see how China looks at all of this? You think european nations and the USA have a relationship that's not based on the balance of power. They are friends?!
The Dutch go against their own economic national interests by export controlling ASML EUV machines to China because they hate money so much? Because they love helping americans achieve success in AI at the cost of their own economy? Or because the american state has root access to large parts of the Dutch state, and the Dutch state has little choice (it has some). Which one do you think it is?
All the AI takeover scenario's that do not involve robotics, would likely involve the AI somehow getting root access to the american security state, and then by proxy it will gain root to access most of the world, except China or Russia, other parts of Asia (e.g., indonesia), perhaps india.
I mean, I'm sure the AI will just be given root access, of course
I'm not sure if it's game theoretically possible for a nation state to give up a decisive strategic edge and hence I am not confident the development of ASI can realistically ever be stopped as I believe governments will attempt to develop aligned-ASI in secret if they commercially ban it.
I have been listening to Nate Soares interviews and he will often point to international cooperation on nuclear weapons. But to me nuclear weapons treaties look like failures of international cooperation. We still have enough nuclear weapons on earth to destroy basically all of modern civilization. We built enough to destroy all of earth, and then we said: "let's not build more than we need to destroy all of earth" and then we patted ourselves on the back "oh boy, good that we stopped building more of those nuclear bombs, imagine if we destroyed all of civilization twice over!". And by the way China is still building nuclear weapons because they rightly assess they can't destroy as much of the earth as Russia and the USA can and they want to reach parity on destroying all of modern civilization.
There have been instances of internationally cooperating to forego some strategic edge, such as chemical weapons. However, I do not think chemical weapons ever were a decisive strategic edge in the way that nuclear weapons are, or that aligned ASI would be.
The reason for states never being able to give up nukes, aligned-ASI, or any other decisive strategic edge I believe to be simple.
Per realist dictate:
1. Nation states live in an anarchic system without a central authority
2. Within this anarchic system they continuously face existential threats from other states
3. To optimally survive in such a world, you have to compete for power. Which is a function of economic wealth (w/ input technology) and population size.
The logic of realism argues the USA is existentially threatened by states such as China or Russia. In other words, the USA and China both hold a knife on each others throat. With both of them constantly armwrestling trying to get a decisive edge such that they can finally wrestle the knife off their throat and gain a decisive edge in the knife fight.
Therefore, the USA is in a bind. It has to secure a decisive strategic edge somehow to existentially secure itself in this anarchic system. Technology in history has often, if not always, offered this decisive strategic edge, And because other states are a proven existential threat, whereas the threat of ASI is unproven, the USA and China may feel compelled to seriously attempt to build aligned-ASI to gain a decisive strategic edge.