How A.I. Was the Elephant in the Room at the Trump-Xi Summit

President Donald Trump’s entourage of tech and business leaders should have placed artificial intelligence at the center of his highly-anticipated summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing this week. But the leaders appeared to focus more on limited questions of trade, without reaching any agreement on the future of A.I.

A lot seemed to be on the table for A.I. The talks, which concluded on Friday, took place against the backdrop of a global A.I. race that has been dominated by the two superpowers. Democratic lawmakers have raised the alarm on allowing Chinese firms to buy A.I. chips from the U.S., and the White House has in recent days accused China of mass A.I. theft. At the same time, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who joined Trump on the trip at the last minute, was hoping to secure a deal to sell China Nvidia’s H200 chip, which has not been delivered to China despite U.S. approval for its sale. Chinese firms have dragged their feet in purchasing the chips after the Chinese government encouraged them to turn to domestic chipmakers like Huawei.

Several observers had also hoped that the talks would produce a broader framework on A.I. governance or U.S.-China technological cooperation.

But the talks looked more “like a trade show” especially from the U.S. side, says Chong Ja Ian, a professor of international relations at the National University of Singapore. Any deals to come out of it are expected to focus on the "three Bs"—Boeing, beef, and beans—which the U.S. wants China to purchase more of. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told Bloomberg on Friday that U.S. export controls on semiconductor chips were not a major part of the talks.

Still, A.I. likely remained on the leaders’ minds, including as an undercurrent in broader geopolitical talks, which centered on Taiwan and Iran.

Hormuz closure accentuates need for chips

The U.S. and Israel’s war against Iran came up in discussions, according to a U.S. State Department readout of the talks. Trump said Xi had pledged not to provide weapons to Iran, as Chinese arms manufacturers had reportedly considered selling weapons to the Middle Eastern country.

“He said he’s not going to give military equipment, that’s a big statement,” Trump said “But at the same time, he said you know they buy a lot of their oil there and they’d like to keep doing that.”

Trump also reportedly pressed Xi to place more pressure on Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a global shipping corridor that Iran effectively closed after the U.S.-Israel attacks on Feb. 28. The U.S. President told reporters that Xi would “like to see Hormuz Strait opened. I said, ‘Well, we didn’t stop it, they did, and then we stopped them.’”

Many of the materials needed for producing chips are byproducts of crude oil and natural gas processing, such as helium, bromine, and sulfur. After Iran retaliated against the U.S. and Israel by attacking Gulf states, several energy facilities were forced to halt production. The pause in operations at Qatar’s Raas Laffan and Mesaieed LNG facilities in early March affected nearly a third of global helium supply.

Thinners, also byproducts of oil and natural gas processing, are also needed to print circuits onto silicon wafers that are the foundational substrate for chips.

Chipmaking is also an energy-intensive process, and the sudden disruption to global energy supplies meant rising costs for the industry. That’s especially true for Taiwan’s TSMC, the world’s biggest producer of chips and the supplier to Nvidia, AMD, and Apple. Taiwan imports more than 90% of its energy needs, with 40% of its liquefied natural gas supplies coming from the Middle East last year, according to Bloomberg.

TSMC doesn’t just supply chips to U.S. companies, it also supplies chips to China and operates facilities in Shanghai and Nanjing, albeit in line with U.S.-imposed restrictions. Taiwan has historically been China’s largest source of semiconductor imports, although China has pushed to increase its domestic production.

“The Strait of Hormuz matters to the entire world, and China has also stated that it hopes the strait will reopen soon,” says Liu Jia, a research fellow at the Middle East Institute at the National University of Singapore.

“However,” she adds, “the closure of the strait is a far more pressing issue for the United States than for China.” China, which Trump said will purchase more oil from the U.S. after the summit, has for years tried to diversify its oil import sources, build up its strategic oil reserves, and invest in green energy, all of which provide some buffer against disruptions in the Middle East.

