Fact Sheet

• What: There is a dire need to foster a joint successful pitch to President Trump, by a critical mass of key US AI policy powerbrokers and officials, to decisively pursue a whole new AI policy. This entails an extraordinarily bold, timely, and proper US-China-led AI treaty, including mandates for citizens co-ownership of large AI firms, that will reliably:

  • Prevent AI’s immense safety and power concentration risks

  • Realize AI’s astounding potential for human flourishing and safety

  • Prevent enormous risks of an improper treaty and treaty-making.

• Why: A proper treaty would future-proof US co-leadership, contain China, safeguard peace. It would prevent immense risks ever more loudly voiced by AI labs, national security and political leaders, most citizens and President Xi — and constitute an unmatched statesman's legacy.

• Who: Relevant staff, officials and advisors of key humanist US AI policy powerbrokers and influencers — and relevant experts, within our wide network and beyond.

• Organizers: The Coalition for a Baruch Plan for AI, and a TBD DC think tank. The coalition comprises 10 NGOs and over two dozen expert advisors and contributors. The Roundtables are a key part of the Deal of the Century Initiative, to persuade Trump to co-lead with Xi an extraordinarily bold and proper global AI treaty.

• Sought Outcome: Initial high-level memos and plans to among — a critical mass of powerbrokers — to engage in intense, effective remote and in-person deliberations aimed at crafting, within 3-6 weeks, a first joint detailed successful pitch to President Trump as to the why and how of a new proper and bold US AI policy.

Our AI Predicament: a Strategic Outlook 

Since June, we have witnessed an astounding acceleration in global concern about AI safety and power concentration risks. This shift spans scientists, voters, US lab leaders, and even Presidents Xi and Trump, sparking calls for bold new international institutions to tackle these challenges head-on.

How the Trump Administration Spurred an AI Policy Snowballing

After 20 months of a "hands-off" AI policy that consolidated US dominance while avoiding major harms, the Trump Administration has pivoted radically in response to mounting evidence of risk and widespread concerns. Key actions include a June 2nd Executive Order on safety pre-testing, public acknowledgment of AI safety dialogues with China, and sudden safety suspensions of top US AI models.

Meanwhile, over a few weeks in June, a previously unimaginable, wide bipartisan consensus emerged in favor of extensive citizen co-ownership of large AI firms. Pioneered by Rosenstein, Berggruen, and others, it was proposed in terms of 50%co-ownership by Bannon on May 29th (accruing to individual citizens) and, two days later, by Sanders (accruing to a sovereign fund) — and then supported in principle by Trump, Vance, Altman, and Amodei.

Meanwhile, US citizens have long been extremely concerned. While 63% of US voters believe it's likely that humanity will lose control of AI, 53% believe it's likely that AI will destroy humanity, and 77% call for a strong global AI treaty.

Xi and AI Labs Shouting for A Treaty to Prevent Loss of Control

On July 18th, while launching a 29-nation AI alliance, President Xi called for shared benefits and issued stark warnings about the risk of (permanent) loss of human control over AI. His statement—"We must make its oversight and governance precise and effective, and constantly refine measures to forestall loss of control"—unequivocally signals the need for highly empowered global institutions with "radical optionality," a concept advocated by Caleb Watney and others.

Then, on July 29th, the two leading AI labs, Anthropic and OpenAI, and most AI lab leaders issued a stark statement: "We request that the U.S. government support an international effort to develop the technical and governance tools needed to deliberately pace the frontier of automated AI development.” — notably in terms of a request and not a mere appeal.

The Need for a Moonshot Diplomatic Effort

These breakthroughs offer a profound sense of hope for safe and fair AI governance; more progress has been made in the past three months than in the previous three years combined.

However, the US Administration is still very far from a cohesive vision of a treaty and treaty-making process capable of uniting key powerbrokers, and engaging effectively with China and other middle powers. Much work remains to be done:

• Not Just Any Treaty. Several signers of the July 29th statement have for months expressed deep concerns about an AI treaty. 

  • Some fear it will turn into a global authoritarian dystopia (e.g. Amodei, Altman, Thiel, Karnofsky). Some are skeptical that it can prevent loss of control, as we have "entered the singularity" (Altman, Musk), i.e., a point of no return towards a (permanent) loss of control and AI takeover. 

  • Many fear a bad treaty can lock away astounding future human benefits, including forestalling other human extinction risks (Bostrom, Amodei, Thiel), or inadvertently create immense digital suffering. 

  • A powerful minority appears to be outright opposed to preventing AI loss of control (e.g., Page, Brin, Thiel) or dismisses AI loss of control as "nonsense" (e.g., Zuckerberg, Huang).

• Treaty-making Process. Given the past failure of treaties and treaty-making, the extremely short timelines, the immense scope of the treaty and the right fears for global authoritarianism, it must be truly extraordinary in scale, speed and effectiveness while being rooted as much as possible in past successes and evidence:

  • As for scale and speed, we need nothing less than an American and then a global "Apollo Program for an AI treaty" — an enormously resourced, well-conceived process, at wartime pace, co-led by the US and China, aimed at inking what will be nothing less than the Deal of the Century.

  • As a treaty-making model, looking at history, it must arguably be led by a bilateral US-China deal, to be followed by a GDP-adjusted constitutional convention treaty-making model. The latter is the only model capable of preventing vetoes, catalyzing sufficient global consensus within months for a deal of such scope, and preventing excessive concentration of power by ensuring federalism and subsidiarity.

