DC Roundtables on a Bold and

Proper US-China-led AI Treaty

Washington D.C.

Delegates of key value-aligned US AI policy powerbrokers will explore whether and how the United States should co-lead with China a multi-phased AI treaty-making process that is bold, timely and well-designed enough to prevent a permanent loss of human control over AI or immense concentration of power, while avoiding the risks of a misconceived treaty and realizing AI's astounding promise.

(Live working draft. Last updated on September 26th, 2026.
Under construction with partners)

Not a convening series — a standing working group of the delegates of key US AI policy power brokers, looking for common ground on a treaty-making process they could accept, and China plausibly could too.

The missing lane

Washington has plenty of convenings on guardrails, standards and China. Few ask the question now on the table. If Trump and Xi were to move or be moved beyond protocols, toward a bold treaty-making process, what process should America propose? And can a critical mass of US AI power brokers converge around a successful plan and guide the President to success — for America and for humanity?

Officials, lab leaders, members of Congress, national-security voices and humans-first figures hold very different predictions and red lines. They rarely compare them in private. That is the lane — Amodei's step two, "democratic coordination," widened from the labs to everyone who shapes the President's AI policy.

What happens

  • Who. 10–25 delegates: senior staff, advisors and envoys of executive-branch officials, frontier labs, Congress, and the political, media and religious leaders who shape US AI policy — plus a few experts in verification, arms control and China.

  • How. Short closed-door sessions under the Chatham House Rule. A series, not a one-off, with remote one-to-one consultations in between. Structured methods — Delphi pre-surveys, double crux, adversarial collaboration — so convergence is measured, not asserted.

  • Growth. The group compounds: members invite peers, and each session widens the circle of power brokers represented.

  • What. The ladder: first steps (incident line, misuse, pre-deployment testing), triggers to the next rung, the communication and verification infrastructure to build now, the safeguards that make scaling safe — and how safety commitments fit their economic impact and a fair share for citizens.

What it produces

No public statement, declaration or signatory list. Instead, three private outputs:

  • a map of convergence and divergence among US power brokers on treaty-making design and safeguards;

  • a written AI Diplomacy Preparedness Plan for a fast-tracked, US-China-led treaty-making process, with diplomatic, scientific-technical and economic-market chapters — the "well-vetted ideas on the shelf" Watney calls for;

  • a coalition ready to carry it. When the group judges the plan ready — and not before — one of its principals can bring it to the President.

A one-sided Track 1.5

In early 1946, the Acheson–Lilienthal consultations let Washington align internally, months before it brought a proposal to the UN for the international control of nuclear weapons. The roundtables have similar aims but are driven by NGOs, involving key national stakeholders, and the aim is a proposal the other side can accept.

Conveners

CBPAI serves as secretariat: research base, protocol and facilitation design. A steering board of US AI treaty-advocacy organizations is forming, with full decision rights. Co-hosts and partners join edition by edition under our Convening Protocol, with an unconditional right to withdraw. CBPAI's own positions are set out in the Summary; they are not the roundtables' positions.

When

TBD dates in Q4 2026. Attendance by invitation.

Take part

Where to go next