 Good morning. The US Institute for Peace is pleased to welcome you to a conversation on strengthening strategic stability between the US and China. This is a very rich and important discussion with many aspects, including the need to find ways to reduce the risks of military and especially nuclear conflict, the need to find ways to manage the tensions created by emerging technologies, and the need to find ways to prevent a destabilizing arms race. Last year, USIP convened a group of 12 leading security experts, six Americans and six Chinese, to engage in a series of dialogues and write parallel essays on the perception gaps, challenges and opportunities that impact strategic stability between our two countries. The report that we are launching today is based on these dialogues and essays. It shows striking differences, but also commonalities between US and Chinese assessments of the root causes of instability and the drivers of conflict. The report also offers concrete recommendations for consideration by Washington and Beijing. We are very pleased to have six of the report's authors with us this morning to share their findings. We invite everyone to engage with us during this conversation on Twitter with hashtag USIP China. With your permission, we are very pleased to introduce Dr. Patricia Kim, a member of our Chinese program at USIP and the director of this project. Dr. Kim will be introducing our speakers and facilitating our discussion. Patricia, over to you. Well, thank you very much, Lisa, and I want to thank our speakers and our audience for joining us today for this virtual panel and report launch event. My name is Patricia Kim, and I had the privilege of directing this project on US-China strategic stability for over the last nine months or so, and it's a real pleasure to be able to publicly share the edited volume that arose from the series of workshops that we held late last year with American and Chinese experts on how Washington and Beijing can enhance strategic stability in an era of growing strategic competition. As Lisa mentioned, our report features essays by 12 experts, six American and six Chinese, who contributed parallel essays on the drivers of US-China conflict and potential steps to shore up stability in the nuclear, missile, and missile defense, space, cyber, and emerging technologies realm. And a very interesting feature of this volume is that all of the authors were asked essentially the same set of questions on how they view each state's respective capabilities, the challenges and opportunities that they see for the United States and China to strengthen stability in their specific realms and to offer suggestions on concrete steps the two sides can take in the near term. So by reading these essays side by side, you can really see the gaps, some big and some small, as well as areas of common interests in US and Chinese perspectives, which I think many readers will find very useful. Although each of the essays in the volume stand on their own with their own distinct observations and recommendations, some common themes that repeatedly arose during our workshop discussions and across the volume include the recognition that US-China relations today are beset by a profound lack of trust and mutual skepticism of each other's strategic intentions. And the stark differences in the two states' nuclear doctrines, policies, and interests in arms control pose significant challenges to pursuing strategic risk reduction. In addition, the growing entanglement of conventional and nuclear systems and the potentially destabilizing impact of emerging cyber and AI capabilities have increased the risk of nuclear escalation. Also US-China strategic stability discussions are further complicated by the fact that they're not just bilateral in nature, but have critical implications for third parties, especially US allies, and are intertwined with regional challenges like the nuclear threat posed by North Korea. Many of the authors in our volume point out that the sharp deterioration in the broader US-China relationship and the disappointment, frankly, with past bilateral exchanges have impeded meaningful dialogue on security related issues and diminished the political appetite for cooperative measures. So recognizing these challenges, the authors broadly recommend that to strengthen strategic stability in the near term, the United States and China should recognize the growing dangers of military conflict, jointly affirm that nuclear war should never be fought, and work together to reduce the dangers posed by nuclear and increasingly sophisticated conventional weapons. All of the authors also recommend that the United States and China pursue sustained and substantive official bilateral dialogues in parallel track 1.5 and 2 efforts to increase mutual understanding and to begin exploring risk reduction, crisis management and arms control measures, and jointly work to establish norms of behavior and transparency measures, especially to govern the use of emerging technologies and to regulate developments in space, cyberspace, and the application of AI to military capabilities. And finally, the authors recommend that the US and China engage other key states in these efforts with an eye on strengthening regional and global strategic stability. So to go into greater detail on their respective chapters, five of the 12 report authors in addition to myself have joined this panel today. And we have Dr. Brad Roberts, who is the director of the Center for Global Security Research at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and former US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear and Missile Defense Policy. We also have Dr. Tong Zhao, who is a senior fellow at the Carnegie-Chinghua Center for Global Policy. Professor Bruce McDonald, who teaches at SICE and served in the Clinton National Security Council, among many other government capacities, as well as at USIP. Dr. Jinghua Liu, who is the director of the Northeast Asia program at the Center