US and China to hold AI talks in September led by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent

The United States and China will sit down for AI-focused negotiations in September, with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent leading the American delegation. The talks represent the next chapter in a bilateral dialogue that began earlier this year when Bessent traveled to Beijing to lay the groundwork for an AI safety protocol framework.

What’s actually on the table

The core of these discussions centers on restricting access to advanced AI models by non-state actors. Bessent first outlined this framework on May 14 during talks in Beijing. His framing was characteristically direct.

“The reason we are able to have wholesome discussions with the Chinese on AI is because we are in the lead.”

Bessent has also projected that AI advancements could potentially double US productivity, drawing a comparison to the internet boom of the 1990s.

China isn’t sitting still

While the US has been positioning itself as the front-runner, China has been building its own coalition. In July, Beijing launched the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organisation, or WAICO, at the World AI Conference in Shanghai.

WAICO already includes 29 nations. China also committed to providing 5,000 AI training opportunities for developing countries over five years. The strategy is clear: promote open-source AI and forge partnerships with emerging economies that might otherwise default to American-led frameworks.

Why crypto investors should care

First, consider the infrastructure overlap. AI and crypto increasingly share the same computational backbone. GPU demand for AI training has already reshaped the economics of mining and validator operations. Any bilateral framework that governs how advanced AI models are deployed, restricted, or open-sourced will eventually touch the hardware and cloud infrastructure that crypto networks depend on.

Third, there’s the regulatory signal. When the US Treasury Secretary personally leads technology negotiations with China, it tells you where Washington’s priorities are. AI governance is moving up the agenda fast. Crypto regulation, which has dominated fintech policy conversations for the past few years, may find itself competing for legislative bandwidth.

The establishment of WAICO also introduces a wildcard for international tech collaborations. If China successfully builds an alternative AI ecosystem with dozens of partner nations, it could fragment the global technology landscape in ways that affect cross-border payments, digital asset regulations, and the interoperability standards that crypto protocols rely on.

For investors, the practical takeaway is this: monitor the September outcome for any language around compute restrictions, data sovereignty, or cross-border technology sharing. These provisions might seem abstract now, but they have a way of becoming very concrete when they start affecting which chips you can buy, which cloud services you can use, and which AI tools are available in which jurisdictions.

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