Not so, nobody forces anybody to compete in an arms race. My point is that there is an arms race - and inventions such as AI for war are part of that arms race and are being developed. These are very easy inventions too, given the widely available and extremely powerful software and hardware. These are facts. No amount of upsetting moral arguments make the arms race go away.
The question is: should America compete in the arms race? I don't know. But there are big consequences either way.
Say US wants to spend a lot of many with some black magic consultant that could assassinate at a distance, you can justify it by launching a rumor that China does it too or probably does it or it will do it.
So you throw away any moral discussions by blaming China , they do it so we have no choice.
Hmm makes sense. I see what you mean from the position of say a general in US army tasked with this stuff: if someone says China can do X, his bosses are going to ask why America can't do X too. And therefore to force America into doing X, you just need reliable sounding misinformation to prove China doing X, and then moral arguments are swept aside.
However that aside, AI is very big in China right now, and they're using it for numerous applications with thousands of students going through Chinese universities being taught how to handle this stuff. While the same doesn't apply to niche interests like genetically enhanced humans (who is working on that, really?), something like AI with thousands of capable researchers and engineers is a different story.
The question is: should America compete in the arms race? I don't know. But there are big consequences either way.