China and America don’t know it yet, but the artificial intelligence revolution is going to drive them closer together, not farther apart. The rise of A.I. will force them to fiercely compete for dominance and — at the same time and with equal energy — cooperate at a depth our two countries have never attempted before. They will have no choice.

Why am I so confident about that? Because A.I. has certain unique attributes and poses certain challenges that are different from those presented by any previous technology. This column will discuss them in detail, but here are a couple to chew on for starters: A.I. will spread like a steam vapor and seep into everything. It will be in your watch, your toaster, your car, your computer, your glasses and your pacemaker — always connected, always communicating, always collecting data to improve performance. As it does, it will change everything about everything — including geopolitics and trade between the world’s two A.I. superpowers, and the need for cooperation will become ever more apparent each month.

For instance, say you break your hip, and your orthopedist tells you the world’s most highly rated hip replacement is a Chinese-made prosthetic that is infused with Chinese-designed A.I. It is constantly learning about your body and, with its proprietary algorithm, using that data to optimize your movements in real time. It’s the best!

Would you let that “smart hip” be sewn into you? I wouldn’t — not unless I knew that China and America had agreed to embed a common ethical architecture into every A.I.-enabled device that either nation builds. Viewed on a much larger, global scale, this could ensure that A.I. is used only for the benefit of humanity, whether it is employed by humans or operates on its own initiative.

At the same time, Washington and Beijing will soon discover that putting A.I. in the hands of every person and robot on the planet will super-empower bad people to levels no law enforcement agency has ever faced. Remember: Bad guys are always early adopters! And without the United States and China agreeing on a trust architecture to ensure that every A.I. device can be used only for humans’ well-being, the artificial intelligence revolution is certain to produce super-empowered thieves, scam artists, hackers, drug dealers, terrorists and misinformation warriors. They will destabilize both America and China, long before these two superpower nations get around to fighting a war with each other.

In short, as I will argue, if we cannot trust A.I.-infused products from China and it can’t trust ours, very soon the only item China will dare buy from America will be soybeans and the only thing we will dare buy from China is soy sauce, which will surely sap global growth.