for Humanitarian Dialogue, a retired PLA colonel and an expert on cybersecurity issues. And last but not least, Professor Qihao Ten, who is assistant professor at the School of International Studies at Peking University. And I also want to recognize the six other authors who are not with us on this panel today, but contributed excellent essays to the volume. And on the US side, the authors include Frank Rose of the Brookings Institution, Dr. Laura Salmon of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Dr. Adam Siegel of the Council on Foreign Relations, and on the Chinese side, Professor Li Bin of Qinghua University, Professor Zhang Tianjiao of the Fudan Development Institute, and Dr. Guo Xiaoping of the China Institutes of Contemporary and International Relations. Now with that, I'll turn over to our panel of authors for a moderated discussion before we open up for Q&A. And I want to encourage members of the audience to begin submitting your questions through the event webpage on usip.org. All right, so the first question is for Brad Roberts, who, along with Li Bin, authored the chapter that provides a broad overview of US and Chinese conceptions of strategic stability. Brad, can you walk us through how thinkers in the United States and China conceptualize strategic stability? What would you say are the key differences or areas of convergence when it comes to US and Chinese conceptions? And what are some of the major roadblocks in your view that have prevented the two sides from advancing concrete measures to enhance stability despite years of dialogue? Brad? And you'd like me to do that in three minutes. Thank you. It is often said that the United States and China take different views of strategic stability, that the United States has a narrow view focused on its traditional concerns in the nuclear area about crisis stability and arms race stability. And in juxtaposition, China takes a broader view, goes the argument. It looks more at the structure of the international order and the nature of the nuclear problem it confronts in that order. There is some truth in this conventional wisdom. But at core, we share similar concerns about a desire to avoid instabilities that might lead to war and that might lead to nuclear conflict in war. So more similarities actually than differences, in my view. China is concerned fundamentally about the developments in the US strategic posture, its missile defenses and its conventional strike capabilities in particular. They call into question, or might call into question, China's confidence in its own nuclear deterrent. This is a very traditional or, quote, narrow understanding of the requirements of strategic stability. Where we have diverged is in our concerns about who's doing damage to stability as it currently exists. Who's making the situation more stable or less stable? And China's analysis is that US actions are the ones that make the situation less stable and more dangerous. Missile defense, conventional strike, for example. And the American view is that China's lack of transparency amidst a major buildup of its nuclear and other strategic capabilities is itself a source of instability. What are the barriers to narrowing these areas of disagreement? Well, we're not talking much. And when we're talking, we're not talking very effectively about these problems. The US contributes a barrier, which is we as a nation have been unwilling to answer China's most basic question, which is, does the United States accept mutual vulnerability as the basis of the strategic military relationship with China? We accept it with Russia. We reject it with North Korea. We've been ambiguous about China. That's a barrier to closure. And China also contributes something as a barrier. And that's this pursuit of more substantial, more diverse, more modern nuclear capabilities in a context of very limited transparency. So I hope I hit your three-minute mark. Great. Oh, that was excellent. And I realize it's a big question and possible to answer in three minutes, but you certainly got a soft choke at start. So you talked about some of the challenges in the roadblocks that have prevented advancing more concrete measures. What would you say are the opportunities for getting there in this era of growing strategic competition? What steps would you recommend that leaders in Washington and Beijing take in the near term? Well, it's a classic American answer talk. It's a part of our strategic culture that we believe we can tackle these problems, or at least understand them, but maybe mitigate them, maybe ultimately make them go away through dialogue. And the dialogue between our two governments on these topics has been very limited. Dialogue at the unofficial level, Track 1 and Track 2 and Track 1.5, has been more substantial and robust, but it hasn't translated into official dialogue. If we were to actually start talking at the official level about these matters in a sustained and substantive way, I think there are a couple of starting points. We should agree to disagree about the past and set it aside. Every discussion relives the argument about Americans' missile defense ambitions and China's no first use policies. And we should just agree to disagree and move into the present and the future. And secondly, we should stop asking each other to do things we know the other's not going to do. China has asked repeatedly that the United States abandoned its missile defense project in East Asia. It's not going to. The United States expects some changes in transparency practices by China that are just not going to happen for the time being. So, setting aside the old agenda and coming to a new agenda would serve us well. Great. Thank you, Brad. I'm going to turn now to Tong Zhao, who with Bruce McDonald contributed essays on conventional missiles and missile defense, both of which have been points of contention in the U.S.