  • Enforcement and communication infrastructure: they must leverage modern state-of-the-art treaty enforcement and diplomatic communication socio-technical systems, and jointly create more suitable, trustworthy, and mutually trusted ones at wartime speed — ensuring "sufficiently" reliable verification (rather than "perfect"/"truly" ones, as some claim, impossible in complex real-world systems). 

• Citizen co-ownership models. Citizen co-ownership of AI labs could be implemented in many forms, most of which are ineffective, repealable, or worse. An informed debate about them is in its infancy, including why they can work only if integrated into a global AI treaty.

Once again, as in 1946, a dozen US officials and individuals have the unique opportunity and responsibility of persuading another pragmatic US president to pursue a bold treaty to manage a catastrophic new technology — closing what would be by far history's boldest, most impactful and positive deal: the Deal of the Century.

Organizers

The roundtables are conceived and organized by the Coalition for a Baruch Plan for AI, an international coalition comprising 10 small NGOs and two dozen advisors and contributors, and are co-hosted by a TBD local DC think tank.

The event series is a key part of the Coalition's flagship Deal of the Century initiative, aimed at fostering and enabling the convergence of a critical mass of a dozen key formal and informal US AI policy power brokers and the US administration to define a new, shared, proper US AI policy centered on a bold, proper US-China-led AI treaty.

While they vary in time, these key powerbrokers nowadays are certain US officials (including Kratsios, Rubio, Vance, Bessent, NSA director Rudd, and WH Chief of Staff Wiles); certain political, religious and media figures (including Bannon, Pope Leo XIV, Carlson, Beck, DeSantis, and Rogan); and certain humanist AI lab leaders (including Amodei/Clark, Altman, Hassabis, Musk and Sutskever). As of August 2026, their own recent public statements and initiatives suggest Kratsios, Bessent, Amodei/Clark, Altman, Rudd, Rubio, and Wiles are best placed to catalyze such convergence.

The Roundtables are the culmination of 18 months of the coalition's research and engagements. A strategic memo — with over 356 pages of in-depth feasibility analysis, scenario planning, and policy recommendations, including 150 pages profiling such powerbrokers — enabled over 90 engagements with advisors or officials of those figures, both remotely and in person during US persuasion tours. Most notably, for four of those powerbrokers, our engagement has been direct and sustained: over 30 hours with senior AI policy officials or advisors who report directly to them. 

Our director Rufo Guerreschi has rare relevant convening and moderating expertise, as shown by his roles in the foundational 2015-2021 Free and Safe in Cyberspace workshop series — to advance a radical international treaty on the most critical secure communications.

Sought Outcomes 

So far, events held in DC on AI risk and governance by think-tanks rarely even mention the word “treaty”. They prefer to speak of redlines, guardrails, standards, or to debate narrow technical or geopolitical AI safety issues, and to separate civilian and military governance. 

Over the last 3 years, many competent NGO initiatives have speculated what an AI treaty should contain, written its statute, and provided civilian-level advice on enforcement mechanisms. Meanwhile, very few focused on how those powerbrokers can stably join forces to assure that an AI treaty-making process can give reasonable guarantees of positive outcomes.

We must have a treaty-making process that is largely designed — rather than improvised through a sequence of summits every few months with minimal so-called "realistic" and so-called "first steps" — a faulty process utterly unfit for the timelines and scope of AI challenges.

The roundtables seek to produce a solid will (including via joint private MoU texts) to engage in intense remote and in-person deliberations aimed at crafting within 3-6 weeks a jointdetailed successful pitch to President Trump as to the why and how of a new proper and bold US AI policy.

A Scientific Approach to Convergence

The roundtables will utilize the most effective negotiation and co-decision mechanisms to, in part, (1) negotiate, converge and find win-win among different positions, worldviews and interests; and, in part, to (2) jointly explore and seek the best means to achieve shared broader objectives, while transparently exposing and tackling the most fundamental disagreements.

These roundtables are mostly not a negotiation between adversaries. Like the Acheson-Lilienthal process of 1946, they assume participants substantially share the same ultimate goals and diverge mainly on predictions, priorities and maximization functions. They will therefore deploy several best-of-breed, scientifically-validated convergence methods, each serving a function no single one can cover.

Before the event, anonymized expert elicitation via the Delphi method and opinion-cluster mapping via Polis will produce a shared “map of divergence.” During sessions, double crux will isolate the empirical beliefs actually driving each disagreement, while adversarial collaborations will pair skeptics and proponents to co-draft agreed facts and residual disagreements. Convergence will be measured, not asserted — via before-and-after Deliberative Polling and, potentially, AI-assisted synthesis like DeepMind’s Habermas Machine, shown in Science to measurably increase group agreement. 

Participants

Primary participants will be advisors, staff, and envoys of key formal and informal US AI policy powerbrokers, as well as those best placed to brief them.

Secondary participants will be selected among:

• Relevant DC-based or Valley-based experts, NGOs and think tanks that are fit to contribute, validate and/or introduce — especially those close, influential or respected by the IC and/or the Administration. 

• Relevant experts within our extensive CBPAI network and beyond.

Participants will be selected in collaboration with our DC co-host think tank. 

Apply to participate at cbpai@trustlesscomputing.org

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