Governance, Legislation, and Geostrategies

Shaping the World’s AI Future: How the U.S. and China Compete to Promote Their Digital Visions

(Kayla Blomquist, Keegan McBride – Just Security – 25 April 2025) On April 8, numerous committees within the United States House of Representatives held hearings on AI, examining China’s growing capabilities, the release of DeepSeek’s R1 reasoning model, and potential implications for U.S. security and economic interests. These conversations attempted to untangle what is more important for U.S. strategic interests: building the most advanced and capable AI technology, potentially at the cost of widespread global adoption, or following China’s approach by focusing on building a new global technology ecosystem where potentially less capable models could be adopted and deployed rapidly at scale. Recent evidence suggests it may be beneficial for the United States to pursue the latter strategy. Smaller, more resource-efficient, and localizable models are gaining significant traction globally, potentially rivalling the impact of compute-intensive frontier systems in user adoption metrics. This is exemplified by the recent releases of models from Chinese firms like DeepSeek and Alibaba; smaller in size and, therefore, more efficient to run. They have quickly achieved high rates of international adoption despite, or perhaps because of, their relatively modest size. – https://www.justsecurity.org/110608/us-china-competition-ai/

DeepSeek: A Tool Tuned for Social Governance

(Alex Colville – The Jamestown Foundation – 25 April 2025) The government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) does not just envision its “AI+ initiative” as bolstering the national economy but aiding its plans for modernizing its social stability system. DeepSeek has been designed, thanks to regulations, in a way that makes it a perfect tool to support the “public opinion guidance” system that aligns the public with state policy through propaganda. Any adoption of DeepSeek’s model overseas has the potential to spread the PRC’s domestic social governance system abroad. – https://jamestown.org/program/deepseek-a-tool-tuned-for-social-governance/

Finland’s Quantum Strategy Published, Outlines Eight Measures to Strengthen Nation’s Leadership Position in Quantum

(Quantum Insider – 25 April 2025) Finland has released a national quantum technology strategy outlining eight measures to strengthen its position as a global leader in quantum computing, sensing, and secure communications. The strategy emphasizes targeted investment in education, infrastructure, and industry access to quantum systems, while acknowledging that Finland must compete through focus and agility rather than state aid. Key proposals include creating a national quantum competence center, expanding access to quantum-classical-AI hybrid platforms, and promoting EU-aligned standards and regulations. – https://thequantuminsider.com/2025/04/25/finlands-quantum-strategy-published-outlines-eight-measures-to-strengthen-nations-leadership-position-in-quantum/

Spain Launches $860 Million Quantum Strategy to Boost National Industry and Secure Digital Sovereignty

(Quantum Insider – 25 April 2025) Spain has launched its first National Quantum Technologies Strategy, committing over €800 million through 2030 to advance research, commercialization, and public engagement in quantum science. The strategy targets leadership in quantum computing, communication, and sensing, while linking national competitiveness to EU goals for digital sovereignty and secure infrastructure. A dedicated Quantum Communications Hub and early funding for major research centers reflect Spain’s effort to build a coordinated, scalable, and globally relevant quantum ecosystem. – https://thequantuminsider.com/2025/04/25/spain-launches-860-million-quantum-strategy-to-boost-national-industry-and-secure-digital-sovereignty/

Sam Altman: AI privacy safeguards can’t be established before ‘problems emerge’

(Suzanne Smalley – The Record – 25 April 2025) The CEO of OpenAI said (…) that it’s too early to implement privacy regulations for artificial intelligence because the technology — and how it impacts society — is rapidly evolving. “It’s very difficult to predict all of this in advance,” said Sam Altman, who has run OpenAI since 2019, at a major privacy conference in Washington, D.C. “Dynamic response is the only way to responsibly figure out the right guardrails for new technology.” – https://therecord.media/sam-altman-openai-privacy-safeguards

FTC publishes updates to children’s privacy rule, easing fears that Trump admin would nix it

(Suzanne Smalley – The Record – 25 April 2025) After a six-year effort to update a landmark children’s online privacy protection rule dating to 2000, the Federal Trade Commission this week made a tougher version of the regulation official and announced it will go into effect on June 23. The development is noteworthy because despite the agency having previously adopted a final rule outlining its updated Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) regulation, the new Trump-appointed FTC Chair, Andrew Ferguson, could have significantly changed or chosen not to move forward with the reforms, which beef up restrictions for how children are treated online. – https://therecord.media/ftc-publishes-updates-to-coppa-privacy-rule

Charting Multiple Courses to Artificial General Intelligence

(William Marcellino, Lav Varshney, Anton Shenk, Nicolas M. Robles, Benjamin Boudreaux – RAND Corporation – 24 April 2025) Artificial intelligence (AI) and the potential emergence of artificial general intelligence (AGI) have important national security implications for the United States, particularly with regard to its competition with China. Existing AI technology—in the form of large language models (LLMs)—has shown great promise, and many in the AI technology and policy worlds argue that LLMs may scale up to AGI in the near future. This paper is intended to complicate that position, explaining why there are barriers to LLMs hyperscaling to AGI, and why AGI may instead emerge from a suite of complementary, if not alternative, algorithmic and computing technologies. The goal of this paper is to provide U.S. policymakers a clear, nontechnical introduction to the issue of LLM hyperscaling and alternative pathways to AGI. The authors argue that there may be multiple courses to AGI and thus recommend that policy around AI avoid over-optimizing for a given possible future (e.g., hyperscaling LLMs), even while that policy addresses the possible near-term emergence of AGI in the hyperscaling paradigm. – https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PEA3691-1.html

