Token diplomacy: How China is shaping the world’s AI future

In the days before the American AI industry erupted in a bitter dispute over Kimi K3 and other Chinese open-weight models, thousands of world leaders, tech executives, and AI researchers converged at the sprawling Palexpo convention center in Geneva, Switzerland, for what the UN billed as a global dialogue on AI governance. Hosted by the UN agency that sets international tech standards for everything from satellites to spectrum, the AI for Good summit featured all the usual tech-conference trappings: a massive expo hall of vendors hawking robotic dogs and networking equipment; circuit regulars like will.i.am and John Legend; and AI-generated, well, everything.Notably absent, however, were the leaders of US frontier labs — the most prominent American CEO was Salesforce’s ubiquitous Marc Ben