USA and China Will Each Be BETRAYED By Their Own AIs — Adam Khoja, Center for AI Safety

Adam Khoja is a top AI forecaster who led the 2023 Center for AI Safety statement that shattered the Overton window on AI extinction risk. We cover his background, Mutual Assured AI Malfunction (MAIM), his new paper on AI betrayal, and whether Yudkowsky’s theoretical alignment research was a dead end.Then Adam makes the case that an international AI slowdown is within reach today. All it takes is US and Chinese auditors inside each other’s AI labs. It worked for nuclear weapons, so why couldn’t it work for data centers?Adam puts his P(Doom) at 40%, right next to my 50%. The real disagreement is how we get out of this: theory or empirics, MIRI or the labs. Enjoy the ride.Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqESBXuo6EITimestamps00:00:00 — Cold Open00:00:36 — Introducing Adam Khoja00:02:45 — Leading the Statement on AI Risk as a Sophomore00:10:17 — The Statement Leaked on Manifold00:15:11 — Mutual Assured AI Malfunction (MAIM)00:24:58 — Is Frontier AI Harder to Hide Than a Nuke?00:32:09 — The AI Deterrence Escalation Ladder00:36:10 — What’s Your P(Doom)?™00:38:01 — Where Adam Departs from Yudkowsky00:42:30 — Liron Explains Intellidynamics00:47:26 — Neats vs. Scruffies in Deep Learning00:55:27 — AI Deterrence by Betrayal01:01:52 — Subversion vs. Overt Co-option01:05:34 — Could the Government Seize the Labs’ AI?01:07:29 — The Offense-Defense Balance of AI Security01:12:46 — An International AI Slowdown Is Ready01:15:51 — Does Adam Support PauseAI?01:16:37 — “We’re All Already Spying on Each Other”01:19:28 — Airstrikes on Rogue Data Centers01:24:23 — Safety Research During a Slowdown01:27:54 — Governance Over Technical Research01:31:14 — Join the Center for AI SafetyLinksAdam Khoja (personal site) — https://adamkhoja.com/Adam Khoja's Substack — https://adamkhoja.substack.com/Adam's July 2023 Manifold market — "Will OpenAI's Superalignment project produce a significant breakthrough in alignment research before 2027?" — https://manifold.markets/AdamK/will-openais-superalignment-projectCenter for AI Safety — careers / job board — https://safe.ai/careersStatement on AI Risk (Center for AI Safety, May 2023) — the one-sentence statement Adam project-led, with full signatory list — https://safe.ai/work/statement-on-ai-extinction-risk"Superintelligence Strategy" — Dan Hendrycks, Eric Schmidt & Alexandr Wang (Mutual Assured AI Malfunction / MAIM) — https://www.nationalsecurity.ai/"AI Deterrence by Betrayal" — Adam Khoja, Aiden Kim et al. (CAIS, 2026) — https://www.aibetrayal.com/"An International AI Slowdown Is Ready Whenever Politicians Are" — Adam Khoja, AI Frontiers — https://newsletter.ai-frontiers.org/p/an-international-ai-slowdown-is-readyPause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter (Future of Life Institute, March 2023) — the "Pause letter" that preceded the CAIS Statement — https://futureoflife.org/open-letter/pause-giant-ai-experiments/Introducing Superalignment (OpenAI, July 2023) — Ilya Sutskever & Jan Leike's four-year goal — https://openai.com/index/introducing-superalignment/Pacing the Frontier — the 2026 letter signed by 1,100+ frontier-lab employees — https://www.pacingthefrontier.com/Why Iran targeted Amazon data centers (The Conversation) — the precedent Adam cites for strikes on compute — https://theconversation.com/why-iran-targeted-amazon-data-centers-and-what-that-does-and-doesnt-change-about-warfare-278642Anthropic says Trump admin has lifted export controls on Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 (CNBC) — https:/