Joshua Achiam argues cutting China off from AI chips could raise conflict risk

In the spirit of holding myself accountable by saying in public the things which I say in private, I want to offer a very difficult thing to say - or even think - in this climate: the extreme hawk position on chip exports might turn out to be strategically wrong, and a crackdown on chip exports may be more destabilizing than people realize. Completely cutting China out of the upside of AI development this close to RSI and ASI may be sufficiently threatening to China's interests that it increases the pressure towards a hot conflict in the near term. A hot conflict with China is worse than a world where China remains a near-peer strategic competitor with whom we have tension but still have some room for cooperation. I'd like the AI safety China hawks to think about how to model this as part of arriving at a more carefully-considered position.