Defense, Intelligence, and Warfare

China Tests Drone-Mounted Quantum Sensor That Could Reshape Submarine Detection

(Quantum Insider – 27 April 2025) Chinese scientists tested a drone-mounted quantum sensor system that could detect submarines with high sensitivity, overcoming blind spots found in traditional detectors. Offshore trials demonstrated high accuracy and stability, with potential applications in underwater resource mapping as well as military surveillance. Researchers noted the need for further testing in harsher conditions before the system could be considered operational. – https://thequantuminsider.com/2025/04/27/china-tests-drone-mounted-quantum-sensor-that-could-reshape-submarine-detection/

The Cyberspace Force: A Bellwether for Conflict

(John Costello – The Jamestown Foundation – 25 April 2025) Cyber operations will be involved in the opening stages of any conflict that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is involved in. This makes the Cyberspace Force an essential bellwether as to what conflicts Beijing anticipates and what conflicts it is tacitly preparing for. The Cyberspace Force demonstrates the depth of reform and centralization the People’s Liberation Army is willing to achieve to advance its operational capabilities. Beijing now possesses a truly global intelligence apparatus less stymied by parochial and bureaucratic interests. The Cyberspace Force has structured its principal operationally focused infrastructure into five regional “Technical Reconnaissance Bases,” Corps Leader-grade organizations that are generally correspond to military theaters. The Cyberspace Operations Base, which now oversees the PRC’s offensive cyber forces, is likely a critical factor in the significant increase in the technical sophistication, maturity, and operational discipline seen by PLA cyber operations over the last ten years. – https://jamestown.org/program/the-cyberspace-force-a-bellwether-for-conflict/

Back & Forth 4: Should the United States Adopt a “Hack-Back” Cyber Strategy?

(Matt Pearl, Alexander Klimburg – Center for Strategic & International Studies – 24 April 2025) Since the emergence of the commercial internet in the United States in the 1990s, we have experienced many transformations, including the explosion in e-commerce, the rise of social media, and the development of cloud computing. During that time, we have also experienced remarkably consistent trends when it comes to cybersecurity: The volume, diversity, and sophistication of attacks have increased, as have resultant costs borne by individuals, businesses, and governments. In response, for many of those years, governments largely focused on cyber defense and coordination, including strengthening defensive capabilities, cyber diplomacy and international cooperation, cybercrime laws and enforcement, public-private sector partnerships, and cybersecurity awareness and education. These efforts are necessary and laudable, but they have also proved to be insufficient. In that context, the United States announced in recent years that it would engage in offensive cyberoperations, and more recently, it is—along with several of our allies and partners—considering vastly expanding such efforts. As the U.S. government decides how to go on offense, this Back & Forth issue will address whether Congress and the administration should authorize some form of “hack back,” or, in other words, allow nongovernment entities to engage in offensive hacking in response to being hacked. – https://www.csis.org/analysis/back-forth-4-should-united-states-adopt-hack-back-cyber-strategy

Frontiers

AI tool aims to improve early lung cancer detection

(Digital Watch Observatory – 27 April 2025) A new AI tool developed by Amsterdam UMC could help GPs detect lung cancer up to four months earlier than current methods, significantly improving survival rates and reducing treatment costs. The algorithm, which uses data from over 500,000 patients, analyses both structured medical records and unstructured notes made by GPs during regular visits. – https://dig.watch/updates/ai-tool-aims-to-improve-early-lung-cancer-detection

AI tool improves accuracy in detecting heart disease

(Digital Watch Observatory – 26 April 2025) A team of researchers at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York has successfully calibrated an AI tool to more accurately assess the likelihood of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) in patients. By assigning specific probability scores, the AI model now offers clearer guidance to clinicians and patients regarding disease risk. – https://dig.watch/updates/ai-tool-improves-accuracy-in-detecting-heart-disease

MedArena: Comparing LLMs for Medicine in the Wild

(Eric Wu, Kevin Wu, James Zou – Stanford HAI – 24 April 2025) The use of large language models (LLMs) in the medical domain holds transformative potential, promising advancements in areas ranging from clinical decision support and medical education to patient communication. This increasing relevance is highlighted by recent reports indicating that up to two-thirds of American physicians now utilize AI tools in their practice. Realizing this potential safely and effectively hinges on the development of rigorous and clinically relevant evaluation methodologies. Currently, the predominant approaches for assessing the medical capabilities of LLMs, namely benchmark datasets derived from MMLU (Massive Multitask Language Understanding) and MedQA (Medical Question Answering), primarily utilize static, multiple-choice question (MCQ) formats. While valuable for gauging foundational knowledge, these existing evaluation paradigms suffer from significant challenges that limit their applicability to real-world clinical contexts. – https://hai.stanford.edu/news/medarena-comparing-llms-for-medicine-in-the-wild