Gilad Abiri (Peking U Transnational Law) has posted “Mutually Assured Deregulation” (Stanford Technology Law Review) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
We have convinced ourselves that the way to make AI safe is to make it unsafe. Since 2022, many policymakers worldwide have embraced the “Regulation Sacrifice”—the belief that dismantling safety oversight will somehow deliver security through AI dominance. The reasoning follows a perilous pattern: fearing that China or the USA will dominate the AI landscape, we rush to eliminate any safeguard that might slow our progress. This Essay reveals the fatal flaw in such thinking. Though AI development certainly poses national security challenges, the solution demands stronger regulatory frameworks, not weaker ones. A race without guardrails doesn’t build competitive strength—it breeds shared danger.
The Regulation Sacrifice makes three promises. Each one is false. First, it promises durable technological leads. But as a form of dual-use software, AI capabilities spread like wildfire. Performance gaps between U.S. and Chinese systems collapsed from 9% to 2% in thirteen months. When advantages evaporate in months, sacrificing permanent safety for temporary speed makes no sense.
Second, it promises that deregulation accelerates innovation. The opposite is quite often true. Companies report that well-designed governance frameworks streamline their development. Investment flows toward regulated markets, not away from them. Clear rules reduce uncertainty. Uncertain liability creates paralysis. We have seen this movie before—environmental standards didn’t kill the auto industry; they created Tesla and BYD.
Third, the promise of enhanced national security through deregulation is perhaps the most dangerous fallacy, as it actually undermines security across all timeframes. In the near term, it hands our adversaries perfect tools for information warfare. In the medium term, it puts bioweapon capabilities in everyone’s hands. In the long term, it guarantees we’ll deploy AGI systems we cannot control, racing to be the first to push a button we can’t unpush.
The Regulation Sacrifice persists because it serves powerful interests, not because it serves security. Tech companies prefer freedom to accountability. Politicians prefer simple stories to complex truths. Together they are trying to convince us that recklessness is patriotism. But here is the punchline: these ideas create a system of mutually assured deregulation, where each nation’s sprint for advantage guarantees collective vulnerability. The only way to win this game is not to play.
