Thus, a key part of pacing within democracies is to keep democracies’ AI lead over autocracies as large as possible, to give us the breathing room we need in order to pace effectively.
Justice Lens: The implications in this part of the essay focus on keeping the US, the "good guys", ahead of China, as the "bad guys". The argument here is right versus wrong based on the idea that we need to punish or restrict the "bad guy", based on the US view of the CCP.
Any cooperation we are able to achieve with China will extend the amount of time we have to spend on pacing the frontier within the democratic nations. We should aim for the higher levels while seeing the lower levels as much more likely and realistic.
Utilitarian Lens: I find it interesting that so much of the focus is on China as the most likely to match the US in the race to build the biggest and best AI. It seems short-sighted to ignore that there are other authoritarian powers that would be willing to do as much as China but not so much in the public eye. I appreciate that his focus is on the biggest, most obvious "enemy", but he is also simplifying his argument a lot. This argument does put most of the focus on the highest, fastest "common good", and would be the least expensive way to do it as well, in a highly utilitarian way.