Trump, Xi Race to Build AI Incident Hotline Before Shenzhen
By Daniel Rao | October 16, 2026 Donald Trump does not want to "work with" Xi Jinping on governing AI. He said so on the record this month: America is "leading by at least a year, maybe a year and a half," and when you're leading, "you don't open it up to each other." Which is what makes this morning's development so deliciously contradictory: his technical teams are in regular, working-level talks with Beijing to build an AI incident hotline — and both sides want to unveil it as a deliverable when the two presidents meet on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Shenzhen on November 18–19. The exclusive, published today by the South China Morning Post and attributed to three anonymous sources, says AI has "taken on a more prominent role" in the bilateral agenda. A framework for handling AI-related incidents — the backchannel that would activate when an AI system does something alarming across borders — plus a standing bilateral di...