-China discussions about strategic stability. These discussions are further complicated by the fact that they're not strictly bilateral in nature, as Brad alluded to, but involve the security interests of U.S. allies in the region who face a growing missile and nuclear threat posed by North Korea and are also worried about an increasingly militarily capable and assertive China. So, Tong, can you walk us through some of the challenges that have stood in the way of risk reduction and arms control measures when it comes to conventional missiles and missile defense? Sure. And let me focus conventional missiles to start with. I think one obvious obstacle is conventional missiles are viewed as critically important for both China and United States to achieve their national security interests. In the case of China, China's conventional theater-range missiles play a very important role in China's plan to defend these territorial claims in the region and to achieve its national goal of unification with Taiwan. And also there is, unlike nuclear weapons, there is no international taboo on the development and employment of conventional missiles. It is viewed as a fair game for countries to compete in the development of conventional missiles and it's okay for countries to actually employ these capabilities. So, these are for real war fighting which makes such capabilities actually very dangerous and risky. And both US and China feel very confident in their capability to eventually out-compete the other side. China has a lot of experience in developing and employing these capabilities and the US has confidence because it has maybe better expertise and technological capability in the long run. So, that self-confidence is also driving arms competition dynamic. And internally in the United States, for example, it is widely agreed that conventional missiles will be very important for the US to check the perceived regional military threats from China. So, it's hard for people to argue against investing in such capabilities. And in the case of China, there is lack of domestic checks and balances on national investment into conventional missile capabilities. The lack of domestic check and balances is another driver in this bilateral competition. And lastly, I think if we look at theater range conventional missiles, in some cases, there is an increasing degree of entanglement between conventional missile capabilities and the nuclear missile capabilities. And that creates new risk of misunderstanding during crises and could lead to even inadvertent escalation. But currently the decision makers have not have not been fully aware of the potential risks. So, the obstacle is how do we raise awareness of the risks before we can take unilateral or cooperative measures to tackle those risks. Thanks. And in your essay, you talk about another concerning aspect of all of this. And that's an action reaction cycle between the United States and China that could lead to a costly strategic arms race. And you make the case that it's in both states' interests to prevent such a dynamic. What would you say are some of the factors that are driving this action reaction cycle? And what are some concrete steps that the two sides can take in the near term on this? Well, I think in terms of the development of advanced conventional missiles, in some cases, the programs are really driven by available technologies. Simply because, for example, the technology of hypersonic missiles are becoming available. Therefore, countries invest in them due to the perceived military potential that these technologies might offer in the future. But in fact, these investments are not sufficiently driven by specific and concrete military needs. So, it is a technology-driven program, and that makes it more likely to lead to action reaction cycles. China is watching the United States investing in such capabilities, and the Chinese investment will then cause concern in the United States. So, I think firstly, both countries need to do their own homework. They need to really study what are the real military objectives that these technologies could serve. So, that's the first step. And secondly, even though it's hard to talk about numerical limits on these capabilities in near term, the two countries can certainly work towards limiting the most dangerous methods of employing such capabilities and developing the most risky types of technologies. For example, do we want to have nuclear and conventional, dual-capable hypersonic missiles in the future? It's time to have such discussions before any country has already started acquiring these capabilities. And another, I think, important example of this action reaction cycle is about the issue of missile defense. U.S. missile defense is really driving China's investment into its strategic capabilities, and China's development of greater strategic capabilities is again causing American concern and making U.S. worry that China is moving towards a more aggressive military posture. And the impact of third-party players, in this case, North Korea, is also increasingly important. North Korea's nuclear program is driving U.S. missile defense, which is then causing China to react by putting more investment into its offensive capabilities. So somehow U.S. and China needs to discuss how they can work together to contain North Korea's nuclear program. But in addition to working on addressing the North Korean threat, U.S. and China can start some near-term joint study. For example, they can jointly examine whether it is technically feasible for the United States to develop and deploy a strategic missile defense network that can only deal with the North Korean long-range missile threats without undermining China's strategic deterrent. I think that joint study using open-source data can be very helpful in mitigating unnecessary threat perception in a bilateral relationship and can contribute to some competence. I think there are other steps, but because of time limit, I will stop here. Great. Thank you, Tom. I mean, you've put some really interesting ideas on the table, and I'm sure there might be follow-up questions on that. But I'm going to turn to Bruce now, who I mentioned contributed the parallel essays to Tom's on conventional missiles and missile defense for the volume, but he's joining today in his capacity as an expert on U.S.