AI Weapons, USD-RMB peg, and SALT
Like all high-stakes negotiations, acceptable terms come in "parcels": you get more than bargained for in what matters most, to you, while offering tolerable concessions, when compelled by time, opportunity, or History, to your counterparts.
The "Big Bargain"
SALT expired without a peep from the US media. Only Dmitry Medvedev's tweet brought mainstream attention to the formal end of any nuclear weapons treaty between the "P5" nations.
The simplest constraint for nuclear and AI defense spending comes down to cost: whether limiting the size of Navies in the 1922 to reduce spending or the original SALT program during the economic chaos of post-Vietnam, high-inflation America, good defense policy means cutting defense spending - period.
America's Current Defense Budget is a Bluff
America simply has to cut government spending - that means, a tolerable solution to the outrageous military budgets. At the moment, the obscene spending for the military only stretches China's resources even further (Russia not taken that seriously as a direct rival).
However, as long as negotiations drag-on with China and Russia, the American military budget must remain extremely high to provide a basis from which to negotiate: e.g. "cutting" the budget from, say, nearly $1T USD to a "projected" $600B over fifteen years. Of course, Chinese and Russian strategists anticipate this "concession", but it remains a valuable PR "win", akin to when the US "turned a blind eye" to the Soviets to running amok in the 3rd world to placate their military establishment after agreeing to START.
Notably, the Treasury market would very positively to such suggestions, especially in the beleaguered long-end.
Objective: the "Holy Trinity"
To get America away from these obscene military budgets and stabilize relations between the "neo-Soviet dual" of China & Russia and the US, three things need to occur:
1) AI Weapons Treaty - a treaty that includes not only includes commitments to limit autonomous weapons platforms but even allows inspection, evaluation, and reporting on systems to avoid a "covert arms race" on what an adversary can actually do with his autonomous weapons platform. With respect to all imperatives, a concrete AI Weapons Treaty amongst the P5(substantively, between China and the US) proves essential, above all others.
2) USD-RMB Treaty - it doesn't make sense to bother with treaties that can't be enforced because of domestic unrest from economic hardship - thus, the RMB must be allowed to significantly appreciate against the USD. The attending improvement in the US labor market for the "working classes" would give the American establishment, especially post-Epstein, a strong mandate for governing and thus maintaining the AI Weapons Treaty signed amongst the P5.
Likewise, China must have concessions from America to keep her economy from imploding, but Trump requires that Chinese involvement in the US must create jobs - there is simply no more collateral with which to trade with the Chinese (outside of AI chips, which are a whim away from a ban). To make a USD-RMB reset work requires close coordination between central economic planners in both the US and China to decide which industries or even specific businesses "go to" the other party.
3) Nuclear Weapons Treaty - SALT naturally finds itself bundled into the general AI Weapons Treaty framework, especially with respect to micro-nuclear payloads and the old "doomsday machine".
Iranian oil, "Rare Earths", & China's Economic Surplus
China needs subsidized commodities to generate sufficient surplus its export economy: with a birth-rate far below the worst-case estimates, China has no hope of boosting domestic consumption, sustainably, without serious social re-engineering - and that means risk for incumbents who want to try to abandon decades of mercantilism.
Thus, when America attacks subsidized Iranian oil exports or begins to subsidize its own rare-earth mining industry, it creates another "item" with which to negotiate a strategic trade-defense pact with China and Russia.
Carrots & Sticks
When the American media declaims that "AI is a national security imperative", what it means is that without a credible, massive, and sophisticated AI-powered defense platform, the US has no leverage against China with which to achieve the necessary trade reforms required to avoid an economic calamity that surely would lead to a hot world war.
China overtly supports: Russia against Ukraine, Iran against Israel, Cambodia against Thailand, Burmese Junta vs. US rebels, and, till recently, incumbents in Venezuela. China would also, if required, escalate her involvement in the European front to include an incursion into the Baltics to secure Kaliningrad, should Russia face defeat from NATO.
Xi is deadly serious and plays to win, but after the Epstein revelations, the entire American establishment has been declared disposable: that means revolutionary changes can occur, quickly, in America - a pivot that Chinese simulations of diplomatic & military confrontations likely underestimated.