Computer Says Kill: The Blank Check to Beat China w/ Lis Siegel
Show notes
The US is in a race to ‘beat China’ at AI. Or is it? What if I told you that powerful actors in the US have built the story of an all-or-nothing race to get what they want?
More like this: Computer Says Kill: A License for Unlimited War w/ Amos Toh
In part four of Computer Says Kill we are joined by Lis Siegel who shares the history. We start with a document produced by China in 2017, and arrive at today when the Chinese bogeyman is being used to drive money, political influence and supply chain control to a few US tech giants. Listen in for some insight into how we got here.
Further reading & resources:
- Examining AI Safety as a Global Public Good: Implications, Challenges, and Research Priorities — Lis Siegel et al, March 2025
- Silicon Valley enabled brutal mass detention and surveillance in China, internal documents show — AP News, September 2025
- A Dark-Money Campaign Is Paying Influencers to Frame Chinese AI as a Threat — Taylor Lorenz, Wired, May 2026
- Slogan Politics by Jinghan Zeng
- Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future by Dan Wang
- Final Report from the National Security Commission for AI — 2021
- Yellow Techno-Peril: The ‘Clash of Civilizations’ and anti-Chinese racial rhetoric in the US–China AI arms race — Kerry McInerney 2024
- Bernie Sanders urges international cooperation to halt AI’s ‘runaway train’ — The Guardian, April 2026
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Computer Says Maybe is produced by Georgia Iacovou, Kushal Dev, Marion Wellington, Sarah Myles, Van Newman, and Zoe Trout