Former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice He argued that the world is undergoing a significant transition from the international order established after World War II, and that artificial intelligence (AI) represents the greatest technological disruption in that reconfiguration. rice gave a speech in front of financial industry executives. Insight 2026An event hosted by. BNYThere, she analyzed the new geopolitical landscape, the risks China’s technological advances pose to the West, and the challenges AI poses to education and organizational leadership.
“For nearly 80 years, we have had a system that gradually transitioned to a non-zero-sum international economy. My growth has not come at your expense,” he said. rice. He argued that the system is collapsing, in part due to the inability to integrate China as a cooperative actor within the world order.
rice pointed out Xi Jinping He said in 2015 that China would surpass the United States in cutting-edge technologies such as AI, and since then he said the Asian country has been acting more like a challenger to the system than a participant in it. In addition to this, there is also a backlash within the United States against 80 years of globalization, with a wide segment of the population that did not benefit from this model calling for manufacturing to return to its home country. “There is a realignment going on and we are in the middle of that realignment,” she said.
Regarding artificial intelligence, rice She said candidly that this was a race between two horses and that she hoped democracy would win. Her arguments are not only technical but also political. She cautioned that it is by no means impossible to predict all the problems that AI will cause or all of its capabilities. That’s why it’s best for AI developments to take place in open societies, with investigative journalism and institutional checks and balances. About China, she said flatly. Just as with COVID-19, China manages AI in a way that is completely un-democratic, hiding the problem and lying.
The former official acknowledged that the United States maintains an advantage in cutting-edge innovation, thanks in part to restrictions on exports of advanced chips to China. But she warned: “We make a mistake if we believe that everything China does is simply copied,” she said as an example. deep seekis a Chinese AI model that shook the industry in early 2025. All the national security experts were stunned, she said, but none of the AI scientists were surprised because they had “read the academic papers.” rice The company also highlighted that none of its scientists have conducted research outside China, highlighting the strength of the domestic research ecosystem.
He pointed out that there are two areas where China has an advantage over the United States. These are the speed of AI adoption and the global adoption of low-cost open source models that are expanding faster globally than the US model. Considering this, rice He called for preserving the U.S. innovation ecosystem and advocated minimal regulation. She proposed a framework that would align the interests of major infrastructure providers, frontier model developers, and the federal government to avoid what she called “AI 9/11” without slowing innovation.
The debate over AI has even reached the classroom. riceprofessor of stanford universityargued that students must learn how to use AI agents with judgment, not as a replacement for critical thinking, but as an adjunct to it. She warned that if the agent did all the work, the brain would stop doing the work itself. She cited a recent article documenting how instant access to information reduces the practice of analytical thinking. If someone once tried to remember the date of the Crimean War, now it’s just a matter of running a search. rice He said this phenomenon will force a rethink of education methods and how organizations train their employees.
rice He also warned of a worrying trend at home: Americans are more skeptical of AI than anyone else in the developed world. She attributed this skepticism to the prevailing narrative that technology destroys jobs, increases energy consumption, and threatens people. “Given this narrative around AI, is it any surprise that people are nervous about such a powerful technology?” she asked. To illustrate this point, she recounted a story about a friend’s 11-year-old daughter who was surprisingly polite to chatbots. When her father pointed out that it was just a program, the girl replied, “When they come to pick us up, I’ll be on the list of people who have been kind to me.”
At the end of her statement, rice He described AI, robotics, synthetic biology, and space exploration as “civilizational technologies.” If future generations can look back and say that these technologies were managed wisely given their enormous power, then humanity will be facing its greatest challenge of our time, she argued. The former US official also warned that the answer is not to fire workers and replace them with agents, but to explore combinations that enable higher productivity with the same number of people, powered by AI tools.
