On: The future of AI in their hands? Trump-Xi summit dismisses calls for global...

Washington, September 25, 2026.

Two emperors dined at the White House tonight, and between the fish and the toasts they agreed on the one question that matters: that no one should govern the new force but themselves. The newspapers call this a summit. I call it a division of spoons at a table where the meal has not yet been cooked.

I spent my life among statesmen who believed that power, like water, could be canalised - that treaties were the sluice-gates and congresses the reservoirs. It was a handsome theory, and it worked admirably for about forty years, which is the natural lifespan of any theory. What I observe now is a force that does not recognise the border between these two republics at all. It crosses the Pacific faster than the diplomatic pouch ever did, and the two men who claim to divide it between them are dividing something that has already left the room.

What strikes me is not the refusal to regulate - refusal was always the likeliest outcome, since no sovereign has ever volunteered a bridle for his own horse - but the unanimity of it. Rivalry, I had supposed, was the last surviving check: two powers watching each other would at least slow the pace. Instead they have discovered that the pace suits them both, and so competition, which we were taught to regard as the great disciplining force of nations, has become the great excuse. Each says the other will not slow down, therefore neither must.

I was educated to analyse such conferences as arrangements of balance. The balance is now struck between two men and a third party that sits at neither place-setting, holds no passport, and was not invited. The dinner was excellent, I have no doubt. The guests of honour numbered three, and only two were fed.