-China space competition. And so in our volume, we had Frank Rose and Bo Xia being talk about the heightening U.S.-China strategic competition in space. And so, Bruce, can you walk us through from the U.S. perspective some of the concerning developments in space and the challenges to reducing U.S.-China risks and pursuing arms control in this particular domain, if that makes sense at all, and if this is something we should be looking at? Sure. Thank you, Patty. This is a matter of growing concern within the United States, the competition, the potential for conflict in space. The United States has far-flung allied responsibilities to many tens of countries, and given this worldwide commitment, we are exceptionally dependent upon communications and intelligence that our satellites gather for us. And so as a result, we are sensitive to issues of their vulnerability. China has developed a series of, a robust series of ground-based anti-satellite weaponry that poses a real danger to the United States space assets on which our forward-deployed forces depend. So this is a matter of some concern. Now, notice that I say ground-based weapons, not space-based. China and Russia have been, they're inclined to talk about space-based weapons and banning space-based offensive forces in space. But the reality is that most space-based weapons are highly vulnerable to attack, whereas ground-based systems, the kind that China has really focused on, and understandably from a technical point of view, that China has systems that are ground-based and are much less vulnerable to attack. Even China's first ASAP test was not a space-based weapon, but it was a ground-based weapon, as are, as I said, most of their counter-space weapons. And Chinese military writings make clear that the PLA sees this and understands, well understands, this U.S. dependence on its space assets as a vulnerability, given that most of our allies and the threats they face are thousands of miles away from the continental United States. And so China's arsenal of these ground-based space weapons pose a direct challenge to U.S. ability to help defend our overseas allies and are a big and growing worry for the United States. In particular, these U.S. satellites that provide important intelligence information, and the Chinese ASAP capabilities are a big worry. Now, that all said, there is the potential for doing something about that. And talking, I think one thread that goes through all of the essays is the matter of dialogue and discussion. And it would be great if the United States and China could resume its space security talks, the last edition of which were held in December of 2016. And it would be a marvelous thing if we could do that in 1.5 and 2, track 2 dialogues that I participated in on this subject. I think that there's a kind of a, there's a hunger on both sides to at least get the conversation going and sustain it. So I'm, I'm, I'm hopeful there are real challenges, but I'm hopeful. Great. Thanks. In our workshops, the issue of orbital debris featured prominently and many of our experts made the case that it's a serious concern that threatens the space systems of both nations and a potential opportunity for U.S.-China cooperation. Can you explain to us briefly sort of what, what is orbital debris? Why is it a problem? And how can the United States and China begin to address this challenge? If there is one issue that makes overwhelmingly good sense for the United States and China to pursue together, where our interests are very, very similar, it's the area of orbital debris. Orbital debris is in a way almost what it sounds like. It's a, it's trashed up in space. It consists of old, non-functioning satellites, the upper stages of the launchers that boost those satellites into orbit. And then from just operations there, bits and pieces will fall off. You say, well, what, what are bits and pieces? But these things at low Earth orbit are orbiting at 17,500 miles per hour. Even in the space shuttle, they found a fleck of paint gouged a big hole into the windshield of the space shuttle. Because when you're going 17,000, a federal miles an hour, you can create a lot of the, a lot of damage. And so if there's one thing, China, the U.S., and all space-faring nations have an interest in curbing space debris. One hopeful trend is there are even some private sector companies that are looking at the problem of, is it possible to clean up orbits in space? And one more technological challenge here is that in a good trend, the United States and China and other countries are looking at deploying what are called megaconstellations of very small satellites. But each one man's satellite is another man's debris. What do you do when these things reach there at the end of their useful life? And we have thousands, tens of thousands of these small satellites before long will be orbiting up there. It's a, it is a big problem. And if you have collisions, the collisions can produce still more debris. I mean, this is a problem for every country to deal with. And, and again, for China and the United States, we have, we have a similar concern. And the one thing is that there has been internationally some attention drawn to this, but nowhere near enough and a lot more steps are needed. We keep in mind that when China did its anti-satellite test in early 2007, that increased amount of debris with that one shot, one test by 15%. If we have any more of that, it's going to be a serious problem. I mean, one norm that we can maybe agree to, I hope, would be simply to not have any more tests of anti-satellite weapons that smash into and create debris. That's just unnecessary. There's been a de facto norm on that, although India conducted the test not too long ago. Although even there, India was careful and they conducted the