President Biden kicked off his abbreviated Asian tour on Thursday in Hiroshima. Hiroshima, a city dedicated to reminding the world of what happens when a brutal war escalates to a nuclear war, prepared to discuss two key issues with its closest allies. Arming Ukraine to enter a counteroffensive against Russian aggressors and how to slow or stop the downward spiral in relations with China.
The G7 countries have become closer and remarkably united since Russia launched an attack on Ukraine 15 months ago, and these are now familiar topics for G7 leaders. It has become. But at some point over the course of three days of discussion, G7 leaders came to a new realm: a common approach to regulating the use of generative artificial intelligence programs like GPT-4, among the world’s largest democratic economies. It is also expected to embark on its first dialogue at
Artificial intelligence was in its infancy because Prime Minister Fumio Kishida invited Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and six other leaders, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, to Japan’s prefecture by video or in person to make political statements there. was not on the agenda. start.
but as OpenAI’s New Artificial Intelligence Language Model As nations around the world turn their attention to disinformation, chaos and the potential for physical destruction of critical infrastructure for the first time, Biden’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan urges a common debate. I started calling out to other countries.
Whether this group of leaders, whose G7 members also include Germany, the UK, France, Canada and Italy, can continue to have a conversation about a technology that appears to be emerging so quickly, even if it has taken years to develop, is an open question. It’s not clear at all. . Past efforts to get the group to address simpler cybersecurity issues have often resulted in platitudes about “public-private partnerships,” with serious debate about the rules that guide the use of offensive cyberweapons. It never happened.
In the case of chatbots, U.S. officials say even a vaguely basic discussion could help establish some common principles. That is, companies providing products using large language models should be primarily responsible for their security and there should be transparency rules. This makes it clear what kind of data each system was trained on. This will allow junior aides to discuss the details of what the first regulations will look like, the officials said.
But as the G7 leaders meet from Friday, it will be a critical time for Mr Zelensky, for Ukraine and for core Western democracies with an urgent mission to implement the policies set out by Mr Biden. In addition, it will be Ukraine that will lead the conversation. It calls this “Russia’s strategic defeat in Ukraine.”
Biden often says Russia has already lost. But the fear that permeates here in the seven largest democracies is that if the counterattack does not prove to be very successful, Ukraine will settle into a bloody, frozen conflict, where the best hope is a truce. , reminiscent of the conflict that halted fighting on the Korean Peninsula. 70 years ago this summer, the peninsula.
Such a confrontation seemed almost unimaginable in 1997, when President Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair invited Russia to become a full member of the group, expanding it into the G8 for almost two decades. Russia was “suspended” after annexing Crimea in 2014 and withdrew from the group three years later.
Now Zelensky, who is already aiming to destroy Russia’s arsenal ahead of a counteroffensive, will make a series of rapid-fire visits to European capitals to strengthen his support for continued massive spending on arms and aid. I just finished As he is expected to speak virtually with Hiroshima leaders, behind-the-scenes discussions are underway about whether he should personally risk taking him halfway around the world to make his case. It’s been broken
Either way, he will have a large audience. In addition to India, the heads of state of Australia, South Korea, Brazil, Indonesia and Vietnam will also attend as guests. This draws in countries that have more or less been on the sidelines of the Ukraine war by denouncing Russia harshly, enforcing sanctions diligently, and refusing to supply Ukraine with arms, Mr Biden said. and its allies in a broader strategy. Ukraine.
Some of the core members are trying to arm Mr. Zelensky in ways that may outstrip Mr. Biden’s ambitions. During his stay in the UK, Prime Minister Rishi Snak gave Mr Zelensky a bear hug and told reporters: Reality for over a year. We must not let them down. “
Britain and the Netherlands are pressuring the United States to allow Ukraine to begin training on the use of F-16 fighter jets. But just as Mr. Biden was initially reluctant to hand over HIMARS and Patriot missile batteries and other technology, so was the F-16, an aircraft that could easily reach and strike the Kremlin. are cautious.
Thus, the United States is in Hiroshima, where fighters, although symbolically impressive, are so expensive that much more useful and cheaper systems, including air defense systems, have proven to be with astonishing success. It seems likely that they will argue that they will pay the price of sending Shoot down incoming Russian missiles. The apparent damage to at least some of the new Patriot missile batteries in Kiev this week underscores the fact that such systems are valuable.
Mr. Biden has been consistently cautious, and there is excessive caution in the minds of Mr. Zelensky and some of his NATO allies, and the rapid escalation of war and the threat of Russian leader Vladimir V. China is cautious about supplying weapons to Ukraine, which it believes could lead to serious threats. use tactical nuclear weapons.
The UK has just begun supplying Ukraine with another precision weapon, a missile system called Stormshadow, which has a longer range than the US-provided HIMARS. British Foreign Secretary James Cleverley told reporters in Washington last week that Mr Putin’s threats of escalation now sound hollow and that these are “gateways that must be passed”.
For Mr. Kishida, the moderator, navigating the nuclear issue will be unusually difficult. The summit will open with Mr. Biden’s visit to the monumental Atomic Dome, making Mr. Biden the second U.S. president to visit the site of the atomic bombing, ordered by President Harry S. Truman. (President Obama visited Japan in 2016 and Mr. Kishida was one of the guides there.)
Like many Japanese political leaders, Kishida has called for the phasing out of nuclear weapons throughout his career. But he and other Japanese politicians say Mr Putin’s threats have made America’s “extended deterrence” under the nuclear umbrella more important to Japan’s strategy now than it has been in years. Admit it.
G7 officials will also grapple with the downward spiral in relations between China and the United States. National Security Advisor Sullivan last week in Vienna with top Chinese foreign affairs official Wang Yi, widely described as an effort to resume communications following the U.S. decision to shoot down a Chinese surveillance balloon. Spent 2 days. off the coast of South Carolina.
Officials say little about the meeting, but China is ready to welcome Mr. Sullivan back to visits by Commerce Secretary Gina Raimond, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and, eventually, Secretary of State Antony J. Brinken. It seems that I told you that there is
Biden said on Tuesday, Canceled additional stops On this trip to Papua New Guinea and Australia, he said Wednesday he is trying to reunite with Chinese leader Xi Jinping so he can return to the United States on Sunday to work on debt ceiling talks. This is a sign that the freeze on relations in recent months may be beginning to loosen, even as the underlying power relationship between the United States and China deteriorates. Growing nuclear powerhas not changed yet.
