“AI Chernobyl” Will Scare Trump and Xi To Order An Immediate Pause — Jeremie & Edouard Harris
Physicists Jeremie and Edouard Harris, co-founders of Gladstone AI, are preparing for an “AI Chernobyl” warning shot. If that forces Trump and Xi to negotiate an AI slowdown, the Harris brothers want to ensure the US has the enforcement tools to make the deal stick. More specifically, they want verification technologies developed and vetted before the crisis hits, alongside enforcement capabilities to deter cheating. Yet when I bring up Eliezer Yudkowsky’s writing on the possibility of airstrikes on rogue data centers as a last-resort treaty deterrent, they push back. They also don’t share my enthusiasm for PauseAI, expressing uncertainty about whether the movement has been net beneficial. Jeremie and Edouard have earned a ton of credibility: • They redirected their careers around the AI threat as far back as 2015, stepping away from their Y Combinator startup before ChatGPT even launched and brought AI into the mainstream. • They’ve built relationships with senior government decision-makers without a prior national security background. • They’ve demonstrated a talent for public communication in their excellent Joe Rogan appearances. In this episode, they bring a level of multi-step strategic thinking that I rarely explore. But I can’t help wondering whether a catastrophe 50 times worse than the Hugging Face incident would let world leaders move much faster on a global AI pause treaty than they expect. Let’s see if they can convince me that an emergency US–China agreement is our best path to a safer world. Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/4jmFcE4WZ7M Timestamps 00:00:00 — Cold Open 00:00:53 — Introducing Jeremie and Edouard Harris 00:02:16 — The GPT-3 Wake-Up Call 00:03:59 — AI Risk Outside the EA Community 00:08:49 — The Harris Brothers’ Backgrounds 00:16:37 — Yudkowsky and Many-Worlds Quantum Mechanics 00:22:00 — SharpestMinds and Leaving Academia 00:25:04 — Briefing the US Government 00:33:01 — How Gladstone AI Pays the Bills 00:35:00 — The Trump–Xi Phone Call 00:39:29 — Pacing Isn’t Pausing 00:42:45 — Defining AI Chernobyl 00:44:07 — Verifying China’s AI Slowdown 00:47:10 — Espionage and Lab Security 00:54:10 — Offensive Operations and Deterrence 00:57:47 — The US–China AI Lead 01:05:27 — Why a Treaty Won’t Happen 01:08:01 — Red Lines and Enforcement 01:16:25 — Warning Shots and Extinction 01:21:26 — What’s Your P(Doom)?™ 01:24:39 — PauseAI and Movement Politics 01:29:16 — Wrap-Up Links • Their treaty analysis: “Arms control negotiators think there won’t be a U.S.-China AI treaty” • The Endgame — the Harris brothers’ Substack • Gladstone AI • Their 2024 government-commissioned AI action plan • Their 2025 report: America’s Superintelligence Project • Eliezer Yudkowsky’s 2023 TIME essay advocating a global shutdown • Joe Rogan Experience #2156 — Jeremie and Edouard Harris, May 2024 • Joe Rogan Experience #2311 — Jeremie and Edouard Harris, April 2025 • PauseAI US • PauseAI Global • <a targ