test so that the debris would fall out of orbit very quickly. Not always the Chinese ASAD test debris will be in orbit for the next hundred years. So, and to its credit, China has not repeated a test like that. I think that there's a real possibility for joint cooperation on the field of space debris. Great. Thank you, Bruce. My next question is for Jinghua, who along with Adam Siegel wrote essays on the cyber domain, which is also becoming an increasingly salient domain of conflict with the potential for clashes in cyberspace to escalate into kinetic conflict. So, Jinghua, in your chapter, you talk about some key challenges and risks that the United States and China face in advancing stability in cyberspace. Can you give us a brief outline of these challenges and risks that you talk about? Sure. We all know that the issues in cyberspace has been already very complicated, but when it's interweaves with nuclear, it just adds more complexities. So, let me start from the difficulties in cyberspace. The first is because of the inherent nature of cyberspace, it usually makes it extremely difficult to understand the real time attribution and the capability to differentiate between cyberspionage and cyber attack, and also very difficult to control the damage of cyber activities. And because of the tensions between the two countries, when there is some cyber activity detected, it's very easy for one side to think that this is attack rather than espionage. This is deliberate rather than just a mistake of being over several activities to think this is being done by the other country or being done by the other country rather than being done by some other actors. So, the second challenge we have to face is China and U.S. are actually assizing their capabilities in cyberspace very differently. China view itself as a relatively weak side thinking that U.S. understands that China is not that ambitious and will not benefit from being pre-emptive, but U.S. seems to feel that very differently. They think China has already been quite similar in terms of capabilities. So, they really think China is very ambitious and also U.S. feels itself especially vulnerable because it's more dependent on cyber infrastructure. And the third challenge we have to understand is the third party. Unlike some other domains, we don't know who is the real originator of cyber activities. So, third parties can take advantage of that. And also, the two countries can use that to try to vary their intentions. And when it gets to the cyber nuclear dynamics, there are two, another two challenges that's really worth attention. The first is the lack of communication between the two domains because of the modernization of nuclear capabilities. We know there are more cyber vulnerabilities there, but no one can really understand it. So, there will be more motivations and more concerns. And also, the two people in two domains are viewing the security in a very different way. Cyber space, people always think the tax is something very normal. But in nuclear area, security means the real attack. So, cyber people may not understand how much threat they have posed, but people in nuclear arena will also over-interpret the intentions of cyber tax. So, let me stop there. There are a lot of challenges, so I hope that is helpful. Great. Thank you, Junhua. So, you listed out a variety of challenges and you talked about the issues of transparency in the cyber realm. And you make the case that in your essay that even if complete transparency of capabilities isn't possible, we might work towards transparency of intentions or postures as well as crisis management mechanisms and potential self-restraints to serve as stabilizing forces. Can you walk through some of the measures that you recommend in your paper that Washington and Beijing adopt to mitigate some of the challenges that you laid out? Yes, thank you for that question. So, I think there are quite a lot of things we can do. The first is just like you said, it's very important to understand each other at least about their intentions. So, I think the first thing is about to build a trust. It's not really, it's not so realistic to think the two countries can become friends again, but at least they can convey the basic understanding that no one is interested in starting a war with the other side, especially a nuclear war. And the second is about whether we can do some steps to improve the crisis management, like whether the two sides can have some track 2 or track 1 dialogues to identify those activities that are really destabilizing or the activities that can help stabilize the situation. And also about crisis management is important to expand the current collaboration on information sharing. We have some information sharing mechanism between the two source computer emergency response teams, but the strategic level information are not included. And also, I think the two countries can think of expanding the previous ifers about CBMs. They have two MOUs, a modification of major activities and user behavior in maritime and air encounter, whether we can think of expanding that into a separate space. And also, I think it's really important to have more chances for people from cyber domain and the nuclear war to talk with each other to understand the other side's basic logic and concerns. And the third idea I think that could help is to have some restraints. It can be mutual, but it also can be unilateral. So there could be some mutual agreement not to conduct cyber intruders into each other's nuclear command and control system. And they can also agree with each other that the cyber operations will be under the authorization of the high-level leaders from both sides. And they can also think about some measures to oversight the third party activities. And last but not least, the two countries should not give up their efforts on promoting international rules and norms in cyber space. It may be not directly relevant, but it will build trust and also promote stability in cyber