This paper compares the ongoing ascent of AI to a geological unconformity, constituting a potential break or watershed in the continuum of human events, with significant implications for the Sino-US relationship, the geopolitical landscape, and global society as a whole. It touches on some of the constituent technical components underpinning the development of AI capabilities and highlights how the full flowering of AI may irrevocably alter the global chessboard and the notion of control for both the US and China. China and the US may each become bystanders in an increasingly AI-centered world. The paper then discusses the patchwork of regulatory efforts undertaken by various world actors, emphasizing how underlying societal values are likely to lead to disparate outcomes and resulting regulatory confusion. The commentary further underscores how competing development platforms, such as China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the US Indo-Pacific Economic Framework and the G7’s Global Partnership for Infrastructure and Investment are becoming vehicles for engaging in the struggle for global primacy and influence in respect of standards for technology, infrastructure, and global governance, writ large. Finally, the paper portrays the current moment as an unprecedented inflection point in which the US and China and the global community as a whole have a stake. Faced with the “unconformity” likely to be caused by AI, this paper makes a measured plea for targeted and realistic cooperation between the US and China on these issues, outlining a multi-pronged agenda encompassing AI and other pressing geopolitical matters while acknowledging the current obstacles to promoting such a constructive dialogue. The overriding point is that AI may turn out to be a somewhat exogenous, even alien, variable beyond the power of either the US or China to control, and that in such circumstances, realistic steps toward some degree of common or coordinated regulatory control constitute not just a desirable, but also a rational and increasingly necessary approach toward harnessing the power of AI and thereby promoting global welfare.