A ‘Red Phone’ for A.I. Crises: China and the U.S. Are Now Talking ‘Super Intelligence’

China’s Xi Jinping used his latest summit with President Trump to push a familiar message: avoid confrontation, keep the channels open, and don’t let the two powers stumble into a war they never meant to start. He warned about the old Thucydides trap, urged “candid, in-depth and continued dialogue,” and pressed for regular military contact so crisis communication doesn’t break down when things get tense. He also invited 100,000 young Americans to study in China, which is the sort of offer that sounds generous and strategic at the same time.

The oddest outcome, though, was not diplomatic. It was linguistic. The White House says both sides will now use “super intelligence,” or SI, instead of artificial intelligence. Trump had already floated the phrase at the United Nations, arguing that “artificial” sounds fake. On the substance, the two governments agreed to a U.S.-China Super Intelligence Dialogue, with its first meeting set for November.

They also agreed to something that sounds a lot like an emergency phone from the Cold War: a direct line for A.I. incidents. Nobody has said exactly what counts as an incident, which is a fairly important detail to leave hanging when the machines are getting a hotline. But the symbolism is clear enough. A.I. has moved from the lab and the chip room into the center of diplomacy, with Jensen Huang, Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, Elon Musk and Sam Altman all showing up at the White House dinner built around it.

That backdrop matters because the U.S. is still keeping strict export controls on chips and chipmaking gear to slow China’s A.I. progress. So the conversation is open, but the spigot stays tight. Trade got only a modest reset: the tariff truce now runs until February instead of expiring in November, and Beijing agreed to buy at least 10 million metric tons of American coal in 2027 and 2028. A joint Board of Investment is coming too, while rare earths stayed in the mix. The bigger picture is messier still, with China heading toward another global trade surplus of about €860 billion, or $1 trillion.

For Europe, that is the awkward part. If Washington and Beijing cool off even a little, Chinese exports will have somewhere else to go, and Europe already runs a trade deficit with China of €1.18 billion a day. Ursula von der Leyen has called that a tipping point, which is diplomatic language for “this is starting to bite.” Maroš Šefčovič is due to meet Wang Wentao in early October, because even sidelined players still have to show up for the match.