Even if averting a new arms race will be extremely difficult, the next U.S. president still should try to do that by forcing the bureaucracy to consider its costs seriously.

Its ambitions shouldn’t come as a surprise, but the geopolitical implications are worrying.

Russian-Chinese “friendship without limits” rests on a solid foundation. Two factors—shared authoritarian domestic politics and adversarial relations with the United States—are most important.

Asia is filled with large, capable, self-interested powers. And increasingly, without looking to either Washington or Beijing, these players are setting diverse and sometimes competing rules on the market and regulatory matters that affect business.

Beijing’s AI safety concerns are higher on the priority list, but they remain tied up in geopolitical competition and technological advancement.