(Washington) Former US diplomat Henry Kissinger said on Friday that tensions between the United States and China threaten the entire planet and could lead to an unprecedented conflict between the military and technological giants.
For former Secretary of State Richard Nixon, the architect of the historical rapprochement between Washington and Beijing in the 1970s, the great economic, military, and technological capabilities of the two superpowers make the current tensions more dangerous than those in the Cold War with the United States. Soviet Union.
It is “the biggest problem for the United States, the biggest problem for the whole world,” Kissinger, 97, said at a forum hosted by the McCain Research Institute.
Although the risk of nuclear conflict was high during the Cold War, advances in technology with regard to nuclear weapons and especially artificial intelligence – two sectors in which the United States and China are the main leaders – have doubled the nuclear weapons threat. for him.
For the first time in history, mankind possesses the ability to self-destruct in a limited time. “We developed technologies of unimaginable strength in 70 years.”
Henry Kissinger
“Now, in addition to the nuclear question, there is the technological question that, in the field of artificial intelligence, is based on the fact that a person becomes a partner to a machine and that a machine can develop its own judgment.” , he added.
“In a military conflict between two great technological powers, the matter is of tremendous importance,” he said.
According to him, the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States after World War II was not comparable.
The Soviet Union was not an economic power. He remembers that their technological capabilities were military. The Soviet Union did not have the “technological development that China enjoys today. China has enormous economic power, in addition to its great military power.”
Kissinger said the United States should stand firm on the principles and demand that China respect them, while maintaining continuous dialogue and finding areas for cooperation with Beijing.
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