Summary

The Deal of the Century Initiative is the flagship initiative of the Coalition for a Baruch Plan for AI, uniting 10 small NGOs, 20 expert advisors and 24 contributors in a high-leverage, high-urgency effort to secure a safe and fair global governance of AI.

Through strategic memos, direct advocacy, and closed-door roundtables, the initiative seeks to catalyze a convergence of key U.S. AI policy powerbrokers and the White House around a new, bold, proper, timely and widely-shared U.S. AI policy. Such a new policy must be able to reliably manage the immense risks of AI safety and power concentration while realizing its extraordinary potential.

Why a Baruch Plan for AI?

Proposed in 1946 by President Harry Truman and presented by Bernard Baruch to the United Nations, the Baruch Plan formally proposed the exclusive international control over all dangerous nuclear activities, including arsenals, facilities, mines and even research. It proposed a new treaty organization with comprehensive inspection and enforcement powers, without any nation's veto — and remains by far history's boldest treaty proposal. 

Coincidentally, it was presented less about 10 minutes after Donald Trump was born on June 14, 1946, and about 10 miles from his birthplace. The proposal was approved by the UN Atomic Energy Commission 10–0, with two abstentions (the Soviet Union and Poland), but ultimately failed after Soviet opposition.

At the time, scientists and key officials explained to Truman that the US alone would not be able to reliably prevent, even for a small state to develop atomic or even hydrogen bombs, a few years down the line. Today, we face a similar tipping point with AI; public surveys mirror the extreme concern seen in 1946, with a majority now favoring international oversight of advanced AI systems. 

How Events are Imposing a Radical New US AI Policy

The hands-off AI policy maintained by the White House until June — that proved crucial to safeguarding US advantage over China, while avoiding grave harms — has ultimately been rendered obsolete by the piling up of evidence of ever more dangerous AI capabilities, and increasing safety and power concentration concerns from all sections of American society.

In a  few weeks, the Overton window has radically shifted and widened. The range and scope of possible solutions have multiplied, all over the map. Previously unimaginable proposals have gone mainstream.

• While the Administration has implemented stop-gap safety measures, bold calls for an international treaty to prevent the permanent loss of AI control have emerged from both President Xi and a coalition of U.S. AI leaders and leading labs.

• At the same time proposals by Bannon and Sanders for 50% citizen co-ownership of AI labs have been supported in principle by Amodei, Altman, Vance and Trump.

• Despite this momentum, most AI lab leaders remain highly concerned that a treaty might be net negative: fail to materialize; fail to prevent Artificial Superintelligence (ASI); inadvertently create an authoritarian dystopia; overly regulate, foreclosing exceptional benefits may might bring, including protection from other daunting existential risks.

Although President Xi advocated for a UN-led framework, Trump maintained that AI governance must primarily be established by the two leading AI powers. OSTP Director Kratsios explicitly rejected the UN as a viable platform for AI governance during his address to the UN Security Council, urging last September direct "cooperation of statesmen" instead. This echoes Secretary of War Stimson's 1945 advice to Truman — a recommendation that, had it been followed, might have saved the Baruch Plan.

Towards a Timely, Widely-Shared, and Proper US AI Policy

While these developments are overall very positive and promising, the policy landscape is dominated by fragmentation and lack of development. Key stakeholders advance a wide array of under-developed solutions, while core concerns are not even named or confronted. There is an urgent need for extremely high-bandwidth, effective, closed-door processes to enable AI policy confrontation and convergence around among the Administration and key domestic actors, then bilaterally with China, and then eventually with the global community.

Given the short timelines to ASI and the risks of global authoritarianism, the treaty-making processmust be: extraordinary in scale, scope and effectiveness; grounded in historical lessons from past international treaties; and guarantee the suitable participation of competent and accountable actors. The "how" is for key actors to determine in the process, but three principles appear inescapable for success:

1. Learning from the 1946 Baruch Plan's failures, and considering global power asymmetries, this effort must begin with a U.S.-China-led AI safety treaty, executed via an extraordinarily bold "Apollo Program of AI Diplomacy".

2. The initial bilateral phase must be followed by a GDP-adjusted global constitutional convention for AI, as history has shown that this is the only treaty-making model that is even remotely capable of achieving the necessary consensus on such a wide-scoped, within a short-enough and predictable timeframe.

3. The prevention of authoritarianism and immense concentration of power — and the full participation of top AI lab leaders and adherence of middle powers — requires that the treaty include a mandate of citizen co-ownership of large AI and robotics firms and other citizen accountability measures. 

Our Action Lines

Our independent, non-partisan coalition—supported by a comprehensive 356-page Strategic Memo of the Deal of the Century — is uniquely positioned to support the Administration and AI policy powerbrokers. We provide rigorous feasibility analysis, actionable path design, and competencies to facilitate of convergence among key US actors and the Administration, ranging from technology leaders to prominent political and media figures.

Building on our updated strategic memo and media engagement, we are finalizing partners for the Inaugural Edition of The Deal of the Century Roundtables, to be held in Washington, D.C. in Early Q4 2026.

Momentum & Traction

To date, we have engaged over 95 relevant staff and advisors of key US AI policy powerbrokers, whom we have identified though our research in high-ranking officials (e.g. Rubio, Vance, Kratsios), media figures (e.g. Bannon, Carlson, Rogan), and lab leaders (e.g. Altman, Amodei, Musk). Notably, our engagement with four of these powerbrokers has been direct and sustained, involving over 30 hours of consultation with staff or advisors directly reporting to them.

Roadmap

With U.S.-China AI safety dialogues commencing in September, we recommend the immediate and careful appointment of extremely highly-resourced feasibility working groups on a wartime timetable. These groups should aim to produce something akin to the 1946 Acheson-Lilienthal Report, a strategic memo that enables the Administration to acquire confidence on a preferred path towards an AI treaty.

Within two-three, the U.S. should be ready fully engage President Xi, launching bilateral feasibility working groups. Given the stakes an timelines, this must be an extremely intense and high-bandwidth endeavor, a sort of "global Apollo Program of AI Diplomacy". The process must include the enactment of temporary bilateral urgent risk mitigation and the creation of globally-trusted treaty enforcement and diplomatic communication infrastructure.