US Pitches AI Incident Alert to China at NY Talks

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the United States pitched a bilateral AI incident notification mechanism to China during roughly eight hours of talks with Vice Premier He Lifeng in New York on Sunday, with the significant caveat that chip and semiconductor export controls sit outside the proposal. Al Jazeera reported the channel is aimed at incidents that raise national security concerns.

"We think that, just like with any cross-border activity, that moving from opaque to more transparency between the number one and the number two AI powers in the world is very important," Bessent told reporters, adding that Washington wants "a shared vision of common goals and common threats." US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and China's chief trade negotiator Li Chenggang joined the session. A working group was set to continue on Monday.

The carve-out is doing a lot of work. Greer confirmed that export controls on advanced AI chips and semiconductor equipment are excluded from the mechanism, which leaves existing US chip restrictions untouched even as both sides commit to surfacing incidents. George Chen of The Asia Group consultancy called the risk notification mechanism "significant" and said it "sets a precedent that other countries may follow."

Little else moved on trade. No new progress was announced on critical minerals, and the two delegations were still working through which non-strategic consumer, agricultural, energy and medical-device goods could qualify for lower tariffs under a process agreed in May. The trade truce expires November 10. This is our second read on the New York session since Saturday's opening; the notification proposal now goes to Trump and Xi to consider at their upcoming summit.