As artificial intelligence grows more capable of autonomous offense, China's security establishment has begun to reckon with a threat it once considered secondary: not the slow drift toward superintelligence, but the immediate danger of AI-built cyberweapons targeting the digital infrastructure millions depend on daily. A demonstration by California researchers—showing that AI could construct a worm capable of compromising WeChat at scale—has crystallized what spy agency warnings had only gestured toward. With Xi Jinping and Donald Trump preparing to meet, two rival powers find themselves boun