space. So let me stop here. Great. Thank you very much. Finally, last but not least, we will turn to Chi-ao Tian, who is our expert on AI. And as Chi and Laura both point out in their respective essays, rapid advancements in artificial intelligence and its incorporation into military capabilities by both the U.S. and China have raised concerns about the impact of AI on current and future conflict dynamics. So, Hao Tian, can you describe for us where the United States and China are in terms of military applications of AI and the risk to strategic stability posed by these advancing capabilities? Sure. Thank you, Patty. The efforts of AI-enabled military modernization in both the U.S. and China share actually many features of structural, doctrinal, and technological transformations. As my dear colleague, Dr. Laura Selman, pointed out, the integration of AI in military capabilities in some areas, for example, nuclear forces remains limited. And yet we both believe that the two militaries are receiving increasingly stronger political and financial support, although the economic conditions and budget politics in both countries have actually been creating constraints. The both militaries invest very heavily and systematically in a series of projects in different mission areas and domains, such as autonomous command and control systems, predictive operational planning, a better fusion of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance where ISR, decision support systems, indications and warning systems, amend vehicles and weapon systems with significant AI-driven components. So, all this development of AI-enabled capabilities have given rise to lots of concerns. We believe that, broadly speaking, the concerns can be categorized into several broad topics, safety and reliability, the use of AI in high-risk contexts, such as nuclear AI nexus, third transparency with respect to strategies, principles and doctrine, etc., fourth, accordance with international law, and then proliferation of AI military technologies. All these concerns include both technical risks, such as system errors or mistakes, a lack of relevant training data bias in algorithm or training models, as well as risks associated with human decision makers, such as human-machine interaction fields, and the potential for AI to compress decision cycles beyond the capability of humans to respond. In particular, we focus and pay attention to some specific issues that potentially influence or even can shape future strategic stability between and beyond the two countries, such as some inherent limitations of AI in the current state where someone would put in narrow AI, which largely relies on high-quality data for training. But when training data is limited, artificial neural networks are prone to making poor generalization, and system training with specific data sets are susceptible to adversarial attacks, biases, and data manipulation. And also a question of human-machine interaction. As many observers and practitioners point out, in various occasions, there's a lack of explorability, which creates uncertainties in human-machine interactions. Most algorithms are still in a black box stage. It's difficult for us to fully understand and assess why an AI system has made a particular choice, especially when it behaves unexpectedly. And also we focus on the new dynamics in nuclear AI nexus. Advancements in AI may give leading powers, leading nuclear powers, greater opportunities to limit the deterrence capabilities of a minor power. And that will create some cycling new dynamics, which leads to new type of instability in strategic balance. And also there is a question of borderline between conventional and nuclear forces, which is also being created problems with the rise of AI. We can discuss all these issues in more detail, but all in all, we believe that both beneath and beyond what is going on in the development of concrete projects capabilities, there's a kind of new system of language and understanding being created by state practices in AI-related capability. But neither side is effectively able to translate the signals sent by the other. And a similar dynamic could also be found in history when there was major technological and associated doctrinal strategic transitions in military and security domains. And that's why we think that it's a point of time that we really need to build some confidence-building measures and take concrete steps for better governance. Thanks, Haktian. In terms of confidence-building measures, as well as the strong interest that you talk about, that two sides have in developing common understandings of the implications of AI for the future of warfare, what would you say are some concrete steps that Washington and Beijing can take to address the concerns that you laid out in your answer to the earlier questions, and what kind of specific topics or agreements do you think should be prioritized in bilateral and or in multilateral settings? Both Laura and I believe that two countries should, broadly speaking, start establishing systematic confidence-building measures and develop a shared understanding of what a future AI-enabled military transformation might entail, as well as its strategic impacts. And in addition to that, a concrete step in the near term, we think is a direct talk. We may need more direct dialogue in the near to medium term, although there are many dialogues existing between the industry experts, academia, the same time in and between, both in and between the two countries, like what we have been doing over here. But more direct exchanges around the diplomats, military leaders, AI researchers, and multidisciplinary scholars is crucial for fostering mutual understanding and opening avenues for future cooperation. In the long run, there are some both not very feasible and feasible steps that we can envision and take. Transparency in the long run is crucial to building confidence between militaries. You can assist each other in assessing actions of coercion, concern, and