China also has a longstanding friendship with Iran, Liu says, and it has shown unwillingness to become directly involved in the war.

“China is fully aware that the Strait of Hormuz represents Iran’s most effective—perhaps its only truly effective—bargaining chip in negotiations with the United States and in confronting U.S.-Israeli pressure,” Liu says. “For Iran, stepping back on the Strait of Hormuz under Chinese pressure would likely require security guarantees from China,” which China is unlikely to provide.

That can be seen from China’s readout of the Trump-Xi summit, Liu says. The Chinese Foreign Ministry emphasized political issues, including stabilizing U.S.-China relations and underscoring the Taiwan issue. It did not mention Iran or the Strait of Hormuz.

There appeared to be a “mismatch,” says Chong, between Trump’s focus on trade and China’s desire to talk more about political issues like Taiwan.

Taiwan issue goes beyond security

Xi warned Trump that overstepping on the issue of Taiwan could lead to “clashes and even conflicts.” Beijing has sought for the U.S. to draw down its support for the self-governing island, which China claims sovereignty over.

Xi has prioritized “reunification” with Taiwan and framed it as a historical inevitability. The Chinese Premier has also not ruled out using force to achieve that aim.

But analysts say Taiwan’s strategic importance in semiconductor manufacturing could act as a deterrent while also raising the stakes for both the U.S. and China.

Taiwan’s dominance of the semiconductor industry “makes it more important to have as a partner and as an independent actor,” which Washington would prefer, Chong tells TIME. “Beijing, of course, would prefer that it be able to control Taiwan,” including its semiconductor production.

“The fact that Taiwan is valuable also means there is less incentive to destroy it,” Chong adds.

In an interview with NBC on Friday, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the use of force doesn’t appear to be China’s method of choice when it comes to Taiwan. “China’s preference is probably to have Taiwan willingly, voluntarily join them in a perfect world. What they would want is some vote or a referendum in Taiwan that agrees to fold in,” Rubio said.

Still, Rubio added that the rapid growth of the Chinese military demonstrates the country’s “ambitions to ultimately be able to project power globally the way the U.S. does now.”

China has “been trying to avoid direct confrontation, but they have been trying to add pressure, they’ve been trying to coerce,” Chong says. “Those sorts of mechanisms are also open to miscalculation,” and could still end up escalating into a direct confrontation.

U.S.-China competition heats up

While Trump and Xi were all smiles this week, the Trump Administration has recently levied accusations of A.I. theft and spying by Chinese firms. An internal White House memo said the Administration had new information suggesting that “foreign entities, principally based in China,” were exploiting U.S. firms by “distilling” or copying U.S.-developed A.I. technologies. A spokesperson for China’s U.S. embassy said China’s A.I. development was “the result of its own dedication and effort as well as international cooperation.”

Lawmakers have expressed concern about Trump’s openness to allow the sale of the second-most advanced Nvidia chips to China. “Giving China access to this premier US technology is dangerous and threatens our lead in the AI race that will shape the global economy for decades,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D, N.Y.) posted on X. A number of other prominent Democrats shared similar concerns.

On China’s side, Beijing reportedly moved last month to block Meta from acquiring Manus, a Singapore-based, Chinese-founded A.I. startup, even though Xi told the U.S. delegation of business executives at the summit that China was open for business.

“An opening chapter of an A.I. cold war is emerging,” Yingyi Ma, a professor of sociology at Syracuse University and a fellow at the Brookings Institution’s John L. Thornton China Center, wrote ahead of the summit. “Beijing’s decision to block the Manus acquisition is instructive because it reveals what matters most to China: keeping its frontier A.I. talent at home. The White House, by contrast, remains focused on distillation and chip controls—symptoms of a competition but not the root of it.”

Ultimately, the Trump-Xi talks were more about stabilizing U.S.-China relations than about forging something new, says Stephen Olson, a senior visiting fellow at the Singapore-based ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute and a former U.S. trade negotiator.