US and China Set Up a Hotline for Out-of-Control AI

The US and China have agreed to open a direct communications channel for "super intelligence" incidents, according to a White House fact sheet released after Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to Washington. Alongside that, China committed to importing at least 10 million tonnes of US coal next year — and the same amount again in 2028. That's a serious amount of fuel, roughly enough to keep several large power plants running for a year.

So what is "super intelligence"? It's the term for AI that could one day be smarter than humans at basically everything. The worry isn't that a chatbot gets rude — it's that a system this powerful could be misused to attack another country, or behave in ways nobody can predict or control. The new channel is meant to work like the old Cold War hotline between Washington and Moscow, which existed so a misunderstanding couldn't spiral into something catastrophic. If something goes badly wrong with a powerful AI system, the two countries can now pick up the phone instead of guessing.

The coal deal is the more bread-and-butter half of the announcement. It's good news for US coal mining regions, which have been losing ground for years, and it signals that the two countries are willing to do business even while they compete fiercely on technology. But it cuts against the climate promises both nations have made, and it means more planet-warming emissions at a time when scientists say those need to fall fast.

Here's the catch: the fact sheet is thin. It doesn't say what counts as a "super intelligence incident," who answers the phone on either side, or whether any of it is legally binding. Similar US-China agreements on AI safety have been announced before and quietly faded. There's also no mention of Europe, India or anyone else — so the world's most important AI conversation is, for now, a two-person chat.