avoid misperceptions which could lead to unintended escalation. There are some feasible things in the long run that we believe we can do. For example, the two sides can sit together and define and rep order some areas of concerns that each has with regard to the other. In addition, there is a shared interest in the counterproliferation of lethal autonomous weapons or laws. Given the broader political climate between the two nations at present, some things are not very easy. For example, it will be very beneficial and should be taken when circumstances allow that China and the United States increase transparency and it has mutual regarding their AI strategies, doctrines, and other related documents. But at present, it's probably very difficult to achieve that step. But just as JFK stated on the mission to moon, we do these things not because they're easy. He said that for winning a competition and we think that we need this idea now for regulating a competition. Laura, I will stop here for the Q&A session. Great. Well, thank you very much, Haotian. And I just want to thank all the authors for their initial remarks and we're getting a lot of questions in the chat function. And so if we're audience members, I encourage you to submit your questions and we'll be monitoring the box. But one of the themes that's been coming up in the chat box is the need for mill to mill dialogues, for track one dialogues between the United States and China to mitigate risks. And among many of the questions, people are asking, well, is there willingness in both countries to reinvigorate these channels? And Brad talked about this a bit earlier and how why there have been hiccups in previous dialogues and the disappointment with lack of progress. I want to turn to maybe our Chinese participants and ask, what would you say are the necessary conditions for Beijing and Washington to be able to engage in sustained and high level dialogues on strategic stability or broader conflict related issues? How ready do you think the two sides are and what could they do to lay the groundwork? So let me see if I could turn to Tong to get at this question first. And then maybe we can circle back to the American side to see if there are ideas as well that they'd like to put forth. So, Tong, over to you. Sure. Thank you. That's a great question. Given the great power competition between the two sides, it's really hard for countries to be really interested in restraining their capability to develop new military technologies. They are also unlikely to be interested in numerical limits on their strategic capabilities. But I think if you frame the framework of discussion not as arms control or numerical limits, but as strategic stability, just as this project does, or to emphasize the issue of risk reduction, I think on those topics, there are certainly very strong mutual interests and China very clearly recognizes that mutual interest. And there are a lot of things that I think can be done in order to strengthen strategic stability or to reduce risks of conflicts, including nuclear conflicts. And many of these measures involve new technologies that are covered by this project. So I will stop here without going into the specific technological areas, but I just say that it depends on how we frame the discussion and which specific issues we start with. If we are smart with it, we can do a lot of productive cooperation together. Great talk. Thank you. I'm going to actually turn it to Brad. Brad, I know you mentioned initially that one way that the two sides can maybe have a more productive conversation is to set aside demands that the other is not likely to embrace. Do you have some other suggestions for how to make a substantive and sustained Track 1.5 or one dialogue, given that you've been involved in many of these for years? Well, I think the substantive agenda is well set out in your product, Patty. It's comprehensive across these topical issue areas. It involves exploring mutual risks and mutual obligations to reduce those risks. I think there hasn't really been any great uncertainty about the content of a dialogue if we were to launch one. The reality is that the government of China has not seen it as in China's interest, and this is in part because your formulation, Patty, that we have mutual risk and it's important to reduce them, that hasn't been the traditional way of Chinese thinking about this, Chinese government way of thinking about this. China's government has been interested in creating more risk for the United States, because this is essential to deterrence, and China has feared the use of American military supremacy in ways that would touch on core interests in Chinese sovereignty. Now, we may be at a tip over point here where there's sufficient interest in risk and shared risk and reducing risk that new things are possible. Let me add one point on your question about how ready are we for this? How ready is the US? This project has brought out vividly the high quality of thinking in China on these questions. The papers are all excellent, the discussion was excellent. China has invested in the institutions and the people and the intellectual capital for this kind of dialogue. We held up our end of the bargain on the American side, but this isn't an area where the US has put much focus, investment, interest, and created much intellectual capital. We've heard from both Moscow and Beijing a general disinterest in dialogue in this area, so we put good people on to other topics. We have a little intellectual capital to create of our own in order to enable the needed dialogue, and kudos to the Peace Institute for putting some new ideas on the table in that direction. Great, thank you. I actually have a question from the chat that would be perfect for Bruce and Jinghua. So let me read it out for you. Is there a way for the United States and China to set rules to diminish the danger of a cyber war or a space war? So let's turn it to Jinghua first for her answer, and then I'll go over to Bruce. Oh wow, I think this is a good question, and I think this is why we are sitting here to try to think of, but I have to say that goal is still a bit ambitious in the current stage. Like I said before, there are still some very basic differences regarding whether there should be a militarized cyberspace, whether we should go to talk about rules regulating cyber operations or whether we should discuss more about how can we bring cyberspace back to a peaceful domain that can benefit every country. So, but the risks are already there, and so for me, I would say we should, maybe we should start from setting up some frameworks or dialogues to firstly understand each other's major intentions and explain their policies together and try to know what are the goals of the other side, and then we think about what are the shared risks and then think about how to mitigate them. So I agree that they are it's very important to talk about rules regulating operations, but I'd like to start from the more basic step. Thank you, Bruce. We are, if I were to sum it up, I would sum it up in two words. One would be for, especially for first steps in getting started would be norms and vulnerabilities. I think that there is a crying need to establish norms. Sadly, in the United States for space, sadly, in the United States, there was reluctance on the part of our defense department that seemed to me to be willing to engage on establishing norms, even though in air and maritime environments, there are rules to the road and norms of behavior, you want to reduce the possibility for inadvertent escalation. And I think there's a very productive discussion that we could have with China in that area. The other way is understanding, and Brad, I like particularly your comment about about risk and that China in some ways wants to increase United States risks, but that in the U.S. space structure, there now is a much greater appreciation than there was, say, a decade ago for the nephesis of resilience, so that the idea being to reduce the temptation for an adversary to want to initiate a hostile action. For example, to cite my colleague and for an author of the space, one of the space chapters, Frank Rose, he said the United States needs to stop building big fat juicy targets in space, and we're doing that with going through a disaggregated satellite structure so that it's much more difficult to gain a decisive advantage. So I think that the United States, for example, can do unilaterally, but the idea of norms and rules of the road is something that needs to be done cooperatively. That won't answer all our problems and not guarantee that you won't have isolation, but it sure would be a positive step in the right direction. Great. Thank you, Bruce. I have a question for Haotian. Haotian, in your essay, you talk about how AI was a very complex topic, and if you were to, you really need to bring a lot of different types of people into the room to have good conversations, whether it's industry experts or academics or military leaders and so on. Who do we need to engage? Who should be at the table? And what are some existing multilateral mechanisms that might be good venues for engagement between the US and China on the topic of AI? Thank you, Patty. I think I will start with what we are starting with with this group of excellent people and minds, because we are really still at a very early and initial stage of building a governance framework or frameworks. But more than often, we from different countries, different areas, different disciplines or different backgrounds cannot even reach agreement on even the meanings of very basic principles of AI governance. So what kind of people do we need? I think I would like to share one of my observations on one issue that AI observers in the United States care very much about the development in China, which is the military-civil fusion. The American observers tend to see this term in an active tone or as a way that China accumulates power from the market, from the civilian sectors, to increase military power, military might. It is not incorrect, but I will not say that the civil military fusion, per se, in China, also in the US in a different way, necessarily increase difficulties of security governance. There is both technological and social aspects of this fusion happening. The fusion has been helpful actually in nurturing a culture of professional and technically speaking acceptable level of transparency from the China side, for example. So if I bring a group of people here, I think that's the major goal of having the civilian, the military, the industry, and business research communities discuss together is to nurture this culture. And I think this culture and the habit of transparency of dialogue is also something that in the previous questions, very fundamental to a better interactive pattern between the two countries. Great. Well, thank you very much, Haotian. And on that note, we are at time, and so we're going to have to conclude our event today. But I want to thank all of our speakers for really thoughtfully working us through so many issues in just one hour. Again, I want to encourage folks who are tuning in who haven't seen the report yet to please go to the USIP website, take a look. There are fantastic essays by all 12 authors that really go into much greater depth on what the US and China need to do to shore up stability in across six domains. And so please go and take a look. I want to thank all of our speakers for joining today, especially our speakers who joined from China. I know it's a late hour. So appreciate you coming. And again, it's just a real pleasure to be able to launch this project after working together for nine months. And so my deepest appreciation again to all of the project participants, the authors, the USIP staff who made this possible, and Lise Grande who joined us today to open up this event. All right. So with that, I will bring the meeting to a close. Thank you again. And we look forward to keeping in touch.